Out of 250 faces of strangers all over Tel Aviv when I landed here in November of 2023, Itay's was the one that leaped off the page and straight into my heart.
I could lie and say that it was because I chose to write about the young male hostages after somebody said they would come out last (as we are all now bearing witness to) and another person asked if I knew what they did to the men in Gaza (I didn't but this question has haunted me ever since), but the truth is - I had already noticed Itay.
So, this statement and this question simply had me decide to write about the young male hostages, but I had already made up my mind about who to write about, so I turned around on my first night in Hostage Square, and literally bumped into a group of people holding Itay's poster.
This wasn't hard to do though, as Itay's picture was everywhere, as this man was so incredibly loved, by those who knew him and apparently - by those of us who didn't. He seemed to capture hearts, and so as he became the first hostage I tried to write about, and soon "the handsome hostage," which I didn't bother to keep a secret since I blurted out almost immediately while standing with his aunt and staring at his picture a little bit longer than I should have that he was very handsome - and her sad face exploded into a gigantic smile.
"Yes, he is," she beamed.
And so, I decided that it was a good thing to have a small crush on sweet Itay.
But my crush was to be short-lived, at least if I had any hope of meeting this handsome stranger.
I met his best friend Adam in the square at the end of December in my quest to meet Itay's sister Merav (for the permission to write about him that I thought I needed only didn't).
Adam and Merav's husband Dan more or less implied that she wouldn't be up to meeting me, because you see - she hadn't only lost her brother to kidnapping; Merav and Itay's parents were both murdered on October 7th on Kibbutz Be'eri, too.
When I asked the aunt that first night if she thought Itay had known this, she responded that they thought he knew about his mother but not his father. Itay's parents were divorced, so lived in separate houses on the Kibbutz, but he had been staying with his mom, so it was assumed he witnessed the murder of his mother - before being dragged by Hamas terrorists to Gaza.
If one can imagine such a thing.
I got his friend Adam's phone number as I hoped to hear from him regarding Merav....but then, only two weeks later, Itay appeared on Hamas's social media page alongside hostages Noa Argamani from the Nova Music Festival and Yossi Sharabi, also of Kibbutz Be'eri. They posted asking their "fans and followers" to guess which hostages were murdered, which were injured and which were alive.
Sickened along with the rest of Israeli society, I opened my laptop and started to write - (without permission) - about Itay.
Twenty-four hours later, Hamas announced that both men were dead, but Noa was not.
I finally wrote to Adam, and he thanked me for writing, and said he had thought of me, and that they were all in shock.
I was completely in denial, and wrote, "I don't believe anything yet - I am waiting for the IDF to confirm," but I went ahead and sent him the article about Itay that I had written which can be read here, which ended with a prayer for Itay, as I was hoping for a miracle.
I then had a notification on my phone that somebody was on my website from Be'eri, and I texted "Adam! Somebody just clicked on my website from Be'eri!" "Yes, this is me," he wrote back.
And I gasped with this knowledge, as until that moment, I had assumed he and Itay were Tel Aviv friends, as Itay now lived here in the city, and I had met Adam in the city...but Adam lived on Be'eri, and if he lived on Be'eri...
"Then Adam," I wrote, "you must know so many people. You must know hundreds! Not only Itay..."
"Yes," he replied, "Including my brother." (Read the story of Adam's incredible brother here.)
And this was a moment I will never forget, when I learned I had met a true survivor of the worst terror attack on modern Israeli soil, that his brother Yonatan had been murdered on October 7th, and that his best friend Itay had been taken hostage and...it was heartbreakingly confirmed the very next night by the IDF...that Itay had indeed been murdered by Hamas on January 13th, 2024.
I was shattered over the murder of Itay for his friend Adam, and remain devastated over the loss of this man I will never meet, who had already left such a mark on me.
But my journey had not ended. In fact, a long one was just beginning.
It was a journey to Kibbutz Be'eri, which began on February 19th of last year when I visited Be'eri for the first time, and also spent time at the Dead Sea hotel where most of the kibbutz was evacuated after it was attacked and burned to the ground on October 7th, 2023. Most were taken there in the middle of the night in their pajamas where nobody knew who was alive or dead or missing or kidnapped.
It was my introduction to an entire world I was completely unfamiliar with, and I met so many people I'd not have met had it not been for my choosing Itay Svirsky, which led to Adam Rapoport which led to Tom and Emily Hand, all of which I called "my spiritual path to Be'eri."
Residents spent close to a year living at this Dead Sea hotel, after which Kibbutz Hazerim, just outside Be'ersheva became ready for them. This kibbutz was elected to be Be'eri's temporary home while Kibbutz Be'eri is rebuilt, a job that will take anywhere from two to three years. Kibbutz Hazerim is another Kibbutz altogether, but due to the emergency that fell upon the southern communities, temporary housing was built for them in record time - about 1000 homes for anyone from Kibbutz Be'eri who should want one - on a section of Kibbutz Hazerim.
Last week's hostage release included two Be'eri residents, Ohad Ben Ami and Eli Sharabi, who were both emaciated, and of course, Eli Sharabi's wife Lianne and teenage daughters Noiya and Yahel were brutally murdered on October 7th, a fact Eli did not know until he got out of Gaza, so in addition to being held in the worst conditions one could possibly imagine, he is also dealing with more loss than any of the other hostages who have yet to be returned home.
One can only imagine Eli's readjustment to life at "home," which isn't home at all, with Be'eri essentially "gone" at the moment as well as his entire immediate family, and let's not forget his brother Yossi Sharabi, mentioned near the start of this article - Yossi was the man alongside Itay Svirsky, in Hamas's "game" of a social media post, when they asked fans to guess who were dead - both Itay and Yossi were murdered at that time - and this was Eli Sharabi's brother.
There is one remaining hostage thought to be alive from Kibbutz Be'eri and that is Tal Shoham, and he is on the Phase One list to be released, but the weeks have gone on and on and his name has yet to be read off, and I can tell you - the anxiety is palpable.
Tal was 38 when he was taken hostage, along with his wife Adi, his young son and daughter, and four other family members. Everyone except Tal was released at the end of November, 2023 - but nobody released has ever seen Tal.
Adi was in the same school class as both Adam and Itay, so "celebrated" his 40th birthday on January 30th, a day that all of his friends traveled into Hostage Square for the second year in a row. I was there last year, as they all sang songs for him together for his 39th.
His children have been exchanging letters with the Pope begging for their father's release and I have been privy to his wife's long and gorgeously written facebook posts longing for his return. Her melodic way of describing her grief could tear anyone's heart to shreds, and they are one of several families who actually moved away from Be'eri as the rockets became so frequent that they feared an attack could happen, but they were there visiting family that holiday weekend as so many victims were - including Itay Svirsky.
February 17th, Itay's birthday, marks 500 days of this war, and of course, for the 73 hostages who remain suffering in Gaza, but the suffering has taken on new meaning since the release of Eli, Ohad and Or Levy last weekend. After seeing their condition, and learning they were held on cement floors barefoot the entire time, mostly in chains, there is an even stronger sense of urgency. They were fed less than a pita a day, so we now know with certainty the predicament of our remaining hostages.
Therefore, it has been decided that tomorrow from 11:40am to 8pm - which is 500 minutes - one may fast - to think of our hostages. This is Israeli time - so if people want to do this in their time zones they are welcome to do so as creatively as they would like. Here there will be an event in Hostage Square at 8pm, so this is my plan, and I have never actually done a fast that begins late morning, so having "breakfast and coffee" ahead of a fast feels like quite a cheat to me, but perhaps on a US (or European) time zone, having breakfast followed by a fast could end with a viewing of a Holocaust film or something else to commemorate our people, or even just some videos from the "Bring Them Home Now" website. Last night, Ohad Ben Ami, one of the hostages just released (from Be'eri), made a short video about his experience in Gaza and what kept him going, and that video could be found on the "Bring Them Home Now" facebook page today.
If there was ever a time to seek prayers, it would be now. Phase One is coming to a close, and there are 14 names left on the list, six of whom are alive and eight of whom are not. Tal Shoham is one of those names. Two on the list are hostages from ten years ago, and most seem to think they are alive. It is completely unknown who is among the living and who is not so again - anxiety for so many families and friends and communities across the country is incredibly high right now - please keep everyone in your hearts and minds.
Once Phase One is completed, we will still have more than 60 hostages remaining in captivity, and as of yet, no "deal" for Phase Two has been agreed upon or signed. Should war start back up, it will take a very long time for it to stop, and given the conditions for the hostages, this would be disastrous for them.
Prayers for all of the hostage families - and for the healing of those brought back.
May Itay's memory continue to be a blessing for everyone who knew him and those of us who didn't.
Happy 40th Birthday Itay. Keep spreading your magic.
UPDATE on Feb 18th: It was announced tonight in Israel that Tal Shoham WILL be one of the six hostages released alive on Saturday. Of course, all news must be taken with a grain of salt, and there is a lot of grief here as well, as many families got the worst of all news, but there are six faces on the list of those to be returned alive and Tal's is one of them. Until everyone is back safely on Israeli soil, things remain tense, but this was tonight's update.
Melanie Preston is an international writer who took herself by herself to Israel in the weeks following October 7th, feeling a need to be there and write about the hostage crisis. Having made aliyah in her 20s, life had required her to leave. At the time of the attack, she had not been to Israel in eleven years. Since October 7th, she has spent six months there alone, unable to tear herself away from these families and this work. To support her writing (and her still paying two rents across the world), visit her GoFundMe. Her hope is to move back to Israel full-time within the year. Thank you and Shalom from Tel Aviv.
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