‘I hear him screaming’: brother of Israeli hostage describes...

Sometimes two years seem to have lasted for ever. Sometimes Gal Gilboa-Dalal feels trapped in an eternal present, still living the agonising, endless day when his brother, Guy, was kidnapped by Hamas.

The siblings were at the Nova festival, dancing in a grove of trees just a few kilometres from Gaza, when militants broke through the border to launch the deadliest attacks since Israel was founded and take 250 people hostage.

“Time has been passing very weirdly,” Gal said. “In a way I feel that I was with him at Nova yesterday and in a way I feel like I haven’t seen my brother in more than 100 years.”

The family’s tragedy is a very public one. Guy’s face is on posters around the country, from the airport to suburban garden walls, news about his condition regularly makes headlines, and his fate is debated on talkshows and in parliament.

But their grief is lonely. There were relatively few other people in Israel who could understand even their initial agony, the waves of hope that Guy was alive, fear that he would be killed, and desperation about the abuse and torture he faces.

After two years, most of the other hostages have now come home or were killed inside Gaza either by their captors or Israeli forces. Only 20 are thought to still be alive, although militants are also holding 28 bodies, denying their families the closure of a burial.

“It’s so hard missing him all day every day, thinking about him all day every day,” Gal said. “And as time goes by it’s getting harder and harder [to bear], and harder and harder to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

There has been joy and pain in watching other hostages released. Bonded by the particular horror of having a loved one taken captive, many relatives describe themselves as a big family and Guy is no exception.

“You can’t not feel happy for them,” he says of watching dozens of reunions broadcast live. But the past two years have taken a heavy toll, forcing his little sister to grow up early and ageing his parents. So there is envy as well.

“I have to say the truth: I am honestly jealous seeing them reunited with their loved ones, seeing this nightmare has ended for them,” he said. “You see their tears of happiness and wish they were yours.”

The last time he saw his brother was at sunrise on Saturday 7 October two years ago, when the first rockets were fired from Gaza, warning sirens sounded over the Nova festival and police ordered festival-goers to evacuate or take cover.

The party had begun on Friday but was at its peak that morning with about 3,500 guests and 500 staff at the site. More than one in 10 would become victims of the biggest single massacre on that day, with 378 people killed and 44 taken hostage.

Approximately 1,200 people were killed in Israel on 7 October, the majority of them civilians. Israel has since killed more than 67,000 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, in a war that genocide scholars, international politicians and a UN commission of inquiry say is genocidal.

Israel has not ordered an independent inquiry into how the country was so vulnerable on 7 October but media and military investigations have already revealed a damning litany of complacency and incompetence.

Only a month earlier, the police commander for the Gaza border region had banned parties and events in the area due to security concerns, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported, but he left his post soon after issuing that order and was not replaced.

Even without his oversight, two local police stations in the border area had turned down Nova organisers’ request for a permit to host the festival, citing factors including a shortage of security staff.

Their third attempt in the town of Ofakim was signed off on 5 October, the day before the festival started. The Israeli military had approved the permit but did not send any forces to secure the site, and police officers at the perimeter carried only pistols.

The brothers knew none of this, but on 7 October, with the party obviously over and with nowhere nearby to take cover from rockets, they decided to leave.

Gal set off straight away with his roommate, followed a few life-changing minutes later by Guy. He was travelling with friends who wanted to smoke a last cigarette before getting in the car for a long journey home.

The road to and from the festival site was single lane in each direction, and the surge of panicked crowds trying to get away slowed traffic to a crawl. Twenty minutes later, Gal heard gunfire and called his brother, telling him to take cover and stay in touch. They have not spoken since.

“People started to run in my direction covered with blood, screaming that the terrorists were closing in on us,” Gal said. He fled the car for a nearby wadi, or dry river gully, the only possible hiding place in a largely flat desert landscape.

He spent 10 hours running, hiding and trying to call his brother, as Hamas attackers armed with guns and RPGs fired at festival-goers scattered across the area. Guy never picked up the phone again and when Gal was finally rescued by police he found out why.

Footage of his brother’s abduction was already online. “When I saw this video it was similar to the way I had felt all day running away from the terrorists, but worse,” he said. “I felt helpless. I’m seeing my brother in the worst condition ever. He had just been with me and I couldn’t do anything to help him.”

Trying to change that is now the focus of Gal’s life. He still has a day job doing tech support, thanks to generous employers who allow him to work remotely as much or little as he wants, but he often finds it hard to concentrate on normal tasks.

“I can’t stop thinking about my brother, I can’t stop hearing him screaming at me from the tunnels of Hamas, asking me what did I do for him today, what more can I do for him, when is he coming back,” Gal said. “I can never stop fighting for him.”

The question of how best to do that has divided Israel as a nation and the hostage families as a group. They all desperately want their loved ones home, but the life-and-death stakes make it hard to compromise about best tactics.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says military pressure on Hamas is the best way to get hostages back. Critics point out that most of those who returned were freed in ceasefire deals, and accuse him of prolonging the war for personal political reasons.

Gal is conflicted. He fears that without intense military pressure Hamas will not agree another hostage release but is also terrified Israeli attacks could kill his brother. Commanders warned that Israel’s most recent offensive in Gaza City would put some of the last surviving hostages at risk, as many are thought to be held there.

“It’s so complicated, and I can’t know if its right or wrong, if its going to affect the hostages badly,” he said of the military campaign. He tries to avoid getting drawn into “exhausting” debates with other relatives and to focus instead being his brother’s voice.

An end to fighting and the return of the hostages appeared to come much closer this week after Donald Trump said Israel and Hamas had both signed on to a new plan. Gal said that because previous promised deals had fallen apart before Guy’s release he was “trying not to be too optimistic”.

“Its not the first time that we were just before having a deal and then Hamas refused or didn’t accept it,” he said. “We pray that this time would be different.”

Guy is fascinated with Japan, taught himself the language and had bought a ticket to fly out there after Nova. Gal hopes the brothers can fulfil that dream together, then aims to retrain for a new career in something that will allow him to harness two years of pain, and help others as a way to heal himself.

For now, a therapy dog helps him keep not just surviving but campaigning, and several new tattoos are a way to “wear his scars”.

One contains lyrics from Gunslinger, a song by the metal band Avenged Sevenfold that is a favourite of both brothers, and has helped sustain him through Guy’s captivity.

After 7 October, Gal liked listening to one line – “the stars in the night, they lend me their light to bring me closer to heaven with you” – and dreaming of their reunion. To him, heaven represented Guy’s freedom.

Then two hostages who had been held with Guy came home with messages for the family. Guy wanted his brother to know that he was holding on to the lyrics of Gunslinger in the underground tunnels, they said.

“That was just crazy because we have a lot of songs that we like, but it was this specific one he sent me through them. I had to get a tattoo, it has so much meaning for me.”