‘We walk around like zombies’
Hostage’s father expresses personal anguish while scorning government efforts
When Hezbollah launched a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv early in the morning of Wednesday, September 25, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, were on their private jet, headed to the United Nations General Assembly in Manhattan.
“If the leader of our country is heading to the United States when our country is engaged in combat on three fronts, who will remember the 101 innocent hostages being held captive against their will in Gaza?” Gilad Korngold asked. “If the head of our country doesn’t make it a priority, who will?”
Mr. Korngold’s son, Tal Shoham, 39, has been a hostage in Gaza since Hamas kidnapped him on October 7, 355 days before Hezbollah’s attack.
A few weeks ago, Mr. Korngold and his wife, Nitza Korngold, spoke to an audience in Rockland County during a collaborative program by the Holocaust Museum and Center for Tolerance and Education at Rockland Community College and Hillel of Rockland.
Mr. Korngold is losing hope, and he believes that many of the other families of hostages are as well. “We walk around like zombies,” he said.
Seven members of his family were kidnapped on October 7. Three were murdered, three were released, and Tal still is in captivity. It is not surprising that he is drained and dispirited.
“We are nearing the holiest of Jewish holidays next week,” Mr. Korngold said. “How can I celebrate? How, as the senior member of my family, can I show strength that I no longer have to those who are still here, those in my family who look to me for courage, when I can barely eat, sleep, talk, or breathe?
“I want to fall down, but I can’t.”
Mr. Korngold cannot imagine celebrating the holidays with huge missiles being fired just 2 1/2 miles from his home. “We will have to live in our thoughts, live in our fear, live in our anger,” he said. “What our government is doing to the hostages and their families, you wouldn’t do to your worst enemy.”
The Korngolds lived in Kibbutz Gvulot, 12 kilometers from the Gaza border — far enough to away to be spared the terrorist attack on October 7. But their son, Tal, his wife, Adi, and their children, Naveh, 8, and Yahel, 3 1/2, who live in Israel’s north, were in Kibbutz Be’eri then. They were visiting Adi’s parents, Shoshan and Avshalom Haran; Adi’s aunt, Sharon Avigdori, and Sharon’s daughter, Noam, 12.
Hamas invaded Be’eri and rampaged through it that day, murdering 130 of its 11,000 residents.
“We all know we have 15 seconds to enter the safe room,” Mr. Korngold said. “We are used to it after so many years. Fortunately, I knew from a WhatsApp call to my son that they were in there.”
The family was huddled together, terrified, when terrorists set fire to the property, forcing them out through a window. “Tal’s son, Naveh, saw his father and grandfather being taken away through the safe room window,” Mr. Korngold said. “Thankfully, he didn’t see his father being thrown into the trunk of a car. A neighbor saw him alive.”
“Tal’s wife, Adi, my two grandchildren, Adi’s mother, aunt, and cousin were all taken to Gaza. Adi’s father was murdered, and so was his sister, Lilach Kipnus, and her husband, Eviatar. Adi’s father was my close friend.”
The next day, Mr. Korngold tried to gather information about his family, but officials didn’t supply it, “not because they didn’t want to, but because they didn’t know,” he said. “On the second day of the war I asked a friend to send me a video of Adi’s parents’ house. It was burned to ashes, but the safe room, filled with smoke from the open window, was in one piece.
“When I learned that, I was actually happy. Can you imagine that? I was happy that my family wasn’t killed in the safe room. I assumed they must be in Gaza.
“I ask myself now — what kind of guy would be happy with that option?”
Adi, Naveh, Yahel, Shoshan, Sharon, and Noam were released from the apartments in Gaza where they’d been held for 50 days during the first round of hostage releases. “Three women and three children,” Mr. Korngold said. “I didn’t know if they were dead or alive, what condition they were in, if they’d separated the mothers from the children, or if the children were even together.
“But Tal remains in captivity with no sunlight, no nutrition, no communication, and possibly no hope. My son is only three miles from my home, and there is nothing I can do to save him. His own country’s government has forgotten him.”
When his daughter-in-law, her two children, her mother, aunt, and cousin came home, Mr. Korngold described their conversations as simple. “We carefully spoke about one member of the family for no more than a half hour,” he said. “We needed to talk to them, but we didn’t know what kind of physical or mental shape they’d be in.”
Mr. Korngold noted that Israeli officials usually manage to get hostages released. He told the story of an Israeli-American woman, Naama Issachar, who was arrested in Moscow during a flight layover from India to Israel. She was found to be carrying more than 10 grams of medical cannabis and sentenced to more than seven years in a Russian prison, but she was released after serving 10 months. “Netanyahu made sure she was pardoned,” Mr. Korngold said. “She was greeted by her mother, the prime minister, and his wife with a lot of noise, including pictures and television coverage. She traveled back to Israel on the prime minister’s private plane.
“Israel pays a lot of money to Russia and other countries to release Israelis who are held there against their wills.”
But when the IDF brought the bodies of the six murdered hostages home from Gaza, no one from the Israeli government came to pay their respects at the victims’ funerals or shivas.
“Only one of 36 ministers in the Knesset, Yoav Gallant, is making the hostage release a priority, but now, as the defense minister, his focus is on the war in the north,” he continued. “Why are the United States and its allies protecting Israel, continuing to supply them with weapons and money? Why are they not forcing Bibi to release the hostages? It’s as though we are without friends in one year.”
Gilad and Nitza Korngold have spoken in person and on virtual platforms to many media organizations and other groups all over the world. Mr. Korngold is a dual citizen of Austria and speaks fluent German and Spanish. “When we travel to the United States, people ask us what they can do,” he said.
“I tell them directly — before you go to sleep tonight, go to your congressman or senator and press them to insist that the hostages be released. They are hostages, not war criminals.
“My wife is broken. How can’t she be? She is the mother. And my daughter-in-law, Adi, she’s at her wits end. The kids don’t let her sleep. They are terrified about their father. They are afraid of the loud and heavy missile fire.
“We try to talk to our grandchildren directly, but we are careful about how we answer their questions. Naveh understands a little more than Yahel. Two months ago, Yahel asked Adi, ‘When my father comes back, will he be very, very old?’”
Gilad and Nitza Korngold appreciate the support of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which provides support for families of hostages who have been released, alive or dead, or who remain in captivity, to share their concerns and discuss ways to get their message out to the world. “While we each have different views about the way this nightmare is being handled, we respect each other’s ideas and work together for a common goal,” Mr. Korngold said
“The goal is to bring our family members home.
“People ask me if we will leave Israel and go to live somewhere where it is safe when Tal comes home, but I live in the kibbutz,” he said. “I am 62 years old, and this is my home. I will stay here.”
The Korngolds continue to pray that Israel’s allies and the world’s governments will push for a ceasefire and put an end to the suffering that so many innocent victims have undergone.
“We must all remember the hostages and hope our leader finds his moral compass,” Gilad Korngold said.
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