{"id":292286,"date":"2026-02-15T08:09:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T08:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/292286\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T08:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T08:09:09","slug":"two-years-later-israel-demands-justice-for-october-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/292286\/","title":{"rendered":"Two years later, Israel demands justice for October 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve taken off the yellow ribbons, but their faces are still everywhere.<\/p>\n

The posters of the hostages, as well as images of fallen soldiers and October 7 victims, look back at us everywhere we go.<\/p>\n

While people abroad tore down posters of hostages, in Israel they have been all over the country for over two years. Some are the hostage portraits by Shoshke Engelmayer, who made what he called a \u201cdaily postcard\u201d throughout the crisis, in which he drew vivid, distinctive images of the hostages that emphasized their humanity. Others are the more straightforward \u201cKidnapped\u201d posters. They\u2019re on bus shelters, walls, fences.<\/p>\n

Some of these posters have the date that the hostage returned or was murdered scrawled on them. In Jerusalem, the most common face is that of Jerusalemite Hersh Goldberg-Polin<\/a>, who was kidnapped from the Supernova music festival and killed by Hamas after 11 months.<\/p>\n

On some of his posters, people have written, \u201cMay his memory be a blessing.\u201d Others have written, \u201cSorry.\u201d The words \u201cFree Hersh\u201d can be found all over Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018Kidnapped\u2019\u2018Kidnapped\u2019 poster of Hersh Goldberg-Polin \u2013 one of the faces that still looks back from Jerusalem\u2019s walls \u2013 surrounded by the vivid, humanizing \u2018daily postcard\u2019 hostage portraits popularized by Shoshke Engelmayer. (credit: HANNAH BROWN)’May his memory be a revolution’<\/p>\n

His father, Jon Polin, eulogized him, saying, \u201cMay his memory be a revolution,\u201d in the hope that Hersh\u2019s suffering could help lead people on both sides to a more humane way of life, and there are banners and murals with his face and these words.<\/p>\n

Many posters have degraded due to the weather, but you can still see traces of them.<\/p>\n

The point is that even after the return in late January of the remains of Ran Gvili<\/a>, a police officer killed fighting terrorists who was the final hostage held in Gaza<\/a>, we can still feel the loss. Even those of us who were lucky enough not to have been touched personally by the massacre and the war still live alongside the faces of these people we have gotten to know. They are imprinted on our hearts and minds, and we will still feel for them even when the last poster dissolves in the rain or blows away in the wind.<\/p>\n

But for the thousands who turned out every Saturday night to call for their release, and for the millions more who wished for it at home, it\u2019s hard to cope with the fact that, in many ways, it feels like the legacy of their suffering is being dishonored or ignored, and that the war resolved nothing. Gaza<\/a> is still in disarray, with Hamas gunning down those who dare to oppose its rule in the streets, and just this week, the United States decreed that the terrorist group does not have to disarm completely.<\/p>\n

While US President Donald Trump declared he brought peace to the region, he is beginning to sound a bit like British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who said in 1938 that he had achieved \u201cpeace for our time\u201d after he allowed the Nazis to annex the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. Bringing Gaza back to where it was on October 6 seems more like a prelude to another war than a real peace.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently responded to the state comptroller\u2019s October 7 investigation by releasing documents that blamed the military and security services, showing only the material that supported his assertion that he was blameless, and burying other documents that didn\u2019t serve this narrative. A key fact is that most of the commanders who were in charge on the day of the attack have resigned, taking responsibility. But the prime minister continues to focus blame elsewhere, unlike US president Harry Truman, who had a famous sign on his desk saying \u201cThe buck stops here.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Israel, the buck stops anywhere but the top elected leader\u2019s office. He continues to refuse to create an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the outbreak of the war, and on Wednesday his office requested that the word \u201cmassacre\u201d be removed from the title of a bill to commemorate the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, asking that it be called the \u201cMemory and Commemoration of the events of Simchat Torah\u201d bill.<\/p>\n

More than just a blame game<\/p>\n

The bereaved families of victims of the attack are protesting this change, understandably, and calling again and again for a commission of inquiry.<\/p>\n

For them and for most Israelis, this is more than just a blame game. People want to know how and why the massacre happened, and why it wasn\u2019t contained sooner once it started.<\/p>\n

We want to know how a quarter of the residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz were murdered and kidnapped before the army arrived.<\/p>\n

We want to know how the terrorists who overran the military base at Nahal Oz were able to kill 15 border observers, tie up and kidnap seven, and still have time to pray (and film themselves praying) before they took their hostages into Gaza.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t understand how a police station in Sderot was overrun so quickly, and why it took a full day to clear it of terrorists.<\/p>\n

We want to know all this, and much more.<\/p>\n

We care about the hostages and the October 7 victims because we know they could have been us; they could have been our families and our friends.<\/p>\n

We need to know exactly what went wrong so that the mistakes and failings will be corrected.<\/p>\n

THERE IS another egregious failure in the government\u2019s response to October 7, and that is the failure to compensate the freed hostages and their families adequately.<\/p>\n

While no amount of money can ever fully compensate them for their suffering, money can provide them with practical help, and they have certainly earned it.<\/p>\n

In recent months, many of the freed hostages have been interviewed; and in addition to telling their stories, most of them have given links to crowdfunding accounts, to supplement the NIS 60,000 payment they reportedly received from the government upon their release.<\/p>\n

Some have criticized these crowdfunding campaigns, but I would caution those who do to think back to a time when they had a relative in the hospital for a perfectly ordinary health problem. Take the stress of watching over a loved one who is hospitalized for a week or two, and then multiply that stress by about a million. That will give you some idea of what the hostage families faced.<\/p>\n

As to where the money for the former hostages and their families could come from, in December 2023 the Finance Ministry itself recommended closing 10 ministries it deemed \u201csuperfluous,\u201d which would have saved NIS 70 billion. A small fraction of that could go to these families, to help them heal.<\/p>\n

The thousands who turned out at rallies to support the hostages for two years are not about to forget them now, both in calling for a probe into October 7 and for just compensation for them.<\/p>\n

It all reminds me of a documentary on The Beatles, It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, in which various celebrities were asked whether they believed the line \u201cAll you need is love.\u201d Most said yes. But activist Abbie Hoffman disagreed. \u201cJustice is all you need,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

I think that\u2019s true for the victims of this war. They have the love of the Israeli public, but they still need justice. We all do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019ve taken off the yellow ribbons, but their faces are still everywhere. The posters of the hostages, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,59,90,46919,85,46,43,112344,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-292286","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","9":"tag-gaza-hostages","10":"tag-hamas-ceasefire","11":"tag-hostage-posters","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-october-7-commission-of-inquiry","16":"tag-the-october-7-massacre"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}