11 days ago
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Posted On: October 6th 2026, 05:44 pm
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A few thoughts on the eve of October 7
Over the past week, I found myself going back through photographs and videos from the two long years between October 2023 and October 2025. Trying to remember it all, and especially all the moments no camera captured. The pain, fear and exhaustion, but also the hope we somehow kept finding, the people who stood beside us, and the goodness we encountered along the way.
A year ago, I stood in Central Park with hostage families, captivity survivors, including @keithsiege (in the photo), and thousands of loving New Yorkers. Omri was still in Gaza.
From there, I travelled to Washington, D.C., to advocate with the Trump Administration for a deal and commemorate October 7. That journey ended on October 13 in Israel, watching Omri finally return home after 738 days.
The distance between then and now sometimes feels impossible to comprehend. A year ago today, I helped my sister Lishay prepare the words she would read to members of the Trump Administration commemorating October 7 with us. This week, I helped Omri prepare his own words for tomorrow’s official European Union commemoration event in Strasbourg.
A year ago, we were speaking for him. Tomorrow, he will speak for himself.
It will be the first October 7 since his return, and I don’t quite know how it will feel. There is enormous relief in no longer wondering where he is, whether he is hungry or afraid. But relief does not erase the people we lost, the lives forever changed, or those two years that became part of who we are.
Perhaps tomorrow is about holding all of it at once: grief and gratitude, pain and hope. Remembering the worst of humanity without forgetting its goodness.
In this fragment from my speech in Central Park last year in the commemoration event if October 7, I spoke about why October 7 and the hostage crisis should never be only our story, but something from which all humanity should learn.
The hostages are home but our responsibility to the world remains: to pursue justice, protect our shared humanity, and choose goodness, especially when the world gives us reasons not to.
Over the past week, I found myself going back through photographs and videos from the two long years between October 2023 and October 2025. Trying to remember it all, and especially all the moments no camera captured. The pain, fear and exhaustion, but also the hope we somehow kept finding, the people who stood beside us, and the goodness we encountered along the way.
A year ago, I stood in Central Park with hostage families, captivity survivors, including @keithsiege (in the photo), and thousands of loving New Yorkers. Omri was still in Gaza.
From there, I travelled to Washington, D.C., to advocate with the Trump Administration for a deal and commemorate October 7. That journey ended on October 13 in Israel, watching Omri finally return home after 738 days.
The distance between then and now sometimes feels impossible to comprehend. A year ago today, I helped my sister Lishay prepare the words she would read to members of the Trump Administration commemorating October 7 with us. This week, I helped Omri prepare his own words for tomorrow’s official European Union commemoration event in Strasbourg.
A year ago, we were speaking for him. Tomorrow, he will speak for himself.
It will be the first October 7 since his return, and I don’t quite know how it will feel. There is enormous relief in no longer wondering where he is, whether he is hungry or afraid. But relief does not erase the people we lost, the lives forever changed, or those two years that became part of who we are.
Perhaps tomorrow is about holding all of it at once: grief and gratitude, pain and hope. Remembering the worst of humanity without forgetting its goodness.
In this fragment from my speech in Central Park last year in the commemoration event if October 7, I spoke about why October 7 and the hostage crisis should never be only our story, but something from which all humanity should learn.
The hostages are home but our responsibility to the world remains: to pursue justice, protect our shared humanity, and choose goodness, especially when the world gives us reasons not to.
Comments (9)
10 days agosohel.jani.111
sry ur dms are closed so im saying it here. i got tired of waiting for my friend to do it. she just got here for school. hmu on her snap shellezx she doesn’t know where to meet people she cannot know i did this
10 days agochristiananderson5371
Thank you again for your work and that of your family. You are heroes of our people.💛
11 days agocbf315
You are such a light. Thank you for your voice. And I can’t wait to listen to Omri’s speech tomorrow!
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