"So much for 'Never Again,'" said Lena Kosinovsky in a text to me last Saturday, as we shared the thoughts so many of us did about how that day's released hostages looked - like those who were liberated from Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz at the end of World War II.
Grown men were sobbing in the bathrooms at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Hostage Square after the images of our men were on the big screen where I'd gone to be present for the second weekend in a row, having flown to Israel to be here for these releases.
The names that particular week - last weekend - Or Levy, Eli Sharabi and Ohad Ben Ami - had me particularly emotional ahead of the release. I was tremendously happy and excited for the families and the community of Kibbutz Be'eri, having become close to them during the past year, as the very first hostage I chose to write about was Itay Svirsky. In my research about him, I met his best friend who showed me Be'eri, so I was mentally waiting alongside them for the releases of Eli Sharabi and Ohad Ben Ami and am still holding my breath for the release of now 40-year-old Tal Shoham, who was also taken from Kibbutz Be'eri that Black Saturday, with his wife Adi, his young son and daughter and multiple other family members - all of whom were released at the end of 2023 - making Tal the last family member still in Gaza.
But it was Or Levy's name being read a week ago tonight that brought me to my knees in tears of gratitude, his "Bring Or Back Home" medallion clinking alongside my normal "Bring Them Home Now" dog tag.
I've worn both since I left Israel on that first trip here as soon as the war started - that trip alone in November of 2023 that turned into four months because I simply couldn't leave the families. They were giving me too much, and what I was doing was too needed. Being a part of what was happening here in those early months - and being back here in Israel - the place that feels most like home (I had forgotten) - was exactly what I needed.
Or's brother Michael had been my first sit-down interview after meeting their father and uncles in Hostage Square the very first time I had ever gone there, when I had been so afraid to talk to people but willed myself to do so.
Michael had been willing to do the interview over Zoom but I had refused, telling him that what was missing was the family piece - that it wasn't just about what had happened to his brother, but the impact this was having on him as well, and his wife and daughters, as his world had stopped completely and his life had become thousands of back to back interviews and traveling the globe, meeting the Pope, and "turning the world upside down," as Michael would famously repeat in interviews, "to get my brother back."
Or Levy, who went to the Nova Festival with his wife Eynav, only to never make it there due to the rockets, so turned around and entered that doomed bomb shelter, "the one with the bird on it," the one Alon Ohel the piano player entered, and Eliya Cohen and dear Hersh Goldberg-Polin, and 30 other young kids - kids Or's brother Michael showed me in a video that I still have - kids going outside and filming the street on that beautiful morning only minutes before Hamas terrorists would show up and launch grenades at them and steal them to Gaza and spray them with bullets and take everything away from them in exchange for pure horror.
One of the people shot to death in that shelter was Or's wife Eynav, but Or had already been loaded onto a truck along with Alon, Hersh and Eliya.
Or's little boy Almog began asking for his parents that day - on October 7th, 2023 - and would ask until last Saturday - February 8th, 2025 - when he finally got to say to his father, "It took you a really long time to come back."
"Mom isn't coming back, Dad," he also said to his father, who until last weekend, had not known his wife Eynav had been killed, a point Michael and I had debated in our three-hour interview in his home on January 1st, 2024. Michael was sure that Or had known his wife was killed, but I wasn't sure how he would have known.
Since then, I've often wondered what would be worse for him, knowing his wife was murdered or not knowing. Would it motivate Or to stay alive if he knew he had to get out for his son because he had no parent otherwise? Or would the grief over Eynav be too much for him in a dark tunnel by himself?
The things you obsess over when you are inside these stories for 491 days...
A week ago tonight the names Or Levy, Eli Sharabi and Ohad Ben Ami were read and I was a bawling basket-case. These stories I knew so well were blaring all over the Hebrew TV, and I was filming and crying and laughing. I made a reel for Instagram of my elated reaction and woke up at 7am to make it to the square by 8:30am, in case Hamas had another really early weekend, like the one before had been.
The mood there was cheerful, and I instantly saw the controversial anchor from the controversial network, so had a controversial conversation and took this controversial picture with - (eeeeek!) - Jeremy Diamond.
I then did a "LIVE from Hostage Square" video for my Instagram (with Jeremy visible in the background) and my excitement continued to be palpable, and you know what? It felt really okay to finally be a little bit happy. It felt well-deserved to be breathing tremendous sighs of relief with a group of people and to be celebrating the fact that a little three-year-old boy was about to get his daddy back, as inside my excitement, I still knew the tragedy of Eli Sharabi of Be'eri who was also getting released that day. I knew he was getting home to learn what he likely didn't know yet - that his wife, a native of the UK, and two gorgeous teenage daughters, had been slaughtered and burned alive on October 7th - so there was still that in the background...there is never "full tilt joy," but there was "almost joy" leading up to the release...and that felt, shall we say, "allowed."
Finally, the Red Cross vehicle was ushered into the space by Hamas, (on the large screens of course, not into Hostage Square). My phone was dying, and I was nervous I was going to "miss the moment." Hamas approached the doors of the car, and...nothing. The car just sat there. This happened several times. Once, the car even drove away after a major suspense build-up.
I began to wonder if this was all a gag - if there was not going to be a release.
Then a Hamas guy ran on stage and began speaking, so I thought this even more. My heart began to race, and I remembered my first thoughts and the piece I wrote after the Trump press conference earlier in the week, how that "announcement" must have infuriated Hamas and put our hostages in extreme danger. Time seemed to stand still for me in Hostage Square as I waited very impatiently for Or, Eli and Ohad to exit one of the vehicles.
And then finally - out came Ohad...and I saw the frail shadow of the man I recognized from pictures and began to pan my camera to the crowd, when next came Eli, and my heart did a thud within me. It just dropped - causing my camera to jerk back toward the large screen and capture his image, barely recognizable from the one that had been looping all morning on this same screen, an image of a man laughing with a most gorgeous smile, beating eggs in his kitchen and making fun of himself, healthy and tan and goodlooking.
I was now looking at someone who had aged twenty years but lost 60 pounds, with eyes hollowed and a soul tortured. I was staring at a man who had not been treated as a man, who had not been treated as a person.
My body began to wince and cringe with nervous and sick expectation as I knew Or was next, and out he came, this man I'd never met, yet I'd sat in this very apartment a year ago for thirty long days struggling to tell his sad story now that I had met his brother. I'd wondered if I'd taken on too much and if I could really do it - tell the stories of the men as they would be let out last..."and what they did to the men in Gaza was worse."
That is what I had heard, and that is why I had chosen the men.
And there was Or...and I could see sweet, and I could see broken, and I could see his 6'3" frame (because he was "the little brother," compared to Michael at 6'5"), and I could not contain my emotion. I turned the camera on myself as I completely fell apart, and when I watched it later, I saw many hands over many mouths in the shot, all of us gasping in horror at this moment - as we looked at 2025 - and saw 1945.
There was simply no other way to put it.
The crowd stood still in Hostage Square, but I couldn't stand there any longer.
I left and walked to my Air BNB on Ben Yehuda, and planned to write but was mentally exhausted, so allowed myself to take it all in, and to watch the rest of the day on TV.
I let myself just hear what everyone was saying and just be in the trauma the country was in, as we knew now with absolute certainty that this is a present-day Holocaust.
They are being starved and fed even less than they were in the concentration camps. They are in tunnels the entire time and getting no fresh air at all, and they are being tortured.
Less than 24 hours later, Alon Ohel's family, the other hostage I did a huge feature article on last year - the piano player taken from the same bomb shelter as Or, Eliya Cohen and Hersh Goldberg-Polin on October 7th - received a sign of life (from Or and Eli, who were held with him) - but the good news ended there.
Alon has been in chains all of this time, is also being starved and fed less than half a pita a day, and is also injured with shrapnel in his eye, shoulder and hand.
However, unlike Or and Eli, his injuries were not known and so therefore - Alon is not on the phase one list of hostages to be released, and his mother, always a class act and a picture of composure, went on the news Sunday night and rightfully wailed. She begged for help and for the country to come out on Monday night, which was Alon's 24th birthday - his second in captivity.
Monday night was one of the hardest moments of this war for me, and that says a lot, given that it is almost exactly a year since I visited Kibbutz Be'eri for the first time and all of the in-depth interviews I have done with families, but to sing beautiful sad songs with the piano placed in the square for Alon by his mother, when we all could now imagine him lying there suffering, injured and starving and unable to move...was unbearable.
I begged friends of mine with any sort of connection to American politics at all to please write their Congress people and ask for his immediate release (Alon Ohel DOB Feb 10, 2001) and I am continuing to ask this of anyone reading this article.
This was his birthday song from the square.
Today Or Levy went to Hostage Square for the first time, only six days out of his hell, having lost 44 pounds in Gaza, yet he insisted, against his family' advice and that of his doctor's, to be taken to the place where everyone fought for him. He literally was taken out of the hospital to see the square - and then taken right back.
Friday evening, the names of "Saturday's three" were released. They were Sasha Troufanov, a Russian Israeli citizen, taken with his girlfriend on October 7th from Kibbutz Nir Oz. Upon his release, he learned of the murder of his father.
Also released was Sagui Dekel-Chen, an American-Israeli, whose father has been on American networks throughout this war, and whose daughter was born while was held in Gaza.
Last but not least was Iair Horn, one of two brothers taken together. I was deeply affected by this story since seeing his parents speak in Kiryat Gat, a village in the south, closer to the communities that were attacked, where rallies are held on Saturday nights. I attended those in lieu of Tel Aviv when I stayed on Hazerim and Be'eri with survivors, and found these events to be much sadder - if that is possible - than those in Tel Aviv.
One night, an elderly couple was on stage, and the woman spoke while the man stood still, holding a picture of two men high above his head. He just stood there, motionless, while his wife spoke.
Afterwards I asked the people I was with about it, and learned that both their sons had been taken together, but that it had taken months for this to be confirmed, as their home had shown no signs of struggle; that both men had simply been missing. It was only after the first release at the end of November 2023, that people released had seen them inside Gaza, and that these parents finally knew with certainty that their sons had both been kidnapped.
One son's name was on the Phase One list and the other's name was not, so I felt a strong sense of relief for this couple that has been in my heart since that night - that one of their children came home to them on Saturday.
To say we can't imagine these stories is more than an understatement, and likewise, to say that nothing is more important for Israel than to see these hostages brought home cannot be overstated. After so much murder and torture and horror and grief, to watch these lives get saved one by one, begins to let some light into the darkness, and this allows us to see enough to start to stitch our shattered hearts back together, a tiny bit at a time, and this is the only chance our society has to heal and so it must be allowed to continue, as after everything we have been through, it is the least that we deserve.
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UPDATE on February 18th: We now await the return of four bodies on Thursday to Israel, another four on Saturday, and the last six living hostages from the Phase One deal on Saturday. Tal Shoham, mentioned above, is listed as one of the living hostages coming home on Saturday. Many families across the country are receiving the worst of all news tonight however, and until everyone has returned safely to Israel, it is hard to relax. Once these 14 return, there will still be 59 of our people held captive in Gaza, with no Phase Two deal signed. We must not stop fighting until all of our people are home.
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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. Alon Ohel, on piano - he is angelic.
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