What the Hostages’ Reunion Shows Us About Being Thankful
Gali and Ziv Berman are 28-year-old Israeli twins, taken as hostages by Hamas, a terrorist group, during the October 2023 conflict between Israel and Palestine. Separated upon arrival in Gaza, they individually prayed and waited for a sign that the other was okay. 738 days later, the Berman twins saw each other once again. Their hug “broke the internet” with emotion.
Many of us sat in our living rooms, watching our TVs, and exhaled. They were home. These moments were referred to as a “taste of freedom”–a joyful sense of unity. Watching the hostages hold their families, I squeezed my mom’s hand a little tighter. I felt a flood of gratitude for her—the woman who always sat right beside me. I texted my sisters that I miss them, and the homescreen of my friends and me on my phone felt warmer than before. I can’t help but wonder, why does it take the unimaginable to make us feel grateful for the ordinary?
We notice value only in its absence. Our daily experiences wash away with insignificance. Families sit at home, eating dinner together on weekdays, having mindless conversations. We smile at our friends and acquaintances in the hallways. Siblings bicker, pushing each other's buttons, making fun, sometimes ending in screeching screams. It seems that we never realize how valuable these mundane moments are until they are lost. What if the noise of the everyday vanished? What if the voices of friends and loved ones were silenced for 738 days of suffering? The story of the Berman twins’ reunion is nothing short of inspirational and tear provoking; however, must they have suffered those hundreds of days in captivity for the world to remember the meaning of peace?
This pattern isn’t limited to the hostage crisis. Our world prioritizes recovery. It’s in our nature as humans. We see pain and rush to fix it: we are reactive, not proactive, with our gratitude. The world ignored early warnings of Covid-19 until a global pandemic broke out, and we apologize to people only after their tears have already fallen. Now, as the final 20 hostages returned to Israel, they have been met with medical and physical care, in hopes of a full recovery. In recent weeks, Israel has found a “new kind of peace,” a feeling that had become so foreign. With the hostages back and celebrations in the street, Israel was gushing with joy. What happens after the wave of celebration fades? We forget we were ever at peace.
We cannot keep living off of this conditional gratitude. We can’t praise the return of the hostages without acknowledging the immoral systems that led to this- the terrorism and violence. The hostage crisis was just one tragic part of a larger devastation of human costs: the thousands of unnecessary reported deaths, and the suffering families that made gratitude feel trapped behind the walls of war. It was kept so far away that only disaster could reveal it.
Being grateful for the peace that is at hand means protecting it. It means treating each day living with peace as our last. Whether it is our families, friends, or education, we have reason to be grateful in times other than just tragedies. We have seen an influx of this sense following the extreme case of the hostage crisis. The tragedies of this war make me realize how lucky I am to have my mom tell me to make my bed. We mustn't take for granted having our families on speed dial, next door, or a car ride away – that is a privilege in itself. Gratitude does not need to be solely a reaction. It becomes our responsibility.
I see this play out in my own life. I roll my eyes when my dad wakes me up at eight am on the weekend, and I get an attitude when my sisters spam call me for outfit advice. Oftentimes, I am tempted to imagine the alternative, but I can’t. I can’t imagine having these people not play their roles in my life anymore. It hurts to think of walking into my kitchen in the mornings, and not seeing my mom in her robe drinking her coffee. That hurt is what the families of the hostages had felt.
It’s amazing to see the reunions of the suffering families in Israel, but we cannot forget; we can't move on from this as society turns back to normal. The hostages are back, and gratitude has returned with them. But we can’t wait for the next war to express it. That must begin now.