"I can’t separate myself from what’s happening in the country," Merav Svirsky begins our conversation. We meet at her home, close to the anniversary of the October 7th massacre. "Our personal and family fate is intertwined with political events. I am a direct victim of policies and political interests," she explains. "This means I can’t shut my eyes. Not even for a second."
We met for the first time six months ago, two months after Itay, Merav’s brother, was murdered in Hamas captivity. Now, after Noa Argamani, who was held with Itay (and with the late Yossi Sharabi), was rescued by the IDF, and after the architect of the massacre was eliminated, and while the IDF continues its operations in Gaza, and with the release of the hostages feeling further away than ever, we meet again. To talk about the loss of her parents and brother, and about the year that has forced her to open her eyes—and never shut them again.
Getting used to everything
Merav is the older sister of Itay and Yuval, and the twin of Yonatan. She is a mother of two, who before October 7th, was involved in art and teaching yoga. Of her entire family, she was the only one who was not in the Gaza border area that Saturday. Her parents were murdered, and her brother Itay was kidnapped.
After 99 days in captivity, Itay was murdered by one of his captors for an unknown reason. All that Merav can say is that, similar to the execution of the six hostages in September, military pressure played a role. When she talks about political interests and policy decisions that have harmed her and her family, she’s referring to the decisions that led to her brother being killed—a month and a half after the only hostage deal the government has managed to secure up until now.
Shortly before we met, I interviewed Maya Roman, who fought for 11 months to bring her relative Carmel Gat back from Gaza. Like Merav, Maya emphasized the worst aspect of this war: the fact that all of us, without exception, have managed to adapt, accept and even normalize the utterly insane reality we’ve been living in for over a year.
There’s this saying about the hostages—that without them, there can be no us. Yet here we are, a year later. They’re not here—and we are.
"As part of the survival instinct, we adapt to everything. And that’s terrifying. What does it mean that we adapt to everything? Do we understand the consequences of our adaptations? I’m constantly in this battle with myself. And this week, I kept thinking about Tami Arad. Is there a moment when you come to terms with it?"
As expected, throughout the conversation, Merav moves between the personal and the political. As she said at the beginning, the separation between her personal life and that of the state is no longer possible. She notices every nuance, every change, every news event. Connections are made, comprehension sinks in. The skills she acquired as the family member of a hostage are now seen in her rapid, in-depth reading of reality.
"We kept saying that not returning the hostages will lead to moral decline. Today it’s clear that we’re already there. It’s not a gradual process," she says. "Unfortunately, it’s a very slippery slope."
In our previous meeting, you described feeling disappointed—with the government, the military, the media. Back then, I felt like you were standing at the edge of an abyss, as you described the sensation to me. Now, as we talk, I feel like you’re speaking from inside the abyss.
"We’re in the abyss, with our eyes wide open. In rapid freefall. And you see it happening, and you don’t know how to stop it. There are no gatekeepers, no one capable of halting it."
Champions and Failures
“We’re now at the grand finale of this year,” says Merav. Our conversation takes place just days after the assassination of Nasrallah. “We’re champions at attacking and killing, but absolute failures when it comes to saving lives.”
I share with Merav a conversation that took place at the Politically Speaking desk on the day Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran. Among feelings of joy, relief and fear, one writer highlighted Haniyeh’s role as a moderating figure in negotiations over the hostages. “Now,” she said, “we’re left only with Sinwar, the deal refuser.”
It later emerged that Haniyeh’s assassination had a significant impact on derailing the hostage deal that was being developed in July 2024. Had it been finalized, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi and Hersh Goldberg-Polin might have been home today—alive.
“When you’re fighting to save lives, you don’t care about killing or assassinating,” Merav says. “At its most basic level, when you’re fighting to save lives, that’s all you fight for. Maybe, if there’s no other choice, you’re forced to kill to save lives. But assassinations and revenge? That completely contradicts the goal.”
But the Assassinations Work, at Least in the Israeli Consciousness
“I think the magnitude of the massacre created layers of smokescreens. You suddenly realize that Israeli pride and honor are far more important than saving lives—than saving you! It’s a huge betrayal. People tell me, ‘I can’t put myself in your shoes.’ But of course you can! You just don’t want to think about it. Nobody wants to be in this position. People prefer to push it away. And slowly, we’re being pushed out. People find it hard to look us in the eye.”
These words are being written a day after David Bitan, a member of Israel’s Knesset, snapped at Carmel Gat’s aunt to "keep it short" while she was speaking about the hostages. I think about Merav’s words—about the feeling of being cast out, beyond the boundary of the collective. Over a year of struggle, an increasing disconnect has formed between the families of the hostages and the Israeli public—a deliberate, artificial separation and distancing, and an unfathomable political exploitation of their stories.
“After Noa returned and shared what happened, journalists took her story and twisted it,” Merav recounts. She refers to an incident where Argamani told the UN that her body was bruised from the collapse of a building they were in because of IDF bombings. In Israel, her words were mistranslated to imply that she had been beaten by her captors.
Until Noa Returned
On the day Noa Argamani was rescued, I thought of Merav. What does it feel like when the hostage who was with your brother throughout his entire captivity—until he was murdered—comes back alive? “I was at Perry’s shiva,” Merav recounts. “As I was leaving, someone mentioned rumors that Noa Argamani had been rescued.”
“You know,” I tell Merav, “the headline of our previous interview was, ‘We’ll never know why they shot Itay.’ But your full sentence was, ‘Unless Noa Argamani returns.’ Now she’s back. Do you know why they shot him?”
“We still don’t know why they shot Itay, and we probably never will,” Merav responds. “Noa came back, and we met. She told us everything. But she wasn’t present in the final moments of his life, which we needed to complete the picture.”
Noa told the Svirsky family that on the 97th day of their captivity, the building where she, Itay and Yossi Sharabi were being held collapsed due to an airstrike by the Israeli Air Force. Itay managed to rescue himself and Noa, and together they tried to save Yossi, who was killed on the spot. The collapse also killed two of their captors, leaving only one alive. At that point, Itay and Noa were moved to another temporary location. The two, Noa said, wrote a script for a video. They wanted to explain what had happened, how the Air Force had bombed them, and to deliver a message to Israel.
“That’s very much like Itay,” says Merav. “To send a message to make sure it won’t happen again.”
The next day, they were moved again. Noa described significant tension among the captors. It was clear something wasn’t going according to plan. At some point that day, their captor burst into the area where they were being held and moved them inside. He called Itay out, and then, Noa recalled, she heard gunshots. Itay didn’t return. Only later did the captors inform her that Itay was dead.
During those last months of Itay’s life, Noa said, the conditions were unbearable. They bathed about once every 20 days and were constantly hungry. “It’s an end that’s impossible to comprehend,” says Merav. “But after seeing what the last six hostages went through, what is this story compared to those who’ve been surviving like that for 11 months?”
The Six Hostages
On August 30th, a wave of rumors swept through the media about the discovery of the bodies of six hostages. An eerily accurate list of names circulated on Telegram channels. The first thing the next morning, the IDF informed the families that the rumors were true—horribly, devastatingly true.
“When I heard about Carmel, I fell on the floor,” Merav shares. “It’s Be’eri, it’s her father, and I’m close with them… I was in total shock.”
“I was supposed to do a radio interview at eight in the morning,” Merav recalls. “It was the first day of school. The night before, you’re making food for the kids; in the morning, you hear the news, cry for half an hour, wake the kids, fake excitement, drop them off at school, and pray there won’t be any more drama.” She describes that complex day as a “day on the brink of insanity.”
She went on the air at eight. “And then I talk. I’m speaking from the depths of my heart,” she says. “These are the most authentic moments… And then they confront me with some stupid question about Smotrich saying the protests strengthen Hamas. I was shocked by the utter lack of sensitivity. As if, because it didn’t happen directly to my family, I’m outside the circle. I stopped them. I told them I was speechless at such a question.”
On September 1st, the day after the announcement of the murder of the six hostages, hundreds of thousands of people gathered to protest. On the way over on the train, Merav overheard snippets of conversation. “Why didn’t we protest earlier?” people asked each other and themselves. “Maybe we could have saved them.”
“That day, I gave interviews everywhere possible to get people out into the street,” Merav says. “By evening, at the protest, I was angry at everyone.” Her anger echoed the feelings of many activists on that day. After 11 months of struggle, people only left their homes after the tragedy.
“You can’t say we didn’t warn this would happen,” Merav explains, explaining the source of her frustration. “It’s a terrible experience.”
Now, more than a year after the October 7th massacre, the signs and statements of the hostages’ families from those early days read like ominous prophecies. Warnings about military pressure, fear of executions, concerns that the IDF might accidentally kill hostages, and the lack of food due to the absence of humanitarian aid…
“The six murdered hostages had no food,” Merav says. “And people were shocked by their condition. What did you think? Gaza was being bombed, so the hostages would be staying in luxury villas?”
Merav recalls the early days of the war, when the studios where she was being interviewed had images in the background of Gaza under bombardment. “I kept thinking to myself, ‘Are you people normal? Do you understand that my brother is being held somewhere in there? And you’re bragging about the IDF’s ‘successes’?”
Talking About Military Pressure as a Tool for Negotiation
"From the beginning, I opposed military pressure out of fear of its consequences for the hostages. But when everyone keeps telling you again and again that only military pressure will lead to a deal, you think: Okay, then at least when there’s a deal on the table, show that you’re taking it. Otherwise, it’s just deceiving the public. And in my opinion, it’s also deceiving the soldiers fighting there, who believe that this is what will bring the hostages back.
After more than a year of fighting, we see that when military pressure isn’t translated into political action, it’s worthless. It only leads to unnecessary deaths—of soldiers, civilians (on both sides), and hostages. Wars ultimately end with agreements, and as I see it, this war will also eventually end with an agreement. Then people will ask why it wasn’t done earlier.”
In the week marking a year since the war began, Kan 11 aired a documentary series revisiting that day, titled The Day That Never Ended. In the series, Daniel Hagari, the IDF Spokesperson, spoke about the military's efforts to regain trust after the failure of October 7th. I share Hagari’s words with Merav.
“There’s a big gap between the political and military systems,” Merav says. “The military is trying. The political system doesn’t even bother.”
I think, and perhaps this is a bit hurtful, that the political system is trying to regain trust—just not yours.
“That’s what’s so insane,” Merav responds. “The narrative we grew up with has been fractured. We expected that during the biggest disaster in our lives, they would come and embrace us. But the opposite happened. We’ve become outcasts. They’re pushing us aside. I’m a nuisance. They’re moving on without me, without us. No one in the government cares what I think or feel.”
Ongoing Loss
In our previous conversation, Merav shared that she was waiting for Itay’s return to clean out the house of their father, who was murdered on October 7th. Yet even now, a year later, the house in Be’eri remains as it was on that Saturday. “We held a memorial for my parents,” Merav shares, “after we moved their graves to Be’eri. All this past month, I’ve been dealing with the external aspects of their death, but I’m not really able to process the loss.”
In Judaism, we have rituals that help us cope: the funeral, the shiva, the one-month marker, the 11-month observance in the first year, and the one-year memorial.
“We held the memorial for my parents in September. People asked me if it was for the 11-month marker, and I said it was simply because that was the date that worked out,” says Merav. Her response underlines her and her family’s efforts to deal with their grief, which the war and the failure to secure the hostages’ release have hindered. “There’s a limit to what the soul can endure,” she says.
What would allow you to begin the process?
“Six months ago, I would have told you that it would be for them to come back,” Merav answers candidly. “So we can stop fighting for a moment, because I go to sleep fighting, and I wake up fighting, and it never lets up,” she continues. “We used to say, ‘When they come back, we’ll mourn,’ because to mourn, you need to be able to fall apart. And to fall apart, you need stable ground. And we don’t have that. The illusion of safety has shattered. That’s why I don’t know anymore. There are parts of the grieving process that I may never experience.”
And how has the loss affected your fight?
“I spend a lot of time trying to figure out where to find the energy. My internal batteries are completely drained, and I don’t know how to fill them. Every now and then, I remember that I need to take care of myself. To ensure that I survive. I’ve learned to accept the waves of despair. But those questions are also deeply painful, because everything that used to strengthen me—the little moments—everything that once was is now a painful memory.”
Something Optimistic
Since the murder of the six hostages, the headquarters has adopted a tougher, less conciliatory stance. While the line between the families and the public has blurred, the difficult year has taken its toll on the number of people taking to the streets.
“My biggest clash with the headquarters was on day 100, when Itay was already dead, although we didn’t know it yet,” Merav shares. “They had a call for all the speakers, including me, to discuss guidelines. I lost it. They were trying to explain to me what the ‘right’ strategy was. That was the first protest where the demonstrators took to the Ayalon Highway, and I felt my heart was with them. My gut physically wanted to join them. I realized that’s where I needed to be.”
Have you considered leaving?
“I ask myself what would happen if I lived somewhere else. But doing so would mean letting the system defeat me completely. We buried my parents next to my grandfather, a pioneering founder of the kibbutz. At the gravesite, my cousin said he looked around and understood the connection to tradition, to our DNA, that we’re part of the fight for our lives, wavering between despair and hope. I don’t want to feel like I’ve given up. Right now, the only way I can exist in this place is to keep fighting. Otherwise, I’d be agreeing to abandon and sacrifice the hostages.”
The other side would argue they’re also fighting for our lives, since the cost of releasing the hostages might be too high and endanger future lives.
“That’s just fearmongering. It’s meant to obscure the failure, to make people forget the people who enabled Hamas to grow and thrive.”
You don’t sound angry.
“My anger is subdued, the result of ongoing psychological terror. Anger flares up when you have nothing left to lose, but by then, you’re already exhausted. I sounded different before and after Itay died. It’s not the same energy. And I think there’s a deliberate hand at work, a strategy of exploiting events to steer us emotionally, with the intent of sustaining and prolonging the war. It also keeps the anger simmering just below the surface.”
Throughout the interview, despite the heavy subject matter, Merav seeks rays of optimism. “I think there’s something within us that resists fully comprehending what’s happening here,” says Merav. “You don’t want to believe it can be that cynical.”
That you’re so unprotected?
“I feel the lack of protection personally,” Merav says. “I live here, and it’s beautiful and peaceful, but I’m not safe, and I know it.”
And yet, if you had to end on a hopeful note?
“There’s something about keeping your eyes open, understanding reality, that actually drives action. In the midst of helplessness, the only thing you can do is keep acting. We can’t let them break us because, in the end, this is a fight for who we are.”
Not just for the hostages?
“Specifically for the hostages.”
