Yarden Gonen, whose sister Romi was abducted by Hamas on October 7th and is still languishing in captivity in Gaza, spoke with Arutz Sheva-Israel National News on Wednesday from outside the Knesset, where a rally was held calling for the hostages' release.
During the rally, family members of the hostages sat in cages to bring awareness to the condition that their loved ones have been in for over nine months. "This was a bit of an outstanding protest, it's not something that our group of young families of the hostages is used to. We are here to remind all the Knesset members and all the leaders around the world: This is what the hostages have been experiencing for 278 days," explains Yarden.
"We invite everyone to join us, just for a few minutes, inside the cage, to feel the helplessness, to feel the thirst, the heat, the lack of identity. We want you to remember, for just a second, how it feels to be a hostage. Then maybe, it will remind them that they should do everything in their power to secure their safe return," she adds.
According to Yarden, a deal to bring back the hostages is what will "build our future, not just in Israel, but for the entire world to see that Israelis are fighting for their own civilians. They will do anything to be the heroes, the kind of heroes that legends tell about. They will be remembered for ages now, and the whole world will see that this is how we fight terrorism. We are bringing back all of our loved ones, all of our citizens, so we can take care of them, we can take care of our future, we could take care of the future of the free world and eliminate terrorism."
Addressing those who oppose a deal and are afraid of the price, Yarden says: "Unfortunately, we already know that we have enemies all around us, for many years in the past and probably for many years to come. Therefore, we have to trust each other, we need to trust our own government and our own leadership to do everything they can to take care of the ones who are in trouble right now, who are being held by terrorists. If we will release them, we will show those terrorists that we will do anything for our people and there is nothing they will do that will defeat us."
She says that now is the best time there has been to sign a deal: "After many months that a bad deal was on the table, now is the first time that Hamas agreed to postpone the end of the war to the second phase of the deal and not to the first one and to give up on some of the guarantees that we won't return to fight them if they would break the deal. So now is the time! now is the time to save all the people we can save, to bring back all the hostages who are not among the living for a proper burial in Israel."
Yarden concludes: "My sister is living proof that nothing is promised. She was supposed to be released in the November deal and she wasn't. But that is not supposed to stop us, we should do anything we can right now before it's too late to release all of them and not give up on any of them, to fight for everyone. And I will fight until the last one is home. We are not giving up on Israel, we are not giving up on our hostages, and we encourage every leader around the world to be a hero. Everyone loves heroes, this is how legends are built. You should be a hero and you're name will continue to be on the pages of history for many years to come."