With other members of his family, and dozens of supporters cheering, Rozen took down one of the hostage posters that had long been hanging by the village’s entrance and replaced it with a banner saying in Hebrew: “Welcome back home — the heart returned to beating and now we can breathe.” Hundreds had been packing the small community center of the hilltop village of Lavon in the Galilee since before dawn for one of the most important days of their lives — when the last 20 living hostages were scheduled to be released, first to the Red Cross and then to the Israeli military, as part of a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war. Both the Oct. 7, 2023, attack and the release of hostages overlapped with the Jewish people’s celebration of the holiday of Simchat Torah, which marks the beginning of a new annual cycle of the reading of the scrolls.
Author: Associated Press
Published at: 2025-10-13 21:50:06
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