
As Israelis cautiously await further news regarding the hostage deal set to take effect today, the family of Alon Ohel continues to hope for Alon’s release. Alon, a talented pianist, was taken hostage from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023. After nearly a year and a half of waiting, the family may be closer than ever to seeing their son again—but his release is still far from guaranteed.
Alon’s parents Idit and Kobi, his siblings Ronen and Inbar, and their dogs Sandy and Chip are all waiting for Alon in the family home in Lavon, northern Israel. Sandy was accustomed to sitting beside Alon on the piano bench as he played and howling—noises that have been painfully absent over the past months. (The interview in this article was conducted before the signing of the hostage deal.)
Alon went to high school in the Misgav Regional Council and then served in the military. Following his military service, he worked to save money to travel internationally. A month and a half before October 7, 2023, Alon returned from his trip.
Idit, Alon’s mother, told Davar that he spent the Jewish holidays with the family after returning from abroad. “He said to me, ‘I think I’ll get tickets to some festival,’” Idit recounted. “I said OK. On the holiday eve, we went to have dinner at my sister’s, and the entire time he was pacing back and forth. When my Alon thinks about something that he still isn’t sure about, this is what he does — he moves. He always has to be on the move. Now he’s learning what it is to be stationary.”
“Before he left, he said to me: ‘Mom, what do you think, should I go? Should I go to the festival?’ He looked at me. He often would ask me this rhetorically, he’s not waiting for an answer,” she said. “He’s 22 years old, who am I to tell him what to do?”
Idit encouraged him to attend the festival. “It was as though his soul and my soul said, OK, we’re going through with this, we’re going to go through this thing now. It’s sealed. That’s it,’” she said.
After returning from Idit’s sister’s house, Alon played piano in the family home. He met up with friends in the area and they set out for the festival at 2 a.m.
The friends arrived at the festival only about an hour before the Hamas attack began. “They arrive, dance a little, barely, for so little time, and then everything starts happening,” Idit said. “They’re good kids, they understand that something is going on.”
Alon met back up with his friends from northern Israel and started driving away from the festival. After reaching a police barricade, the group was forced to turn around. Eventually they drove to a shelter outside of Kibbutz Re’im that would come to be known as the Death Shelter. Out of the 27 people hiding in that shelter, 16 were killed, seven made it out, and four, including Alon, were taken hostage.
Idit became aware of what was going on only around 7:30 a.m. that day. “My dad called me and asked, ‘What about Alon? Where is he?’ We told him, ‘Come on, it’s a party, what’s the problem?’ I didn’t understand.”
At 7:58 a.m., Alon’s parents texted him to ask if he was alright. At 8:08 a.m., they received a response: “We’re in a shelter, everything is fine.”
“That was the exact time he was taken hostage,” Idit explained. “There’s no cell service in the shelter, and when they took him, his phone fell. Then the message was sent.”
Meanwhile, Alon’s sister kept calling him every five minutes. Eventually, another survivor of the Nova massacre picked up his phone. “She whispered into the phone, ‘Terrorists are firing at us and we need help, come save us,’ and told us where she was. We understood that it was in the area of the shelter, we looked at the map to find where it was, and that was it, the call ended,” Idit said.
Hours later, another man answered Alon’s phone. The father of another victim, he had driven to the area to try to save his son and ended up saving seven others and driving them to Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva. Alon’s family mistakenly thought that Alon was among the people he had saved.
Only hours later, after Alon’s father Kobi drove to the hospital to search for him, did the family get the news that Alon had been taken into Gaza alive.
The Ohel family’s first decision after receiving the news was to not let their home turn into a house of mourning. “In this house there is always music,” Idit said. “Even within the first few hours we put on music, all the time: music. Good music, not like the kind you hear on memorial day, and then people got used to it. I think that it also helps them. I don’t need the people with sad faces, how does that help?”
Idit said she tries not to let herself be affected by news and rumors about the hostages. “It’s all irrelevant,” she said. “I have no control over it. If I start thinking 24 hours a day about how he doesn’t have this, he doesn’t have that, and he doesn’t have that, that they’re doing this to him—how will I be able to change any of it? I have no control over when he’ll be returned. I have no control over how he’ll come back. It’s outside of my control.”
What she does have control over, Idit said, is the well-being of her family. “I can control how I ensure that he will have a good home, a strong home, a special home,” she said.

Just two days after October 7, 2023, Alon’s sister Inbar decided to start an initiative to promote Alon’s release. The initiative asks people to do one good deed each day with Alon in mind in order “to send him energy and light.”
The initiative granted Inbar and the whole family a path for positive action, one that would illuminate the family’s other initiatives in the future. “That quote by Ghandi ‘If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change’, is what has guided me since October 7,” Idit said.
When asked whether had succeeded in doing a good deed every day for the past many months, Idit responded “There are peaks and troughs, and I hold them fast as a blessing. I let myself feel all feelings, and I am present with each of them, even sadness and longing, and usually I just act, because action gives purpose.”
Dozens of pianos with Alon’s picture have also been placed throughout Israel and around the world as part of the call for his release.

Idit is unsure how her son is handling captivity. She noted that her son had felt drawn to travel to India in order to learn meditation.
After Alon’s kidnapping, many of the people he had met throughout his travels reached out to Idit. Many of them told her that Alon had refused to use drugs or alcohol, preferring to fully experience each moment.
“Alon has a base,” Idit said. “It’s very clear to him what his limits are. I think about this a lot these days. A lot of people are thinking of him, praying for him, sending him energy, I myself as well.”
Idit and Kobi have debated how they will handle Alon’s return, including where they should meet him, what they should do, and who should be there. The couple has set up various options for Alon, such as acceptance to the Rimon School of Music where he will be admitted for free for his first year, and a room in an apartment in Tel Aviv that his friends rented. “When he comes back, he’ll have choices,” Idit said.
Idit imagines Alon meeting up with the family’s liaison, a representative from the military who has become more like a member of the family. “He doesn’t know him, but as far as we're concerned, he’s someone who’s already connected to the family and knows everyone. He is and will remain a part of it.”
Lying on the piano bench is the jacket Alon was wearing at the festival. It’s also the jacket he wore during his trip abroad. “Itamar, a good friend of his who was in the shelter with him and survived the massacre, brought it to us a few months after October 7, and it’s been here ever since,” Idit explained. “I haven’t even washed it in a year.”
The night before Alon left for the Nova festival, he played the song “Shir Lelo Shem” by Shalom Hanoch on the piano. The song includes the lyrics, “Darkness surrounds me. I hope that you are listening—maybe, maybe, maybe, you come and go to me.” Since that evening, the piano has been left open waiting for Alon’s return.
“I don’t close it,” Idit said, patting that piano. Since that fateful Shabbat, only a picture of Alon, a dollar bill from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and a yellow paper crane have been placed on it. “When he was 9, we bought him a piano, and since then Alon always plays when he comes home and before he goes anywhere. He left it open, and I don’t close it.”
This article was translated from Hebrew by Tzivia Gross.