Bring Them Home · עַם יִשְׂרָאֵל חַי
738 Days
On October 7, Hamas dragged 251 people into Gaza: nine-month-old babies, grandparents, young people from a music festival, soldiers asleep in their beds. For two years, three words held a country together.
They were taken from their homes and from a dance floor, in pajamas and in handcuffs, and carried across the border on motorbikes and in pickup trucks while crowds cheered. For 738 days, “Bring Them Home” was painted on walls, worn on dog tags, and counted out on a yellow ribbon by millions. This is the arithmetic of that wait, and its end.
251
Seized and taken into Gaza on October 7, 2023.
168
Came home alive, through deals and daring rescues.
85
Returned for burial, killed on October 7 or in captivity.
0
Remain in Gaza. The last was brought home in January 2026.
The long way home
October 7, 2023
251 taken. In a single morning, the largest mass kidnapping since the Shoah. The youngest, Kfir Bibas, was nine months old.
November 2023
A first truce brings about 105 hostages home, most of them women and children, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
2024
Israeli forces rescue eight hostages alive in operations deep inside Gaza. Others are confirmed murdered in the tunnels; the bodies of some are recovered under fire.
February 2025
The bodies of Shiri Bibas and her sons Ariel and Kfir are returned. The redheaded babies had become the face of the whole ordeal. A nation grieves as one.
October 13, 2025
Under the peace plan, the last 20 living hostages walk free after more than two years underground.
January 26, 2026
The remains of Ran Gvili, the final hostage, are recovered. No hostages remain in Gaza. Soon after, the IDF closes its Hostages Headquarters, 846 days after it opened.
Some came back to weddings and newborn nieces they had never met. Others came back in coffins draped in blue and white, to families who had held a place at the table for two years. Every single one was fought for, by negotiators, by soldiers, by a movement that refused to let the world look away.
They are all home now, the living and the fallen. That a people moved heaven and earth to recover even the bodies of its dead is not weakness. It is the whole point. כל ישראל ערבים זה לזה — all of Israel is responsible for one another.