This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.

The war is not over, not for Israel or for Hamas, no matter how often the astounding US President Donald Trump announces that it is, or how many internally contradictory documents Israeli and Hamas negotiators solemnly affirm with their signatures. It is not over because Israel’s two declared and necessary goals for the war have not been fully achieved: many of the fallen hostages have not been returned, and Hamas has not been definitively prevented from rising again in Gaza.

And yet, Monday was the single most joyful day for Israel since the single worst day in its history precisely two years earlier. For the first time since Hamas burst into Israel in an orgy of murderous barbarism, a mass slaughter that it believed would lead to our destruction, for the first time since that blackest of days, there are now no living hostages held captive in the infernal depths of the Hamas Gaza terrorstate.

By sheer act of American presidential will, with the wary cooperation of Israel’s prime minister, 20 hostages came home to their families. Twenty worlds were saved.

The reunions were like nothing anybody had ever witnessed. Living souls had returned from the very edge of the abyss. Here they were, apparently normal people — walking, talking, embracing, smiling — after seven hundred and thirty-eight days in the hands of monsters.

In these first free moments, our returned hostages defied belief.

We last saw Evyatar David emaciated, required by his captors to dig what he was being told would be his own grave in a Gaza tunnel.

And now here he was, on an IDF helicopter, his mother at his side, calm and composed, writing on a white board: “There is nobody happier than me to return to you, people of Israel.”

David and his friend Guy Gilboa-Dalal were notoriously driven by their captors in a van to witness, near the stage, the February propaganda ceremony at which Omer Shem Tov, Eliya Cohen and Omer Wenker were released, and were filmed pleading for their lives and their freedom.

Now here was Guy, reuniting with his family at the Re’im military base, waving from a helicopter, greeting more relatives in the hospital — he, calm and smiling; they, overcome with emotion.

The Cunio brothers, David and Ariel, kidnapped along with since-returned loved ones, elected to reunite with family members by jumping out at them from behind a hospital wall! Who are these people?

What do 2 brothers do when they are released from 2 years of captivity and about to meet their wife and girlfriend (both themselves freed hostages) for the first time? Boys will be boys and the Cunio brothers are absolute legends. pic.twitter.com/mQwpjHf8ai

— Elad Simchayoff (@Elad_Si) October 13, 2025

As for those to whom they have returned, their joy and relief in those first reunited seconds emerged as anguished screams and squeals from deep inside their very souls. Tearful, breathless, painful elation. And hugs so tight you feared for the bones of their freed men. Advertisement

These were redemption scenes. For those whose lives have been saved. For the families and loved ones to whom they have been restored. And, quite possibly, for our nation that, overwhelmingly if not universally, refused to relinquish them.

And what of those fallen hostages who have not yet come back?

What of their families  — people like Ruby Chen, father of fallen hostage soldier Itay, who on Wednesday morning pleaded to the nation, “Don’t forget about us”; who asked Israelis to return to Hostages Square on Saturday night for yet another rally, because it turns out that last week’s, with those powerful speeches........

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