When Nothing Seems Real, "Are They Really Coming Home?"
- Melanie Preston
- 5 days ago
- 17 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
"Are the hostages coming back? When? Monday?" Versions of this question have been asked lately around Israel, via messenger and WhatsApp, so for the past two days I stayed in to finally try and write about it - this momentous occasion of the hostages coming home - and found I felt empty.
And it's no wonder, that the tiny group of us who have day in and day out - dedicated our hearts and our minds to the 253 human beings we've never met - and tried to make the world care about them and fight alongside us - feel this way.
The two friends I'll speak of, (but know there are more of us), I had not known the day of the October 7th, attack, but because I started this website, and began posting articles in various online groups, I found people doing similar things in their communities. One of them is Lee Burton in England, who volunteered on Kibbutz Be'eri as a young adult in 1990. Other than a few short months all those years ago, he had never been to Israel and isn't even Jewish, yet the experience he had here was so profound, that it shaped his identity and life direction, and so when his beloved Kibbutz was slaughtered on that day two years and four days ago, it shattered him. Not a day has gone by where he hasn't written multiple posts on his page - begging his friends to read them and learn about what happened, yet for the most part, my heart has broken for him, as time and again, I see his posts met with an eerie silence, or likes from only myself and Tom Hand of Be'eri, Tom of course being the father of little Emily - who was kidnapped at age eight by Hamas terrorists while at a sleepover; kidnapped with her friend Hila and her friend's mother Raya for nearly two months.
In addition to advocating tirelessly for the hostages online, Lee also played a significant role in pushing me to close down my US apartment earlier this year, having gained a fuller understanding of just how many years of my life were wasted on things I did not want or deserve, and living in places I had no desire to be. He insisted I get back to Israel to live and sweetened the deal with an invite to the UK to motivate me to work faster.
This helped me get back "home" to Israel, something I needed to go as well as it possibly could after a devastating decade, but I regrettably sabotaged my own fresh start and well-deserved happiness by allowing people who have proven to not have my best interest at heart back into my life during my first six weeks here, which included the terrifying war with Iran.
I did this because it was the right thing to do and I was concerned, but I'd been in this exact position before with the same people and not only lost everything over it - but become physically ill as a result.
During my first three months here, I was volunteering with the babies of Kibbutz Nir Yitzchak, just a mile from the Gaza border, one of whom was the son of hostage Tal Chaimi, whose body has still not been returned for burial. It was an incredibly demanding job, both physically and mentally, and I obviously needed to be at my best, so by attempting to allow people on board long enough to even set a healthy boundary, I was setting myself up to lose everything I had worked so hard to build.
Because you can't teach people what they refuse to acknowledge, and I knew this. I knew this off by heart.
I bring this up because of the parallel I see between myself and Israel - the desire to be loved and understood by others - (or the world) and therefore appeasing them in 2005 and departing Gaza in the name of "peace," instead of recalling Maya Angelou's famous phrase, "When a person shows you who they are - believe them."
That wasn't only relevant to Hamas - it was relevant to the world's treatment of Israel, and it's relevant in my case.
And perhaps this is the reason that during this war, Israel hasn't cared about what the world thinks. I've cared - but Israel has finally learned her lesson: the world is going to think what the world is going to think - and we need to focus on surviving.
I had learned the same lesson and practiced it for three years, so why did I stop practicing it when I finally was back "home"? Of all times when I had so much at stake and so much to lose? Despite my having learned over a period of ten years that no contact was the only way to go with certain people to ensure my own health and ability to move forward, and that any explanation I offered would be dismissed, my good-hearted nature and impossible-to-ignore conscience still hoped for a different outcome, or at least that my well-intentioned phone call would be seen as just that.
Instead, my months of warnings to these people that my new friends are victims of the terror attack had fallen on deaf ears, which shouldn't have been surprising as so did my own cries. My boundary was not understood or respected which sucked me into old and tired explanations, which in turn destroyed my psyche, affected my fragile relationships and became the wrecking ball to the sacred world I had fallen in love with, had finally become a part of and intended to help rebuild.
My entire Israel plan was on the line, and it had all been predicted ahead of the phone call, when my friend that joined me on the call asked, "What's the worst that can happen?" and I answered by spelling out what would become my future - almost overnight. I knew it - and I did it anyway. That is how strong our denial can sometimes be.
Actions speak louder than words is the theme of this post, both in our personal lives as well as in war and politics, as sadly what Israel has had to learn from decades of "negotiating" with terrorists only to then be fooled is that one cannot trust a partner who does not operate in good faith, as our enemy does not empathize with our situation the way many of us did with the plight of the Palestinians.
Us Israelis will wrestle with this as having a good heart and wanting to see the best in others can be a difficult thing to let go of, as after all - "we are not them, and we do not want to be them," which is exactly why when I have seen and felt my heart harden these past few months - I have worried: has this war began to make me like my enemy? As the day we become the darkness, is the day our enemy has won. I believe it took Israel and many Israelis an attack as brutal as October 7th to wake up and truly see just how hated we are by the neighbors we kept appeasing, and that no amount of our sympathy or making concessions would ever change the situation, and yet - where does this leave us?
To learn who our enemies are next door is one thing, but for it to now be the entire world, when we are meant to be the light? For the silence to come from friends? From co-workers? From ex-partners who joined us to synagogue for seven years? From people we have known all our lives?
I actually made contact with a wonderful couple I had not seen since childhood only two years before October 7th. They are a mixed-race couple my mother was friends with, and I very clearly remember their stories about dating in the 1960s and how much racism they experienced.
On my way to Israel last year, I was going through New York, so wrote them that I was coming through and would love to see them. The email went to the husband, so it was he who responded, eager to see me, and asked what I had been up to. I sent him several of my pieces, memorably the one about hostage Or Levy, a heart wrenching piece based on my interview with his brother, and explained how I'd lived in Israel many years ago and my mom's attachment to it as well as mine.
I never heard back. I was just dropped - cold - which I believe is the most blatantly antisemitic thing I have had happen by a person I know - but it is also just one of many, many things, but it is a perfect example, as it was in the name of "justice," as I am the oppressor in this narrative.
I am the white guy - and the rich guy - and I am therefore the bad guy. I am therefore wrong.
And I was therefore not worthy of a response, no matter the 40+ year history and how openminded I have proven myself to be. And was it only him or his entire family? I will likely never know, unless I take the time to snail mail a letter to his wife, and let her know just how atrocious and offensive that was - now that I am long gone from American soil.
Sadly - gaslighting others, and in this case the world and turning things around on the side that has shown heart and light for decades is unfair, but can be very easy - if you are the side without a conscience and an ability to story tell, especially if those listening to the story are too lazy to do their own research, and especially if a Chinese company called TikTok has the algorithm, and especially if - the world has been salivating for the time when hating Jews loudly was simply back in style.
And that is what this has felt like, only I didn't know that. I had spent my life thinking that the world regretted the Holocaust. That was my world view, and I thought "Never Again," was the world's promise, not something Jewish people promised themselves and each other.
Another friend I've made through my writing and will finally be meeting in Israel in a week, is Patti Leroy. She'd have been here to meet sooner, but her flights got canceled during the Iran war. Patti has been organizing and attending weekly "Run for Their Lives" walks in New York City, Rhode Island and Boston, and nothing has stopped her from going on Sundays, including the terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, when a man threw burning acid at the peaceful participants walking to raise awareness about the hostages. A Holocaust survivor later died from her injuries.
Patti came to Israel after the Yom Kippur War, in 1973, much in the same way I ran to this war, and has always wished she stayed here to live, so she has been very encouraging to me, without knowing me very well at first, to follow my heart regardless of the various messes and "realities," - and get back here to build my life. Her advocacy has been tireless. She has been putting up posters of our hostages all over big cities - only to see them instantly ripped down - for the duration of this war. She has even sent me pictures of posters she sees and tears down, depicting terrorists as "kidnapped by Israel" victims. These posters look very similar to the "kidnapped" posters of our hostages, only they are Hamas's green.
She has been changing her profile picture to that of a hostage for several months now, and telling their long story in an effort to introduce people to who each person is.
Yet all of us have more than our caring about the hostages in common. When we post the things we post, we have the same few names acknowledging our efforts, again and again and again, so for the most part, at least as far as we know anyway, our tireless work has not done much to move the needle. It might be difficult for people to understand why this matters, and why in the past week all three of us have expressed some form of frustration with those in our audiences, that we know are there reading our posts for more than two years now, but choosing to ignore anything and everything related to Israel.
I can tell you that it isn't because we are seeking fame or to become household names or massive influencers. I can also tell you that it isn't because we are addicted to social media or "likes."
It's because this isn't a phase for us or a hobby or an obsession that will pass. It isn't an "interest." It is a mission because it is an existential threat to humanity, and it has been impossible to put it down and rest since October 7th, 2023, because while we have been trying to grieve for the 1200+ civilians who were brutally murdered that day, and care for the families of the hostages, whose stories we are always reading about, we have simultaneously been under attack in an aggressive way, as well as in a slow and steady, constant way - and the silence - is a massive part of this.
We have been accused of the things we experienced during the Holocaust (genocide), and again on October 7th.
Even before the bodies of the murdered had cooled - before they had even been discovered and counted - the "Ceasefire Now" parades and protests had begun, with professors screaming on microphones in New York City that watching this attack on Israelis had been exhilarating.
I may never recover from the horror I felt when I saw this reaction for the first time in America, as I simultaneously was taking in the enormity of the attack itself. Nothing could have prepared me for it, nothing at all.
I have taken on the people calling for a ceasefire online, and I even did it in person with a barista my 'last day in America.' I sat down in his cafe and wrote him a letter with his pen, telling him about my friends in Be'eri, and then stayed a second hour debating him on topics he admitted he knew nothing about - the geopolitics and history of the region. All of Hollywood continued to scream for a ceasefire at the recent award shows, some with their sickening red pins shining on their lapels which specifically references the day two Jews took a wrong turn in Israel and were torn apart by hand in the West Bank, after which the murderers proudly stuck their hands out of windows with huge smiles, their hands covered in Jews' blood.
This is what those red pins on Joaquin Phoenix and countless other artists represented, as they smiled their shiny smiles and glistened in their beautiful outfits.
For those of you who don't know, I am an actress, and I love Joaquin Phoenix's work and many of the others that I have seen take us on. It's a spear that drives into the deepest parts of me - art through performance - and Israel.
Yet this "Ceasefire Now" crowd have not stopped until - you want to know when? Now.
The calls for a ceasefire stopped the moment a real ceasefire was finally on the table, but it was Hamas that needed to accept it. When the suffering of the Palestinian people was left entirely up to Hamas - (even though really it always has been up to Hamas) - the world and the beautiful shiny people went silent.
And this was when the undercurrent of rage on our side finally came out.
Noa Tishby posted a video asking the Hollywood actors where they were. Why the silence now when everything they were screaming for was finally on the table? One by one, we all started to see what we had known all along - that this had never been about the suffering of the people of Gaza. If it were, the same crowd would be protesting about the starvation in Yemen, the massacres in Syria and the genocide in Nigeria.
This was about the freedom to loudly and unapologetically call for the destruction of Israel and the repeated massacre of Jews. This was about siding with a Jihadist terrorist organization to rid the world of the Jewish state "by any means necessary," and wipe the land of Israel free, "from the river to the sea." And so, the ceasefire is actually a tremendous inconvenience, never mind that it was spearheaded by Trump.
"Trump is not the hero of the Jews," my cousin posted angrily. "Let's just get the goddamn hostages back, okay?" I commented, just as impatiently. "It's been two years, and I know their families personally. Nobody else has lifted a finger and nobody ever would have."
And that really is the terrifying truth - and it haunts me. "Fine - but he is not the hero of the Jews." "Right - that will be Mamdani," I should have shot back, as I'm sure this cousin will vote for him, "and then we can all globalize the intifada."
Give credit where it is due, has always been my motto, and nobody hated Trump the way I hated Trump in 2020, and if I look for them, I am sure I could find the videos I made imitating his rallies that I watched, when I knew what he was going to do on January 6th so clearly that I wrote it on my calendar and set up my DVR to record all of January 6th one day in advance (because I feared him, hated him, despised him - need I go on?) But now I live in Israel, and this is where I took myself in November 2023, when rockets from Hamas, Hezbollah, Yemen and Iran frequently and readily have been over my head, and Trump is the only reason that Almog Levy, now 5, got his father back on February 8th, 2025, after crying out for both of his parents for a year and a half. At the age of two and a half, his mother Eynav was murdered at the Nova Festival and his father was dragged to Gaza, so for him, and Or's brother and parents and uncles that I know so well, Trump is definitely a hero. Read their story here.
And he is a hero to the family of American Keith Siegel, who survived the same year and a half in Gaza as a senior citizen, after his wife Aviva survived it for the first two months, and then had to leave her husband there to suffer alone. Ask his daughter Elan if her little boys are happy Grandpa is home. These are her words from just a few weeks ago, alongside this picture. Read her family's story here. "A little and simple moment
Taken with trembling fingers.
And tears in my eyes.
Long, long days and nights
Of prayers in all forms and in all ways.
Cheers to the life
To a year of a complete and full return
Home."
And he will be a hero for Idit and Kobi Ohel, whose son Alon, the most brilliant piano player, has been playing piano on his chest for two years, as he is chained to the floor in the dungeons of Gaza, blinded from the shrapnel in his eye from being shot two years ago and receiving no medical treatment. Read my interview with Alon's mother here.
And for the parents of brother of Gali and Ziv Berman, the twins taken together from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, who have had walks done for them in Tel Aviv every Thursday for two years - President Trump will be a hero.
And then there is Eitan, who was filmed hugging and saying goodbye to his brother Iair, who were also kidnapped together, when Hamas released only one brother in February, and kept the other behind to suffer. Iair, the released brother, has had no joy, as he has been mentally stuck in Gaza with Eitan. He is a beautiful, sensitive soul, who every time he opens his mouth to speak, breaks down crying. For them, their third brother and their elderly parents that I watched speak numerous times at various rallies when both sons were still gone - Trump will be a hero.
And David Cuno, whose wife was released without him after the first two months, and his brother, Ariel Cuno, whose girlfriend Arbel was only released in February of 2025, after being held alone and not by Hamas - but by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. She has been waiting for her partner's release. Ariel famously told his brother, "We are in a horror film," during the sadistic rampage through their peaceful Kibbutz on that Black Saturday.
And how about Noa Argimani? She is well-known, on the cover of Time magazine and at award shows in the US. Has she been free since the IDF rescued her in the summer of 2024? No, she has not. She has been waiting for her boyfriend, Avinatan, to come home to her.
For all of these families, and many more - including the 28 waiting to bury their loved ones - Trump will indeed by the "hero of the Jews," or at least a hero. He has been my hero of 2025, that's for sure. The man keeps his word, and sometimes that means more than anything else, so I am giving credit where credit is due, because we are talking about dozens of human beings who would have been left to rot underground without air - and that is why the silence - still - since the news of their impending release - even by people I know who have been supportive - is frightening to me.
So, is Trump's involvement in this the real reason the Mark Ruffalos and Annie Lennoxes and "Hannahs" - (Jews that think they'd be excluded from the "Kill all Jews" ordinances once Hamas came for them) aren't celebrating this long-awaited ceasefire? Because...
"HEY! 'Ceasefire Now' people! Your ceasefire? It's NOW!" But no - I think it being the work of Trump is only a small part of it. The new and no-longer-naive me knows it's the other reason - the "Oh no - does this mean we can't go out publicly and scream for the massacre of Jews anymore?"
It seems the only people trying to actually celebrate the end of this war - are us - those of us here in Israel, and I suppose the people of Gaza - we are the people who were actually affected by it the last two years, right?
Yet to circle back to where I started, none of it seems real.
I've not been to Hostage Square since October 7th just a few days ago, where I marked the two-year anniversary and volunteered. I wanted to write, so I've not seen the joy in person that I know was there from the photographer friend that texted me, and the scenes from television, so I remain in this bizarre space...I remain in a suspension of disbelief.
Are they coming back? Are they really?
It looks that way, and it sounds that way, but until they are here, I cannot celebrate.
What we do know this time, is that the hostages know. They've been told, as the ones who returned in the winter told us this, and that was why it was so traumatizing for Alon Ohel, as he learned he was not being released on the day those he was held with learned they were.
I lit the Shabbat candles last night, and I thought of all of them, having been told they were going home, and I tried to imagine them, as I have so many times over the last two years and four days.
I imagined Alon knowing he has survived and wondered if he maintained the routine by himself that Eli Sharabi now speaks of...
How part of their daily ritual included thinking of one thing at the end of each day they were grateful for, inside their reality of being chained to each other for close to 500 days. How no matter how tiny it was, that at the end of each day, they had to find one thing, even if it was that they were not beaten that day, or that they'd had the less horrible guard...
Because this one thing kept the tiniest flicker of light going inside of them - which kept their soul's light from going out completely.
If only I'd had such wisdom whispered to me in my darkness from 2014 - 2023, some guidance to sustain me when I'd needed it the most...
I'll bet Alon has continued this ritual.
May we all heal from our deepest wounds and find the one thing that keeps our light from being extinguished, no matter the darkness that engulfs us...
...and may the whispers and rumors be true... They are coming home. #BRINGTHEMHOME #BRINGTHEMHOMENOW #BRINGALONHOME
Melanie Preston is a Jewish writer who took herself to Israel in the days following October 7th to help the families of the hostages by writing their stories. This project led her to the south where she became close with various kibbutzim affected by the attack, and inspired her to move back to Israel. To support her, her writing and her move back to Israel, please click on the donate button or visit her GoFundMe page. Thank you and Shalom from Israel.