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Despite Pain, Relatives of Terror Victims Express Support for Deal

“If I could, I would open the prison cell with my own hands and set them free in order to bring the hostages back home,” the daughter of a terror victim whose killer is set to be released wrote

כיכר החטופים עם שחרורן של רומי גונן, דורון שטיינברכר ואמילי דמארי (צילום: כדיה לוי)
Israelis gather at Hostages Square to watch the release of the three women. (Photo: Kadia Levy)
By Yahel Farag

Israelis and Jews around the world are celebrating the ceasefire deal with Hamas, which is set to bring an end to the captivity of the nearly 100 hostages held in Gaza for 15 months. So far, three Israeli hostages have been released in return for 90 Palestinian prisoners, and over the next six weeks, an additional 30 hostages will be set free. Nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners will be released in exchange, including terrorists responsible for the murders of hundreds of Israelis.

For the family members of those terrorists’ victims, the news of the deal has been complicated, as they have had to grapple with the knowledge that their loved ones’ killers will be set free. Many such family members have taken to social media to share their complicated feelings—and, in many cases, their steadfast support for the deal.

Yair Cherki, a prominent Israeli journalist, lost his brother Shalom Yohai Cherki to a terrorist car ramming attack in Jerusalem in April 2015. Khaled Kutina, who carried out the murder, is one of the terrorists slated for release.

Cherki described the release of his brother’s murderer after less than ten years of imprisonment as “unimaginable.” But he described a conversation he had with Yarden Gonen, the sister of released hostage Romi Gonen, leading up to Romi’s release. “I wrote to her what I really think, that in the end my brother is gone and Romi is still alive, that this is the basic and simple thing that needs to be done,” he said.

“We need to invest all our energy into returning all the hostages—and going hard to not make previous mistakes again,” Cherki continued.

More than a decade before Cherki lost his brother, six Israelis were killed in a terror attack on a Likud party polling station. The attack was planned by Zakaria Zubeidi, another terrorist set to be released in the deal. “This terrorist planned the attack in which my brother was murdered, and I will continue to shout out: Let all the hostages free,” Mor Or, sister of Ehud Avitan, who was killed in the attack, wrote on the X social media platform on Saturday.

Avitan’s daughter Oshrat Barel shared a similar sentiment. “My heart is shrinking and my stomach is turning. That said, this is the right thing to do,” she wrote. “This is the heavy and correct price for the release of the hostages. If I could, I would open the prison cell with my own hands, set them free, and spit in their face in order to bring the hostages back home.”

Naama Tzoref, whose parents Helena and Rafi Halevy were killed in a suicide attack in 2006, expressed a similar sentiment. In a poem she shared on Facebook, she described a willingness to open the bars to her parents’ killer’s cell herself if it meant freedom for the hostages. “My heart would contract with pain for the animals who will be freed, for lives that were cut short and may yet be cut short—but in the same breath, my heart would dance with life for souls redeemed from the inferno,” she wrote in the poem imagining the scene.

Meital Ofer also took to Facebook to share her feelings about learning that the man who murdered her father Sariya Ofer in 2013 was on this list of prisoners to be released.

“Have you ever seen the name of the person who killed your father among the people released from prison as part of a deal to free hostages? That just happened to me,” she wrote. “Since the beginning of this terrible war, I have been hoping for the moment when there will be a deal, and I don’t care if the killers of my loved ones are released as long as they bring everyone back, everyone, to their families.”

She said she would be willing for the second man involved in the murder to be released as well to ensure that all of the hostages return. “And why didn’t this happen for 469 days? It was clear they would release them. Why did it have to take so long? So many hostages could have come home alive,” she continued. “The tragedy for many families could have been avoided. A devastating trauma for so many people could have been prevented. Release them and bring everyone back! I am willing to pay this price as long as they return. Now. All of them. Enough with this terrible war. Enough.”

This article was translated from Hebrew by Leah Schwartz. 

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