BREAKING: Hostage Deal in Crisis | What's At Stake?
48:03 Share

You know every moment in these 20 years I live in this area. I know how we live 20 years and I don't want to come back to live like this. But we can't figure it until all the hostages come back.

Hello and welcome to State of a Nation, I'm Elon Levy. Israelis watched in shock and horror on Saturday as three more hostages were freed from the dungeons of Gaza. Yet again, Hamas paraded them in front of the cameras. Yet again, an Al Jazeera exclusive. Yet again, a banner with propaganda and threatening slogans at the back. And yet again, the Red Cross forced to take part in this humiliating debacle.

But whereas the previous hostages released from Gaza in this Hunger Games-type spectacle looked at least superficially okay physically on the surface, it was clear that these three hostages, O Levi, Ohad Ben Ami and Elisha Rabi, had been through hell. They'd lost a lot of weight. They could barely stand. And everyone in Israel had one word on their lips that started with an H and it wasn't Hamas. It was Holocaust.

They looked like Holocaust survivors. They looked like they were limping out of Auschwitz. It was a horrible reminder of the conditions inside the terror dungeons of Gaza. And as the hostages were just being united with their families, Hamas gave us a glimpse of what the dungeons of Gaza look like. It released a video of those three poor men sitting on the ground barefoot inside a concrete tunnel underground being taken out by their Hamas captors.

And the stories that have been emerging since they came back are chilling. They describe how they were left barefoot with barely any food, horrific sanitary conditions, how they were chained, we know of hostages being kept in cages,

We know of other hostages in Gaza such as Alon Oil, who returns 24 the day we're filming this episode, with shrapnel injuries in his eye, untreated since the October 7th massacre when Hamas death squads threw grenades into a rocket shelter where he was hiding to try to blow him and other party goers apart limb from limb. The hostages are trapped in hell. There's no time to get them out and it's been nearly 500 days.

One of the hostages still trapped in the dungeons of Gaza is Omri Muran. Omri is a father of two. He's a Shiatsu instructor. On the morning of October 7th, he was with his wife Lishai and two daughters at home in Nahalos, just 700 meters away from the Gaza Strip. The whole family were held at home at gunpoint by Hamas death squads. Omri Muran was abducted into the bowels of Gaza. His wife and daughters, they could have been hostages.

But they were spared, for reasons we don't know. And since then Li Shai has been fighting for her husband's life. Travelling the world, speaking at hostage rallies, active on social media, doing whatever she can as a normal mother who has two children who remember things about the massacre that even she doesn't remember can do, in order to save her husband from the death squads holding him captive, probably in a concrete tunnel,

somewhere underneath the Gaza Strip where he is being starved, maybe tortured and at permanent risk of execution. Lishai joins me here on the podcast because it is important for us on State of a Nation to use this platform to bring to you the voices and the stories of the hostages and their families as they fight for the humanitarian emergency to end the October 7th hostage crisis and bring their family members home because there is no time left.

We talk about what she tells world leaders, the pressure that she expects on Hamas and its patrons to force it to release the hostages, the encouragement she hopes that Omri is receiving in the dungeons of Gaza from hearing her speaking out, and how we need everyone to speak up for the hostages and keep them front and center of everyone's minds, because none of us are free till all of them are free.

Lishai Levy joins me here in the studio to talk beyond the headlines and between the lines. Lishai Levy, welcome to State of a Nation.

Thank you very much. I would begin by asking, how are you? But Rachel Goldberg already told me off once and told me it was the meanest question I can ask. So I'll ask a different question about how you're feeling. We're filming this episode just a few days after the whole of Israel watched in horror as Or Levi, Eli Sharabi and Ohad Ben Ami were paraded out of Gaza by their captors looking extremely thin.

And we have heard shocking stories since about the conditions that they were held in underground, in the tunnels, chained, starved. And I'm wondering, how did you feel as you saw these three men being taken out to freedom? I was in shock, really. Normally, I told myself that I don't need to see all this. And this Saturday, I want to see because I know Eli from a long time ago.

And I really know the daughters of Oad and the family of Or. And when I watched it on TV, I was in shock. I imagine. I can't even. I think all these days, all this year, we told a lot of things. But, you know, we talk a lot about the girls. We talk a lot about the women.

And when we saw now the men, we understand what it means to be held at Hamas, what it means to be a young man over there. And it's really tough. And I can't stop imagining what's happened with Omri right now.

in which situation he now held and how many days I'm going to wait to him and how many days he going to wait until he come back here. I imagine you have mixed feelings. On the one hand, you see these three men coming out and there's a part of you that's obviously happy for them, for their families. But on the other hand, it really makes you think, oh my goodness, what...

what the hell is happening to my husband in the dungeons of Gaza? Yeah, of course I'm happy for them and I'm happy, you know, especially for Orr because his young boy waits for him and Almog is in the same age as Ronny. So I was really happy to see him and I was really happy to see his hug with Almog. But all this feeling...

You know, every time a lot of people ask me about how I feel and how much I miss Duomri and I always say the scared and the feared is, you know, it's more than every other feelings.

And this is what happened when I saw them. The images of the three men being taken out of Gaza, I think shocked a lot of people around the world. And even President Trump said they looked like Holocaust survivors. A lot of people invoked Auschwitz because of how emaciated they were when they were coming out.

And you make an interesting and very important point that we've spoken so much about the children, the women, the elderly people, as if these are the most humanitarian cases. But every hostage who is still trapped in the dungeons of Gaza after nearly 500 days is a humanitarian case. And it's so urgent that we get them out immediately. Lishai, what was the last sign of life you had from Omri?

We had the video that Hamas released in April. I think the date was 27 in April. It was the 202 days after he was kept. And this is the real sign that we have.

We know that in July from other hostages that released in this period, we know that he saw him in July and he was okay and alive, but we don't have any more and no really more details about it. We know he's alive right now, but you know, every second it can change.

And you talk about the Holocaust, we thought that October 7 was the second Holocaust, but we understand that the Holocaust is continuing right now, not far from here.

And I think maybe that's part of what shocked a lot of people around the world. I hope it shocked them at least to hear how freely Israelis were invoking Holocaust comparisons, because we always say, look, you're not allowed to go there. Nothing can compare. But David Cunio's wife spoke at the hostage rally on Saturday night where I went and she said, you know, what does never again mean if only an hour's drive away from Tel Aviv, people are being abandoned to die in Auschwitz-like conditions. And even President Trump invoked those horrible comparisons.

We have had sign of life of other hostages, Alon Oil, Elia Cohen, the hostages who were released saw them, but nothing from those hostages that they saw Omri. Nothing since July.

Lishai, when I was preparing this episode, I spoke with some members of your family to work out what we should discuss. And I was told you don't want to repeat the whole story of what happened to you on October 7th, when you were held at gunpoint with your daughters and Omri was taken. You've had enough. I've received clear instructions not to waste half of your time talking about your October 7th story. So tell me why. Why not? We are in the same day.

We are really in the same day. You know, this morning, warning back up. Every morning in this period of time, she asked me every morning if daddy comes back today. And every time I need to tell her no. And...

Every day she remembers more and more things from October 7. She remembers the guns, she remembers the knives, she remembers she was on Omri all this time. And I live this day every day. But I think the most important thing right now, it's not to talk about this day, because they are still over there. You know, we have a lot of time after they are going to come back to...

to understand what happened, to heal ourselves. But now we don't have this time because we need to save their life. This is something that I've been hearing from other families as well. There is that, you know, we talk of hostage families and displaced families and survivors of October 7th and your family are all three and you can't even begin to process the trauma of what happened to you on October 7th until you're able to get your husband back.

out of the dungeons of Gaza to be able to move forward. But I just want to pick up, you spoke about your two daughters. I'm wondering how are they processing and dealing with this? I mean, there's the trauma of being held at gunpoint on October 7th. There's the trauma of dad not being there. How do you as a mother try to help them?

Roni and Alma, they are too young, but this is a separate story. Roni, she's now two and a half years old, and she was two years old

And she remembers a lot. She remembers the life before October 7th. She speaks a lot about Omri, she speaks a lot about the trip they did together and when daddy came back to take her from the kindergarten and be with her. And what she loved to do with him and what she wants to do with him.

And she speaks a lot of October 7th, of this day, because she really, really remembers. She's three and a half and she remembers the details? She remembers everything. You know, there is a time that she told me, she asked me about the bus that took us, and I don't really understand what she means, because there are details that I don't really remember.

And then she talked with me about the bus and I told her, yes, Ronnie. And this was at 11 o'clock at night after a day that she didn't eat, she didn't drink, she didn't do anything. And she remembered that we are a lot of people in the same bus. She remembered that it took us a lot of time to get out from Nachal Loz. So even these details she knows.

She remember she told me some day that she remember that daddy get into the mamad to the safe room with a knife. And I told her about what he talking. And she told me, yes, you thought I sleep, but I was wake up and daddy get in with a knife.

And I told her, what do you think we're going to do with this knife? And she told me, maybe you want to do a salad. I told her, okay. But, you know, she remembered the knife, she remembered the gun, she remembered everything, and...

And it's difficult because she's too young, but we need to explain her a lot of things that she not really needs to know, but in this situation we have to do it. Before a lot of months, I understand that I need to tell her that daddy is in Gaza and he not just got lost because she told me people, bad people took daddy. So how it's...

How you told me that he got lost. That was the story you told the girls that daddy got lost in Gaza? It started with Ronnie. It started with daddy go to a treatment because Omri is a Shiatsu healer. So every time he goes, he goes to do a treatment to another person. After a few days, she told us that daddy go to a trip because there is a days that passed.

And I think after two weeks, she told me, I think daddy got lost. And we stay at, okay, daddy got lost. It's true. But after a few months, and I understand, and of course with a psychology, a children's psychology, we understand that we need to tell her a little bit more because it's not just daddy got lost anymore.

The bad people took him. And she knows that the bad people took him. You told her the bad people took daddy? She told this. She said? Yeah, of course, because she sees this. She really sits with him. She really be in this situation. So she understands he didn't go on a shiatsu trip. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, it took a time, but she understands. Every time she remembers another stuff. So when she remembers that the bad people took him, so I told her, yes, they took him and they took him to Gaza and we do everything that we can to bring daddy home. Let's talk about how we do that. The day will come to a process, October 7th.

We're filming this now as we are in phase one of three phases of the ceasefire agreement. Phase one sees an immediate pause to the fighting and a retraction of Israeli forces and negotiations are beginning over phase two. In phase two, we're going to see a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in exchange to receive all the remaining living hostages, including Omri. Phase three would be reconstruction of Gaza in exchange for the bodies.

I don't know whether we're going to get that. There's a fundamental difference of opinion between Israel that says as part of phase two, Hamas is going to relinquish power because we can't leave Hamas in power. Hamas is saying as part of phase two, the Israeli army is going to retreat and we're going to remain in power. And they've made a big deal of these parades inside Gaza as a show of force to the world.

But that's the situation now. We're talking about negotiations towards phase two because Omri, we said everyone is humanitarian at this point. Everyone is humanitarian. There is no time left for anyone right now. But he's been left for phase two. Yeah. Tell me some of your thoughts now at

this point in the negotiations? I always say that we need to start something because we are, we was more than a year and don't start anything. There is not people that came here. There is, they're all stay over there and we need to start. To every end there is a begin. So this is what I thought and I think it's, this is, I think it also today. Yeah.

I was really shocked that Omri is not in the face one because Omri, even if he's a young man, he's 47 years old, he's not really a young. But Omri, first of all, he's a daddy. And

We always say that, and even Israel say that we're not going to separate parents and children. And we're going to do everything that we can for the children. But in this situation, my daughters were not hostages in Gaza. They are hostages near Israel, but it's not the same. So Omri is not in phase one.

And we should say that, you know, for all the military pressure that Israel was able to place on Hamas, we're getting 33 hostages out in phase one, not all alive. I mean, we're expecting that on March 1st, we're going to get three hostages back and eight bodies. We couldn't, we weren't even in the negotiating position to insist on 33 live hostages. Yeah. And so Omri's been left for phase two. Yeah. And it's difficult to...

It's difficult to understand this, really. Until today, there is a lot of answers that you in Israel give me, but I don't accept these answers. What do you mean? You know, they told me that Omri is a young man and he does not have a disease or something like this. And because of that, they can't really see him right now in this phase one.

But the important things that I think everyone needs to understand is that they really don't have time. There are going to be over there like 20 people still alive. We saw how...

we saw how they go out. We saw how... I mean at least 20, we're talking about at the moment there are 76 people in Gaza. Yeah, 76 people. 35 of whom have been declared dead, which means we need to presume 41 are alive. Yeah, but we know in phase one we have from the 33, we had no, we have eight bodies that we thought that they are alive, but they are not, unfortunately.

And after phase one, normally there are going to be 20 people alive and the other not. And we have to do everything that everyone, the bodies, but the life need to come back alive.

Tell me what you've been doing because you've been, like so many of hostage families, I don't know where you draw the strength. I guess you have to because there's no choice. We don't have choice. Yeah, because there's no choice. You've been really active. Tell me how you've been fighting for Omri's life. First of all, the fighting is, you know, there is the outside and there is the inside.

There is the home, and I fight every day to wake up in the morning to smile to our daughters and...

stay a mother for them because they don't have a father so they have to be I have to be a real mother and of course you're still displaced from Nahalo where are you living now we are living in Kibbutz Karamim it's near to Meitar in the south of Israel we are temporary what they call in Hebrew Karavilot yeah we are over there from October 7 and my parents are with me my parents they are from Sderot so they was

also under this attack. In October 8th, they can go out from Sderotsov. They came to be with me and they are with me from this day until today. They really stopped their life to be with us. So we have this part of the fight. And in the other part, I do everything that I can. I fly to...

I fly, I go to other country to speak. I hear in Israel, at the Knesset, with the minister, with the prime minister, of course, with Bibi Netanyahu, in the street, even if it's in Tel Aviv or in our area, in the Otef Aza,

Speaking at the Hostage Rally in Tel Aviv, in Hostages Square, of course. Yeah, of course. I'm telling our story every day to groups. I'm going to the community in Israel, out of Israel. And internationally, tell me, which world leaders have you met with? I didn't meet with a lot, but most of my power I'm...

I do it at Hungary because Omri is a citizen of Hungary. Right, he's a Hungarian citizen. Yeah, and they really help us. They try to help us. How? Speak with all the other countries that they can, doing pressure on Hamas, pressure on Israel also. Do everything that they can. That's what I want to understand, pressure, because...

Rachel Goldberg and the families of the six hostages who were executed in the tunnel months ago wrote a scathing piece in Time magazine about how they met world leaders who offered them rhetorical support and sympathy, but never followed up with any real action, any real pressure. And I'm wondering, when you go and you speak with these world leaders, what's your demand? What's the ask? You want Omri back, but what do you want them to do?

Of course, I want them to be back, but I want that they do everything that they can. They have a connection with Qatar, they have a connection with Syria, they have a connection with Iran, they have a connection with everyone. So they need to do everything and do a pressure of everyone that they can't. I can't accept until today... Before one year, I told...

I told once that I can accept that all the world, that Hamas rule all the world. I can accept this. After one year, I still can accept it. What do you mean Hamas rules the whole world? You know, all the world told us that they do everything that they can. Did they? I don't know. I don't think so.

because if they do everything that they can, I think they'll be here before a lot of time. Let's talk about what they can do besides wearing a pin and saying, bring them home, bring them home. You mentioned Qatar. What should the world be doing about Qatar?

You know, I really don't know because I'm not a politician. I don't know everything around this. But I know that there is a lot of money that move on. I know that there is a lot of things that around the world don't say really clear. Because really...

If all the world and all the leaders of the world want to do something, I'm sure that they can. Do you know what they should do? No, but I know that they have to say clear and loud...

That the hostages need to be here. It's tragic that what we've been hearing from world leaders is bring them home, bring them home. Hamas must release the hostages. No, they need to do more than just...

And they're not using that leverage. No country has even mapped out the leverage that it has over Hamas's state sponsors and asked, how are we willing to jeopardize our relationship with these countries in order to get the hostages out of hell? And that means that for all the pretty words that you get from world leaders, I haven't seen at least, perhaps from the United States, maybe.

any genuine pressure on Hamas or the state sponsors. And of course, the world keeps treating Qatar as if it is some neutral mediator when Qatar

condemned Israel for October 7th while you were still being held hostage in your house and Omri was being dragged back home, while it continued to host Hamas's leaders in Doha, and while it's patently obvious that Qatar told Hamas to keep the hostages until they could get a ransom deal that would allow them to remain still in power. I'm wondering, regarding phase two,

How can we move it along? Because I find as well, just as a citizen waking up every morning, switching on the radio, hearing about the hostages and feeling just an immense sense of helplessness and wanting to scream and get the hostages out. So I'm wondering your message for supporters, for allies of the hostage family movement around the world. What do you want them to do? How can they help you?

You know, it's a difficult question because before, if you ask me this before one month, I'm going to give you a list of things. I'm going to tell you that they have to go out, that they have to speak with their leaders, go and go with our pain, you know, in the social media, share our stuff. But today I really don't know. I really, really don't know.

But what I know today, that I'm sure that everyone in the world understands, and it's difficult things to say, but the Holocaust, it happened again. After we screamed about it a lot of years, that never again, never again, never again now. And now everyone needs to look in their mirror and say if they are going to let this continue again.

like before 18 years, or they are going to do real stuff to get out all the hostages from there. I really hope that phase two happens and we're able to get the hostages out of Gaza. But as I said, there is a conflict of interpretations between Israel and Hamas about what phase two means. Israel says...

As part of Israel's withdrawal, Hamas is going to have to step down and relinquish power. Hamas is saying, no way, we're going to remain the government of Gaza. And they're threatening us with more October 7th over and over again. Part of the message that I've been trying, both as a government spokesman and now from the citizen spokesperson's office, is to say that we want to bring the hostages home.

But bringing them home means bringing them back to the homes from which they were abducted on October 7th and that they should be able to sleep safely there. Bringing them home means that we pass what I call the diplomatic babysitter test. I want Ronnie and Alma to be able to sleep safely in Nahalos and for the diplomats at the UN voting for an unconditional ceasefire to feel safe babysitting them because it is safe to go back to Nahalos. And so I wonder when Omri comes home.

Do you see yourself going back to Nachalos? I don't know. You know, yesterday I was in Nachalos. I was in our home. I'm going over there just to feel him and to be really close to him. Nachalos is really 700 meters from Gaza. He's really close. That's it. He's really close to there.

So I've seen houses in America with smaller gardens than the distance between your backyard and Gaza. Yeah. And and I was yesterday and I saw our home and I saw, you know, the trees and everything. And I.

I thought to myself, I really want to come back here. I really love this area. Even if it's not to this area that I live all my life over there. I really love this area. But I know that if Omri is not going to come back alive, like we saw him go, like we know today that he's alive, because we don't have anything else. We can't going to come back over there. And

I hope that I'm waiting for the day that Omri comes back and I can ask him where we are going to live right now because I think that the answer is with him right now. You know, there are people that really want to come back to the same place that they had this trauma and to come over there, but there are people that can't.

And that is an entirely legitimate decision for families to say they can't go back to a place that is haunted and has all these horrible memories. But I want to see Nahalos rebuilt. Of course. And so the question is, can Nahalos be rebuilt if the Hamas terror regime is still its neighbor?

I don't think, but I know most of all that we can't rebuild ourselves again if the hostages are going to stay over there. So we have a real dilemma here. A dilemma. Yeah. What's the dilemma? What is more important right now? What is more important right now? That we are going to release our brothers and sisters from there.

or we are going to continue this war and Hamas is not going to stay. The dilemma for Israeli society. Yeah, of course. You said your parents were, it's horrible to think of it in these terms, but your parents are from... Sterot. Sterot, yeah.

They want Omri back, but they also don't want to go back to a reality where Hamas is able to shoot rockets at their houses. They want both things. They want Omri back and they want no more rockets, which means no more Hamas, right? They want both of these things. But you know, we can't figure this dilemma because we can't do everything that we want over there because of hostages. And this is also the thing that we need to understand.

There is a lot of things that the army can do, but they can't do because there are hostages over there and they need to be more careful. Because Hamas is using them as human shields. Exactly. So, you know, it's like the... It's a loop that we have to figure. And if I...

If I thought of myself and not even just of Omri, okay? If we not stop now and release them and after, we can continue. We know this. All the world know this. And even Hamas know this. You know, every moment in these 20 years, I live in this area. I know how we live 20 years and I don't want to come back to live like this again.

But we can't figure it until all the hostages come back. This is the problem. Lisha, I agree with you. Once we bring all the hostages back, we can return to the war to bring down Hamas. The problem is that Hamas knows that as well. Yeah, of course. And that is why we need global pressure on Hamas and its patrons to let the hostages go because Hamas wants to keep hostages as insurance. Of course. Hamas is evil.

Hamas is not stupid. We know this. Hamas needs to be brought to think of the hostages as a liability rather than as insurance, because otherwise it's going to try to hold on to them to make sure that Israel cannot resume the war to bring down the regime that is threatening to do October 7th again and again. Lisha, you just, we were talking about the day after. Yeah. The day after Omri's home, the day after it's safe to go. I want to tell you a little bit about the day before.

You are living 700 meters away from the Gaza Strip. You're washing your dishes in the kitchen and you see Hamas-run Gaza from the kitchen window. Yeah. What were you thinking? How do you live like that? You know, when I moved to Nachalaz, my family and my friends told me that I'm crazy. How would I do it again?

And I told them that for me it's not really different from other places in this area. And I think October 7th showed us it's really done. You know, it's the same things. It's not really important if you're in Nachalos or in Sderot or in Ufakim or in Be'eri.

This is how we live. I know it sounds crazy, but this is our life and this is how we live. I mean, Nakhalos was close enough to the Gaza Strip that when there was a rocket attack, how long, what sort of notice did you have to duck for shelter? Yeah, of course it's close. It's like 10 seconds when the rockets go out from Gaza until she falls in Nakhalos. From the moment you have a siren.

Yeah, it's something like 10 seconds. 10 seconds. Yeah. But you know, it sounds crazy, I know. But this is our life and this is what we regular. You know, in October 7th in the morning when the sirens... We hear the sounds of the sirens. Me and Donny, when we get into the safe room, Ronnie was sleeping over there and we get into the safe room. We thought, okay, there is...

This time, in this year that we have a lot of rockets, we are going to take... It's the rocket season. Yeah. Two or three days in the north of Israel at Omri Fader. We live in Yisrael. And after that, we're going to come back. This is what we thought in the morning of October 7. This is our life. This is how we live. And I think that...

Just in October 7th, people got to understand what it means to live like this. And even us, we just... You think before the war, you underestimated the threat from Gaza? Yeah, of course. I wonder when you look out of your window in Nahalos and 700 meters away, you see Gaza and the people of Gaza. What do you thought about them before October 7th?

About what they were like, about what they wanted, about what it was like living next to them. And how your understanding has changed since. Of course it's changed. My thought is not the same and I'm not the same person, this is for sure. I thought about a lot of children over there that don't need to live like this. And I thought there is a lot of people that want...

like us, to live in peace and in quiet and just to live. You know, we don't think about something else. I'm really sorry about the children right now over there also. This is not something that changed. I know that they have, you know, they have, this is the education that they give to the children to be a terrorist, to hate us, you know,

And I'm really sorry for this. But now I really can't, you know, really understand and really think about them because I thought about my two children, my two daughters that are sitting with terrorists in our kitchen that still, in a lot of ways, they are still in this day. Even Alma, she was just six months old, but we know that she... We are feeling...

That you remember things. She can't speak about it. We don't know what you remember, but we know. And I don't have a lot of time to think about other things. I just think about my daughter and about Omri right now. Because it's so emotionally all-consuming. Yeah. It's definitely like that for the hostage families. I think it's also like that for a lot of Israeli society. Yeah. That maybe one of the tragedies of October 7th is that

Hamas managed to convince a lot of Israelis, even those who previously believed in coexistence and peace, that our enemies see this as us or them. And if it's us or them, then it's been forced on us to see this as us or them. And so we think more and more about us because we think increasingly of this conflict in zero-sum games, zero-sum terms, because October 7th was a fallout of

Israel's withdrawal from the territory up until 700 meters away from your window. And then they used that as a staging ground to abduct Omri. Last Saturday, three men came back. Two of them lost their wives on October 7th and didn't know about it. Yeah. Until they got out. We know that Omri knows that I'm and the girls are alive. Omri knows. He knows where he saw me at the television in the...

I think 35 days or 40 days until this day they told him that I'm in the girls was die but he saw me and he understand we know that he understand that me and the girls are okay and we are alive and my parents okay that's what you know from from captivity survivors that the terrorists told Omri that you and the daughters were dead yeah

Yeah, and he saw me on the television and I thought, you know, at the start when I'm going to the television, a lot of people told me don't do it. Don't do it. You know, don't speak a lot. A lot of person told us that all the hostages family to be in quiet. And after we hear this,

I told to myself there is no week that I'm not going to be in the television because he need to saw me. And this is what helped me to take the decision to show my daughters also. It was really hard for me to show, you know, Ronnie and how she speak and Alma, she was really young and

But I understand and I imagine to myself that Henri is so dumb and it gives him a lot, a lot of power to continue his life. Because eventually I know that Henri wants to see his daughter and I know that my daughter wants to see him. And this is the important thing. It's an agonizing choice to have to use your children as part of this campaign and this struggle to try to give him hope.

in the dungeons of Gaza. We know some of the hostages had access to media, even if it was just the radio. Others were simply kept completely in the dark inside tunnels. But also for you, it gives you hope knowing that maybe, maybe there is something you have been able to do to give him a little bit of strength and hope. I wonder, have you rehearsed in your mind the moment Omri comes home and says,

gets brought into the initial reception facility or the hospital and the, you know, Israel distributes the footage of the emotional reunions of the families. Have you rehearsed in your head what you're going to tell him? A lot of days I thought that I just saw Ronnie run to him and give him a hug. And after Alma started to walk, I saw Alma also...

And right now, unfortunately, I can't see it really because I don't know in which situation it's going to come back. But I have one picture in my head. All these days, Alma is going to celebrate her second birthday in the end of March. And I know now it's possible that I'm really going to be here in the second birthday. And I just saw in my mind

And he's been found.

Lisha, this has been a really moving conversation. We are here at your disposal. Me, the team here at the Citizen Spokesperson's Office. You're not the first member of a hostage family we've hosted on this podcast. We had Aviva Siegel, who was herself a captivity survivor. Her husband, Keith Siegel, was just freed. We had Jonathan Decker-Hen. We had the cousin of Omar Neutra. We had...

other members of hostage families as well, who've also been creating content with us at the Citizen Spokesperson's Office. And I want you to know, and all the other families who are with you, that we are here at your disposal to use this studio to get your stories, your messages out, unfiltered to the entire world. I know...

I know, I can't begin to imagine how difficult it is to have to rehearse this all the time. And all you want is to be able to hug your husband and have him home. And we're going to do whatever we can to ensure that Omri can come home and that you can rebuild in the hollows. Ishaa, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you very much.

And that's it for today's episode of State of a Nation with Lishai Lavi, whose husband Omri Miran has been a hostage in the torture dungeons of Gaza for nearly 500 days now. Lishai is active on social media. You can find her on Twitter at Lishai with a Y-L-I-S-H-A-Y-L-M. Her brother, uh,

Moshe is also active fighting for Omri's freedom. You can find him on Twitter at Moshe E. Lavi with an I, and they're on Instagram at Bring Omri Home as well. Please do give them a like, share their content, help them in any way that you can until all the hostages are free. We cannot stop until all the hostages are freed from the terror dungeons of Gaza, the living for rehabilitation, the dead for burial, because none of us are free.

till all of them are free. I'm Ilan Levy, and thanks for joining us.