The Stability of the Hostage of the Palestinians: Taking Action to End the Dilemma and the War on Gaza

In Washington, the number of attendees was not clear Saturday afternoon, but the streets swelled with demonstrators, and the crowd was dense. The areas of the rally that were more rowdy were in the middle.

Saturday’s marches, organized in cities including New York, Nashville, Cincinnati, Las Vegas and San Francisco, extended a stretch of loud calls for a cease-fire and lifting of the siege, following vast demonstrations a week ago in Asian and European capitals.

As Israel escalates attacks on Gaza, the US has increased support for Palestinian civilians.

The demonstrations on Saturday reflected the constellation of causes and groups that have long connected themselves to the Palestinian cause, including student organizations, labor unions and antiwar campaigns.

At one point, a man in a cape yelled “Free, free Palestine!” to a crowd below as he climbed up a traffic light. A calmer portion of protesters sat at the World War I Memorial, holding up signs, while listening to their chants and cheering at Freedom Plaza.

Some protesters on the edges of the demonstration sat on a ledge outside the White House Visitor Center, their message to President Biden clear. They protested against U.S. military aid to Israel. Another said, “You lost my vote.”

I have not had enough strength to take on this silence. Since Oct. 7, I have focused all of my energy on taking action to urge my family’s immediate and safe release. I spoke at the U.N. and had to recount my cousin’s last voice message too many times. I have poured myself into this all while struggling with almost indescribable grief. Outside of the Jewish community, it has proved to be a lonely struggle. No political spaces were created to help the hostage families.

An hour after discovering they were missing, I spotted some of my family on a TikTok video. The terrorists were shouting “Allahu akbar” as they were being carted away. The pain I experienced in that moment and in so many after has been so sharp, it follows my every breath. Every morning when I wake up, I remember how my family is being held hostage by terrorists.

My brother and I hung posters of our family around the community of Brooklyn which is affectionately referred to as the city of liberals. Almost all of them were destroyed within a day. Posters reading, “Honor the martyr” replaced some of them. The behavior feels pointless, even cruel, but it isn’t what makes me feel isolated.

Instead I feel loneliest when I scroll through Instagram and see friends and acquaintances, Jews and non-Jews alike, reposting a protest image calling for a cease-fire from Jewish Voice for Peace in between their fall foliage photos. These are the same people who watch my stories but who have not once shared the faces of my 3-year-old cousins or demanded the release of the hostages, despite my increasingly desperate cries for help and humanity. The deafening silence is suffocating. I wouldn’t allow myself to be deceived by not knowing the pain, and having a different truth from the one I carry.

All around me I have witnessed a silence so enormous, it feels cacophonous; I have seen former co-workers be so quick to share unverified headlines fed by Hamas yet say only a few private words of sympathy to me. It would appear they believe my suffering to be collateral damage in service of some universal truth they hold higher. Is it really impossible to hold these two truths at the same time — that both Israeli and Palestinian civilians are suffering at great cost? Are they unwilling to say that publicly? I’m not sure which is worse.

I hear that Israel is a country of oppressors. Some of my puzzlement is in my skin. In central Yemen, my grandparents, Avraham and Sara, were raised in a small village. Jews from Yemen were stripped of their citizenship as a consequence of the denigration of non-Muslims before the law. After the pogroms against the Jews in Yemen, my grandparents made a perilous journey by foot and donkey to the capital. They were flown to Israel from there during the operation Magic Carpet. As refugees fleeing oppression in their country, they started their lives in poverty in Israel. They started out as a humble, but comfortable life and raised five children with my mother.

At the beginning of all this, I promised I would scream to the ends of the earth for my family, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. Everyone in my large extended family has mobilized alongside me, demanding the safe return of our loved ones and of all the hostages. We’ve been told by the Israel Defense Forces that my family is alive in Gaza, and for now, this gives us a glimmer of hope. In Israel my aunt Riki, whose core family of 10 has been reduced to four around her Shabbat table, is trying to stay upright while bearing a mother’s anguish. People come by daily and bring food as if they were sitting shiva.