During the meeting of the foreign affairsand defensecommittee on Tuesday, hostages who were released from captivity in Gaza addressed the committee.
Iair Horn, who was kidnapped to Gaza and released in February 2025, said in the meeting, “If I was released in a deal, that is probably the best way to free the rest of the hostages. I don’t count days anymore, but we don’t sleep so well and it slightly impairs my ability to speak and arrange my thoughts. But it was important to me to come and speak from the heart. My heart is broken; what happened yesterday was another blow—the terrorist attack, the soldiers who fell—and we sit here and we think about everyone. It’s true that my shirt shows my brother Eitan [who is being held captive in Gaza], and Ariel and David [Cunio] appear on the shirts of other people here, but we think about everyone.
“I don’t tell many stories from captivity. I remember we were in a place that looked like the basement of a building, there was a rule that we were supposed to keep quiet, and we heard explosions getting closer and closer, to the point that a missile fell a few meters away from us. We started to run; you know approximately what a tunnel looks like. We ran, and the concrete was crooked and the tunnel nearly collapsed on us. On the way, we started to split up, and whoever was able to run faster ran. I was with my brother Eitan, he’s not a small person, and we had to run, because aside from the bombing there were poisonous gases and we weren’t allowed to breathe. While we were running, Eitan sat down and said, ‘leave me.’ He’s my little brother, I wouldn’t give up on him. The man weighed 100 kilograms or more. I pulled him by the arm, and we ran in the direction that the terrorist told us to go, while I was trying to drag my brother. I learned in Israel that we don’t leave anyone behind. At that time, I was willing to sacrifice myself in order to try to save my brother.
“More than 700 days have passed. A week ago, my mother asked me to help her because she was preparing new signs for Eitan, because they faded after being in the sun for so long. It’s been over 700 days, and dates pass, a birthdays, and life. In a few days it will be Rosh Hashanah, on the 22nd, and on the 23rd it’s Eitan’s birthday, and on the 27th it’s my brother Amos’s birthday. I invite those who are making the decisions to sit with my mother, my brother Amos and me on Rosh Hashanah eve. I am stuck at October 7, the whole family is stuck, I’ll probably never get over it. I will cope, but I think the country is in distress, the people of Israel are in distress, and in order to start recovering we need to end this whole thing, the whole war, and bring back the hostages and try to return being something closer to a properly-run country and society,” Horn said.
Sharon Aloni Cunio, who was kidnapped to Gaza with her two daughters and released together with them, and whose husband David is still being held in Gaza: “Who gave you the right to assign a price to my husband and my brother-in-law? Who gave you the right to decide which price is too high? Everything you’re doing is the complete opposite of bringing them back, every day you are killing them and us anew. All the committees continue here; you make a toast, you go on recess. There are things that I’m ashamed to tell I underwent in captivity. Why aren’t you on our side? Because these are not your family members? How much longer do I have to lie to my daughters that it will be happening any moment? How much longer can I keep going? This is a daily torture. Why do I have to come here and reopen my trauma for the sake of my husband and brother-in-law? It’s a disgrace that you have no pity on us or on them. I regret that I have to come and disrupt the [committee] schedule so that people will remember that there are 48 hostages over there; I hope that this will make even the slightest difference to you.”
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