For 737 days, the people of Israel — and Jews around the world — hoped and prayed for the moments of bliss we witnessed on Monday, as the last living hostages returned from Gaza and reunited with their families and their nation.

For just over two years, many of us found that the joys of life could not feel whole. On holidays, at weddings and on vacations, there was an aching sense that until the hostages returned, it would be impossible to experience pure, unfiltered happiness.

Yet now that this long-awaited moment is here, our joy is tinged with sadness.

We feel that sadness because we know that it will take years for the hostages to recover from the unfathomable cruelty they endured in Gaza, and because perhaps they could have come home sooner. We feel it because 42 of the 251 hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, were killed in captivity. Hamas has so far failed to return the remains of many of those hostages, robbing their families of the closure they so desperately need.

Our joy is mixed with profound sadness because we lost two years to a war that should never have started — a war that was launched in the name of resistance and liberation, yet has ended with the total destruction of Gaza. That was precisely what Hamas wanted: to commit such a horrific massacre that Israel would react with unprecedented force, resulting in global condemnation and Israel’s isolation.

Our joy this week is also tainted by anger, because Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught was entirely preventable, as many Israeli investigations have made painfully clear. We feel that anger because Hamas is still in control of Gaza. We know that true peace is nowhere near.

There is also an overwhelming sense that all this devastation could have been avoided, had Israel heeded ample warnings of plans for an invasion by terrorists from Gaza — who had made clear for years their desire to annihilate Israel — and made serious military plans to combat it.

These joyous days are mixed with sorrow for these reasons, and so many more. We are still grieving the nearly 1,200 lives that were so violently extinguished by Hamas’s massacre. And we grieve, also, for the countless others whose lives were forever changed by the horrors of that day — those who were wounded, lost their lives during the war in Gaza, and lost loved ones and beloved communities.

We are still mourning an Israel that will never again be the Israel it was: a place where Jewish families did not fear being hunted down and slaughtered in their homes. And we are mourning a world that is not what we thought it was.

For many in the diaspora who feel close to Israel, everything changed after Oct. 7. We lost friendships, and sometimes entire communities. We felt betrayed by professions that once gave us a sense of belonging.

We will not forget the protests against Israel that erupted on city streets and college campuses on Oct. 8, 2023, when dead bodies still littered the streets of southern Israel. Nor will we forget the many people who praised Hamas’s massacre as noble resistance.

We will always carry with us the memory of posters bearing hostages’ faces being torn down in American and European cities by people who described them as “Zionist propaganda” or worse. We will never forget the images of the atrocities those activists denied or justified.

As an independent journalist who reported from Israel for dozens of American newspapers and magazines for more than a decade, I have felt betrayed by the profession I belonged to until 2023.

This week I have watched — no longer in shock, but in despair — as many news organizations drew a false equivalence between Hamas’s release of 20 hostages and Israel’s release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian security prisoners, including 250 who were serving life sentences. The BBC, for example, ran an emotional segment featuring the sister of a released Palestinian prisoner, weeping because he will be deported rather than return home; the segment fails to mention that her brother was convicted in connection to a suicide bombing that killed four people. Then there are the Al Jazeera English stories describing Palestinian prisoners as “captives.”

And it’s not just the hostage release. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour was made to apologize after saying on-air that the Israeli hostages in Gaza were “probably being treated better than the average Gazan” during the war.

Even as this war comes to an end, we are seeing the same distortions of truth that have characterized public conversations about this war from the very beginning. Their persistence suggests the relief we hoped to feel at this point remains far off.

Too many institutions I once held in esteem have fallen prey to those distortions. There’s the literary world, which has broadly censored Jewish authors and boycotted Israeli cultural institutions; women’s rights organizations, such as U.N. Women, which took months to condemn Hamas’s use of sexual violence on Oct. 7, or the others that never did; the medical field, which has seen an alarming rise in antisemitism; and universities, where the surge in antisemitism has been fueled by some professors who seem to have deliberately indoctrinated students into believing that Israel’s very existence is a crime.

Yet one of the most vital lessons from this chapter in our people’s history is that we cannot allow the hatred of our enemies to define us, or to shake our conviction in what we know to be true.

As the awe-inspiring Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of the murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, so aptly explained at a rally in Jerusalem two nights before the living hostages returned: “There is a time to sob, and there is a time to dance, and we have to do both right now.”

Sob and dance we will. Perhaps for years to come.

The post A time to sob, and to dance: Why does the joy of the hostage release feel so painful? appeared first on The Forward.

“I love Hitler,” one individual wrote, in leaked texts from a Young Republicans group chat that Politico reported on earlier this week. Over the course of several months earlier this year, the chat’s participants talked about sending those who worked against them in their quest for political power to gas chambers. One person, referring to a Jewish colleague, wrote that a fellow texter was giving “the Jew” too much credit.

Condemnation came quickly — but not from the White House.

While some members of the chat were fired by their Republican bosses, and others found their chapters of the Young Republicans disbanded, the reaction from the top was defensive. Vice President JD Vance downplayed the texts by comparing them to violent texts sent in 2022 by Jay Jones, who is running to be Virginia’s attorney general. “This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia,” Vance posted on X.

But in attempting to deflect attention from the violent fantasies of GOP youth, Vance actually highlighted why they’re so concerning. If our collective understanding of whose urges toward political violence matter most hinges on the question of who has power, we should be more concerned by those urges on the right.

Yes, even when they’re expressed in a “college group chat” with limited practical influence. Because when we look at who actually has power in this country, we can see quite clearly that it’s the reactionary right. The chat is yet more evidence of the ways in which that political sector has normalized and elevated violent, extremist hatred, including antisemitism — and why we should see that normalization as a pressing problem.

The Republicans in power in the White House and Congress, and their powerful allies in conservative media, have succeeded in making the idea of the politically violent left seem like the primary threat. If one consumes certain media, one gets the impression that cities are being destroyed by violent leftists, and that the greatest threat to American Jews today is the left.

But the truth — although President Donald Trump’s administration pulled down the government web page that laid out the data — is that the right is the most common source of political violence in this country. And, unlike the left, it is so with the backing of the most powerful people in the country.

Consider the fallout from the murder of the prominent young conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Trump officials and various figures across the right jumped to blame the murder on leftist political violence, long before a suspect was publicly identified. They blamed their political enemies for the killing and vowed to crush them, going so far as pushing to get people fired for not having the response to Kirk’s death that they deemed appropriate. (More than 145 people did in fact lose their jobs).

In other words, the right cast political violence as something that should automatically be perceived as a leftwing problem — one that could be solved by some of the most powerful people vilifying the everyday people who disagreed with them, including nurses, restaurant managers and professors, while leaving calls for reactionary violence against the left unchecked.

This was not calls for violence and punishment ping ponging back and forth from side to side. It was those with power blaming and seeking to punish those with whom they disagreed.

Perhaps some do not consider members of the Young Republicans to have power just yet. But surely all can agree that the Pentagon official pushing a conspiracy about Leo Frank, and the various White House officials with ties to antisemitic extremists — to take just a few examples — do. The Young Republicans in this chat are training to be the next generation of people in these roles. They are following the example that’s been set for them, and working to stitch it more firmly in the fabric of the right.

Seeing this clearly is especially pertinent for American Jews in grappling with antisemitism today.

This is not to say that there isn’t antisemitism on the left as well as the right. Of course there is. I have no doubt that some readers of this piece will be thinking of the images of college protesters against the war in Gaza, some of whom did indeed cross over into antisemitism. There have been significant cases in which antisemitism from those on the left has led to vandalism and even, tragically, violence.

But those college protesters, the vast majority of whom were peaceful, do not have any real power.

It may feel like they do, particularly for students who feel lost or excluded in the campus political climate. But real power on campus is held by the board of trustees. It is held by the people who have too often, recently, decided to compromise academic freedom in order to try to placate Congress and the administration over weaponized charges of student antisemitism.

Congress and the president have still more power. And they, as Vance’s dismissal of the hatred from the group chat signifies, are comfortable normalizing hatred when it comes from within their own ranks.

I sympathize with young people navigating their feelings about Jewish identity and Zionism who have felt ostracized or demonized by their peers. But their peers cannot arrest, detain and threaten to deport them. Those who hold real power can and do, and are doing so ostensibly to fight antisemitism — just ask Mahmoud Khalil.

And yet, at the same time, the FBI is being helmed by someone who has repeatedly appeared on a podcast hosted by a prominent Holocaust denier.

It may be that many of us are more likely, in our everyday lives, to encounter someone who is leftwing and blurs the line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. But that we are more likely to encounter this kind of antisemitism more often in a social context does not change the basic math. The right in this country, which holds power in the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, is made up of individuals who have shown themselves to be at best disinterested in ridding their movement of calls for discriminatory political violence. And they are the ones whose decisions have the ability to actually affect the essential conditions of our lives.

And so, in this one extremely limited way, we should listen to Vance. We should look at who has actual power, and think critically about the ways in which they have advanced — or facilitated the advance of — racist, extremist, xenophobic and, yes, antisemitic political rhetoric. Because when we do that, we can see that there is no equivalence. It is those who have power — real power — who are making ours a more politically violent country.

The post Think the left is politically violent? Young Republicans have a wake-up call for you appeared first on The Forward.

Ronen and Orna Neutra, parents of US-Israeli citizen Omer Neutra who was killed during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas, speak accompanied by their family, as Hamas continues to hold Omer’s body hostage in Gaza, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, US, Oct. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon

Despite widespread celebration over the release of the last 20 living Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has still not handed over the remains of 19 deceased hostages, including the bodies of two Americans with dual citizenship.

The families of Itay Chen, 19, and Omer Neutra, 21 — both American-Israeli dual citizens who were born in the US and served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) — are intensifying calls for the return of their sons’ remains more than two years after they were murdered during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. 

“My son, Itay Chen, is still in Gaza and we have no confidence he will be returned soon, as the deal signed does not provide guarantees that all the hostages will return this week. And until he, and every last hostage, is home, our fight is not over,” Chen’s father, Ruby, wrote earlier this week in an op-ed for USA Today, referring to the US-brokered ceasefire and hostage-release deal that halted fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists from Gaza kidnapped 251 hostages and murdered 1,200 people during their Oct. 7 rampage. All the living hostages still in captivity were released on Monday as part of the ceasefire. However, the Palestinian terrorist group has still not handed over the remains of 19 out of the remaining 28 deceased hostages, violating its obligation under the agreement to release everyone who was abducted during the Oct. 7 atrocities.

Israel has demanded full compliance with the ceasefire, accusing Hamas of flouting its terms. Hamas claims the destruction of Gaza has made locating all the bodies unfeasible, saying that “significant efforts and special equipment” are necessary to continue the search.

“Israel has made this mistake before. Following previous wars, the government failed to bring home several captured soldiers, even when the world promised to help. Some of those soldiers’ remains have been lost forever. We cannot allow history to repeat itself,” Chen wrote.

Neutra’s father, Ronen, has expressed similar sentiments.

“I expect the United States to exert strong pressure on the mediators,” Neutra told Fox News Digital. “We’ve heard that Washington has spoken directly with Hamas in Egypt, and we demand full implementation of the agreement — or serious consequences: halting humanitarian aid, and stopping the movement of goods and people through the Rafah crossing.”

“Our expectation is for President Trump to ensure that the two American citizens still held by Hamas — our son Omer and Itay Chen — are brought home for burial,” he continued. “After two years of fighting for this, we deserve closure — and our son deserves proper burial in the land he loved and defended.”

Neutra added that he met with Trump on Monday and said the US president “assured us he would do everything to bring our children home.”

US Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) on Wednesday released a statement praising the release of the 20 living hostages while calling attention to the remaining captives in Gaza, adding that Israelis deserve both protection and honor in life and death.

“As we build on the progress we made with the first stage of the peace agreement between Israel and Hamas, I urge President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to keep applying pressure to fulfill the deal’s terms to return the remains of the deceased hostages still held in Gaza – especially the two Americans among them, Itay Chen and Omer Neutra,” Hoyer said.