We are stuck on Oct. 7. It’s been 100 days since our son Omer was taken hostage by Hamas. Those days have been filled with agony — an agony no parent should have to go through. But they’ve also been filled with action because we cannot stay still.
We, alongside the rest of the hostage families, have joined more than 40 meetings with U.S. and Israeli government officials, have participated in nearly 100 press interviews, and have made trip after trip from our home in New York to Washington, D.C. and Israel. We’ve found the only way we get through day by day is to keep moving.
Omer is only 22. He’s an all-American kid, a Knicks fan, and a proud New Yorker born just a month after 9/11. We remember well the days and weeks after the attack, how the city was covered with missing person posters and overcome by a sense of grief and tragedy. How people spent hours, days, and weeks searching for their family members, not knowing where they were, if they were all right, if they were alive. Omer came into the world a month later, born into unprecedented, extraordinary circumstances.
Today, we see the same tragedy and grief in Israel that we saw in New York 22 years ago. Israeli cities are blanketed in missing person posters, each with the face of one of the hostages taken on Oct. 7.
But people are also taking care of one another — and we’re reminded of the ways people can still build community and hold one another up despite terror and tragedy.
Today, Omer embodies community in everything he does.
Our son is a connector. He makes friends easily and genuinely cares about the people he meets. He’s a natural leader, whether he’s serving as regional president of his youth group or as captain of his sports teams, and a hard worker who enjoys being mentored as much as mentoring others. Wherever he went, he built a community all around him. Everyone wants to get to know this fun-loving kid, who draws out the best in others and makes everyone around him a little bit better.
His gift for community is part of why he felt called to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. Omer grew up on Long Island, but he deferred college for a year and traveled to Israel after high school, looking to connect with his family and his Jewish roots. As those roots deepened, his conviction grew: he wanted to do his part and serve.
On Oct. 7, Omer was kidnapped. For three months we’ve received no sign of life. What we have heard are other hostages’ stories of abuse, torture, and starvation. The situation is dire. Every day the remaining hostages, six of them American, draw closer to death. We are running out of time to bring them home alive.
All of the hostages need to be brought home: women, children, and men. Omer is one of three young American IDF soldiers — as well as Itay Chen and Edan Alexander — who volunteered to serve. They cannot be a last priority. We cannot leave any hostage behind as negotiations for a deal continue.
Getting our son home is going to require all parties at the negotiating table to increase the intensity and focus. We’re grateful for all of the work the Biden administration has been doing to facilitate negotiations, but the president and the administration need to continue to pull every lever they can. We also need the Israeli government and American allies in the region like Qatar to keep pushing for a deal, one that includes IDF soldiers.
We think about our son Omer every second of every day. We think about the nights he stayed up late, laughing with friends and family, sacrificing sleep for memories We are surrounded by a community that he built, that is fighting for him, that is not giving up on him.
So, we keep moving. We keep attending meetings, speaking at solidarity rallies, doing interviews, answering phone calls, as our one endless day drags on. It’s the passion and urgency our son, and all of the hostages, deserve — from us, and from their governments.
We need all parties at the negotiating table — the U.S., Israel, and regional partners — to fight relentlessly to bring our son home, and reach a deal where every hostage, including IDF soldiers, is reunited with their family immediately. There is no more time to wait.
Every day that passes brings even greater urgency to bring the hostages — sons, daughters, mothers, fathers and grandparents — home. Until then, we will not sit still.
The Neutras are the parents of American hostage Omer Neutra.
from New York Daily News https://ift.tt/szS3i1U