Amanda Yakobovits
I walk past a ripped hostage poster. I stop in my tracks. I immediately see a street corner in Toronto: a lamppost left barren after someone heartlessly tore down a poster of a human being held captive, in an underground tunnel, against their will.
But this is Tel Aviv. That doesn’t exist here. What I’m looking at is a photo that has withered away; due to changing seasons, street cleanings and the clock that kept on ticking until the image was, ultimately, nothing more than a memory.
At the time, that face was one of 99 decorating Hostages Square in front of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Their plight was present and urgent, and their rescue within reach, if only it would come. I call it a living museum because it does not memorialize relics of the past, but honours those whose stories are far from over, who long for their resolution
in anguish.
The square evolved with each hostage who returned, either to tearful reunions or dignified burials. Each truth that had emerged lay on top of the last, stacking moments of closure upon the burden of those left waiting. The girl in the tattered poster eventually became the last female hostage in Gaza; by then, a banner depicting malnourished hostages from a recent Hamas video hung in its place, steps away from a sticker advocating for the release of a man rescued a year earlier.
Her eyes had gazed toward the last trace of a living museum in Hostages Square: Cypress Avenue. Towering cypress trees line this cobblestone path into the square, which is adorned with memorial candles and portraits of faces once beaming with life. They form a place to solely honor the fallen hostages, whose fates are certain though their stories are not yet determined, commemorated without closure.
Once all living hostages were liberated and only the deceased remained in Gaza, most exhibits at the square resembled what had thankfully been put behind us. I walked past a sign saying “Itay Chen, waiting for you at home” hours after his funeral. I stopped in my tracks at the Nova music festival tent, where I saw that each poster was marked with a heart, indicating all hostages taken from the party were home. The cry to save them was answered; the cry belonged to the past. The exhibit devoted to the dead hostages is now the only living thing about the square.
Hostages Square is its city’s namesake — it’s a tel: the Hebrew word describing an elevation built upon layers of civilizations, a mound shaped by all that came before. It stands as the product of these two years: More than a place to live through the situation, it’s a testament to what our nation and our hostages have overcome.
But Cypress Avenue is topographically flat. Its meaning has stayed as current as it was the moment of its inception, not yet having the privilege to move forward in time and revise its significance.
Frozen in the same unresolved story that began on Oct. 7, 2023, Cypress Avenue defines the ongoing fight to bring back those who remain. With survival no longer a question, the focal point of the “Bring Them Home” campaign shifted from a pulse of hope to a plea for closure. Its refusal to fade into erasure proves that captivity doesn’t end with death, that liberation stays urgent. Return is not an optional conclusion but a moral imperative, and
the mission endures.
When dead hostages return, there is no singing and dancing in the streets, no sense of triumph. A fallen hostage can’t see us cheer for them when they’re discharged from the hospital. They can’t sit down for a tell-all interview or speak to crowds around the world. They can’t feel an entire nation hugging them and praying for their recovery. It’s not fun. It’s fighting for a funeral.
The dead won’t be alive to experience the day after. But their families will, and they deserve a life without uncertainty and the relief of knowing what the hostages endured in their final moments. They should have a place to memorialize their loved ones on their birthday, on Remembrance Day — any time.
Today, Cypress Avenue stays alive through one single soul: Ran Gvili. More than 825 days after heroically sacrificing himself to save hundreds on Oct. 7, he remains the final hostage held in Gaza. He is the symbol of bringing all hostages home, carrying the final chapter of the intertwined fate of 251 hostages and their families on his shoulders. The countdown of hostages in Gaza may have reached one, but the injustice is not reduced; it is concentrated. It’s our obligation to amplify the voice of the one family that is forced to continue to live this nightmare.
On the tel that is Hostages Square, Gvili’s absence is the last layer that cannot yet be laid down, preventing this national tragedy from becoming history. Zero hostages is not victory; it is permission to properly grieve, remember and move forward. Healing cannot begin until the last hostage is home.
The museum cannot stop living, and Cypress Avenue cannot transform into Memory Lane until those that passed are granted a final resting place at home. “Bring Them Home” is Cypress Avenue is Ran Gvili. Bring him home.
Amanda Yakobovits is a freelance writer who has spent extensive time volunteering in Israel.
