Bring them home now
An initiative by filmmaker Ari Folman aims to breathe life into the hostage impasse
Time is of the essence. While the IDF takes on Hamas in Gaza, and deals with the threat from the North, the families of the around 200 Israelis, taken hostage a week and a half ago, sit and wait, and grieve and worry. “It is simply incomprehensible,” says Eliran Peled who, together with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ari Folman, is putting out dozens of videos of relatives and friends of kidnapped Israelis held captive in Gaza.
The project is called “Bring Them Home Now” and Peled says new videos are constantly being uploaded to a website that they quickly constructed, in half a dozen languages, including English and Hebrew.
“This is a cooperative effort,” Peled notes. “There are many people, dozens, and there will soon be hundreds – filmmakers, editors, camera people, translators, hi-tech professionals, researchers, studios, and others – who are collaborating on this, and offering their services free of charge. We need to get these messages
out as fast as we can.”
As soon as the news of the tragedy down South began to filter through on Saturday, Folman, Peled, and their colleagues slipped into high
gear. And they are keeping up a furious work rate. “There are videos with a documentary element, which run for between a minute and a half to three minutes. They are for the established media.”
They are firing on all cylinders, and in every possible direction, in an effort to stir up as much attention as possible, across the globe, to the plight of Israeli citizens, of all ages, being held prisoner by the Hamas. “There are also videos that run for 30 seconds to one minute, that are aimed at social media,” Peled adds.
The idea is to kick-start things here, and arouse as much active interest as possible abroad too. “We all quickly understood we need to generate an advocacy effort,” says Peled. It is every hand to the pump, to prevent the ship sinking. “We need to get people to understand that this is not a list of 200 names. These are all human beings.”
That patently comes across in the videos with, mostly family members, and some friends, pouring their heart out and beseeching anyone who will listen, and can do something to help, to bring their loved ones home, safe and sound, as quickly as possible.
The many suffering loved ones include Ifat and Haim Haiman, whose daughter Inbar is being held hostage; Natalie Madmon, whose mother Ophelia was also taken captive by the Hamas, and Omer Shem Tov’s distraught parents Shelly and Malki.
But it wasn’t just a matter of getting to the families, setting them down in front of a camera, and shouting “Action.” “We had to deal with all the horrific material that was uploaded to Telegram and, with all the shocking images, the algorithms just deleted a lot of the footage,” Peled explains. “Strangely, that also applied to informational Israeli videos.”
It is a matter of hitting home, as efficiently and emotively as possible. “These are all people, with feelings, and people who love them and are anxious about them. We want to show the world that these are people, just like you and me, and them, with families and children and people who care for them. They just want to get on with their lives. It is impossible to grasp the extent of this tragedy.”
Peled has some idea of what the families and friends are going through. “I have lost friends since the war started. These are not just more names to add to this country’s far too-long list of the dead. They are people, human beings.”
While the politicians go about their business, perhaps this grassroots initiative can help turn the tide, and bring the hostages home.