Israel Part 7: Kikar Hachatufim (Hostage Square)

If you haven’t heard or read about Hostage Square, I urge your to start by reading this. 

The Altmans took me there on Sunday. In the process they also taught me how to use the trains. (This is coming in very handy at this very moment as I’m typing this while on a train traveling from Karmiel towards Yerushalayim, taking breaks to watch the surf break along the coast near Haifa.)

It was a challenging, painful and beautiful place to be. Most of pictures I’ll include here will speak for themselves.

I included this particular photo because Edan graduated from Tenafly HS within walking distance from where I live. His father spoke to us at shul.

I’ll only talk about one of the installations. There is a small make-shift “tunnel” you can enter. People take markers and write messages on the wall, but my experience has less to do with that and much more with something else. Inside it was dark, claustrophobic and frightening with speakers piping in sounds of explosions. 

My associations with the Hamas tunnels are strong. The building of these tunnels is the thing that has convinced me that Hamas truly cares more about war with Israel and murder of Jews than about survival of the people that live in Gaza’s borders. It is into these tunnels that humanitarian aid has gone. It is in these tunnels that our people are being hidden and tormented. I can’t hear the word tunnel — even in reference to subways or groundhogs — without feeling the world stop again.

But the physical experience of walking through a fake tunnel was more than these thoughts. It translated all of them into pure sensory overload.

There was nothing I could do but weep.