‘Mixed emotions’: Israelis in Boston celebrate hostages’ return; mourn those who are lost

One by one, they stepped to a wall filled with pictures of the missing. One by one, they attached tiny blue stickers, reading “home.”

One by one, they celebrated the hostages who returned to Israel on Monday after two years in brutal captivity by the terrorist group Hamas.

Twenty returned home. Twenty to celebrate. But, still, 28 who never made it home alive. Twenty-eight to eventually bury. Twenty-eight to mourn.

“It’s a mixed emotion,” Alon Levy, whose sister Sigal Levy was among those who were killed when Hamas attacked the Nova track Festival in Re’im, Israel, as dawn broke on the desert on a day that eventually left 410 festival-goers dead.

By day’s end on Oct. 7, 2023, 1,200 Israelis would be dead and 251 taken hostage and brought across the border into Hamas-controlled Gaza.

“We’re happy to see them all,” Alon Levy said. “But when you see on the TV, family hugging … you try to imagine, I’m hugging my sister, and she won’t come back.”

Levy, joined by five survivors of the Nova attack, gathered Monday morning in South Boston to mark the return of the living hostages and a cease-fire, partially brokered by the United States, putting an end to the fighting that also claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

• Read More: ‘We will dance again’: Survivor of Israeli track festival targeted by Hamas tells her story

“After Nova, my family was four days without knowing what happened to my sister. And this day was horrible,” Levy said during a news conference at a traveling exhibit that tells the story of the Nova festival attack.

“So I can only imagine what happened to the families of the other hostages …. because until you have a grave, something to mourn,” he said. “… You cannot leave, it’s like there is the feeling inside of you that cannot leave it, like, [you] cannot let it go and breathe as the family.”

Hamas said Monday it would hand over the bodies of four of 28 deceased captives, though it was not immediately clear when the rest would be released, according to The Associated Press.

Israel said it freed more than 1,900 Palestinian prisoners as part of the Gaza ceasefire offer, the wire service reported.

One of the deceased hostages yet to be returned is Roz Shifer’s childhood best friend, Inbar Hayman. The 27-year-old became known as the last woman held hostage in Gaza. She was killed by Hamas after 71 days in captivity.

“And I’m waiting for the news today to see if she’s gonna, her body is gonna return,” Shifer said. “And it’s very confusing. Because everyone is very happy. But there’s still 28 people there that we are waiting for.”

Onn Britschner, who was a bartender at the track festival, said he was thinking about Alex, his bar manager, who was “slaughtered” by Hamas after 11 months in captivity, and just hours before Israeli Defense Forces found him.

“And he was a father to one, and expecting another,” Britschner said. “And I’m thinking about him all day.”

Tal Mazor, another Nova survivor, made no secret of his feelings about Hamas, even amid his optimism and grief.

“The people that we are talking with, we are having negotiations with are monsters,” he said. “They don’t care about human life; they don’t care about their own people. So, as a matter of fact, they don’t care about ours.”

“So at first I couldn’t believe that the hostages are still coming back home,” he continued. “And for me, I woke up in the middle of the night to see the first pictures of the hostages coming back. It was a relief. But still, it’s going to be a long way ‘til everybody … comes back home.”

Shachar Hovitz, who survived the attack, said she found her thoughts turning to a fallen Israeli Defense Forces soldier who was a friend of her family.

“They’re all 19, 20, 21, they’re babies, literally, they’re boys,” she said. ” … And I’m thinking about that 20-years-old boy that died on a day before his 21st birthday, and all these soldiers that sacrificed their life for us to get to that day. So I’m filled with hope that we won’t have to go through that again and grief for that, too.”

The emotions for Greater Boston’s Jewish community, one of the nation’s largest, are much the same, Rabbi Marc Baker, the president and CEO of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies, told MassLive in an interview after the news conference.

“This has been the hardest couple of years of my lifetime. And, I think, [for] the American Jewish community, certainly since the Holocaust.”

“Today is a day to celebrate, to be joyful,” he continued. “It is emotionally fraught. We are thinking about all of the hostages that did not come home, all of the people whose lives were lost on Oct. 7. All of the soldiers who’ve fallen, we’re grieving. We’re also celebrating. We are allowing ourselves to feel hope.”

During formal remarks during the news conference, Baker said he also “acknowledg[ed], with compassion‚ also the suffering and loss of so many Gazan civilians because of this war and because of Hamas’ indifferent, oppressive regime.”

Keeping that peace will take work, U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-4th District, who also attended Monday’s news conference, said.

“The president is saying that the war is over, and we certainly all hold that hope,” Auchincloss, who is Jewish and a Marine veteran, said of remarks by President Donald Trump on Monday.

“But peace is not just the absence of conflict. It’s the presence of justice,” he continued. “And we are going to have to work together across nations to ensure and to architect that justice for Israelis, for Palestinians, so that we can have a new dawn.”

Auchincloss also said he was keeping the family of Hirsch Goldberg-Polin, a young Israeli-American man with ties to Massachusetts, in his thoughts.

His parents, “Rachel and John, are exemplars of a spirit that should inspire us all,” Auchincloss said. ” And their son will not be coming home today, as is true of too many families in Israel. And we mourn for them.”

Asked if they had any words for Boston on a day, as Levy said, that was filled with so many emotions, Noa Beer, a DJ booking agent who survived the attack, spoke for all the survivors sitting with her.

“The day we forget is the day that it happens again,” she said.