Exactly 736 days ago, Hamas invaded Israel, murdered 1,200 people in the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and took 251 people, 30 of them children, back to Gaza. In all that has happened since then—in the Gaza Strip, in Israel, across the region, and here in the West—those innocent hostages have remained at the strategic and moral core of the conflict. Their safe return has been both one of Israel’s two objectives in the conflict (the other is the destruction of Hamas) and the subject of a national and international rallying cry: “Bring them home.” Now, finally, the remaining hostages—living and dead—are set to come home as part of a plan to end the war after these two long years.
Their release will mark the end of a dark chapter in Israeli history—and they are returning to a country forever changed by the horrors of October 7, 2023, and the war that followed. Here at The Free Press, we have covered the hostage story relentlessly ever since the early hours of October 7, and we have gathered some of the coverage of which we are proudest in one place.
—The Editors
October 8, 2023
War in Israel: Michael Oren Explains How ‘Evil’ Infiltrated the Country
Just hours after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Michael Oren joined Bari on Honestly to make sense of what had happened.
October 9, 2023
‘All I’m Asking Is to Have My Babies Back Home’
The day after Hamas’s invasion, Bari interviewed a mother whose two children, aged 12 and 16, were taken hostage by Hamas.
