Israeli Gibatime
CNN
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The visual or collection that emerged in February from Hamas prisoners of war shocked the world.
The pale, debilitating frame, 34, stood as evidence of the brutal circumstances he endured in the 491 days when he was taken hostage.
“It’s hard to understand how difficult it is to live in one pita a day for 491 days. Humans should not live that way,” Levy said in an interview with CNN this week. “And for those still there, I know those times are even worse than what I’ve experienced – and it’s scary.”
Levy has been at home for five months now. It was the roller coaster of emotions that began the day he was released, and he describes it as the most and hardest of his life.
He was reunited with his son Almog. He was only two years old when his father was invited. However, he also learns that his wife, Einaf, was killed in the attack on October 7, 2023 and had to begin the process of grieving her.
That was the first question Levi asked a representative of the Israeli army.
“I asked her about my wife. I think I know, but I said I’m not 100% sure and I wanted to know,” Levy said. “Then she told me.”
For 491 days, Levy suspected that his wife had been killed in Hamas’ attack on the bomb shelter that his wife was lured in, but hopes that she survived. Above all, he said he wasn’t ready to know the truth and didn’t ask the prisoner if she survived.
Instead, Levy said he lived with the focus on his son – and a mantra he learned from Hirsch Goldberg Polin, an American and Israeli hostage to be executed by Hamas a few months later.
Levy and Goldberg Polin were taken hostage from the same bomb shelter near the Nova Music Festival. Seven weeks later they were reunited in the tunnel in Hamas and were captured together for three days.
“I remember Hirsch saying this sentence… “How can someone who has “why” endure?” Levy recalls.
Almog was Levi’s “why.”
On a difficult day, when Levi says he thought about dying, he will touch his left arm and think about the mantra and his son.
One of the days was my son’s birthday last year.
Levi recalls crying most of the day, silently singing “Happy Birthday” to his son, talking about him to the other hostages, and committing to doing whatever it takes to spend Almog’s next birthday together.
Levy was able to maintain that promise two weeks ago, celebrating Almog’s fourth birthday at his home on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
Levi also obtained a mantra that helped him survive a prisoner tattooed on his arm.
Or, his reunion with his son was nervous and emotional. He feared that his son would not recognize him. But the moment they accepted all of those horrors, they were washed away.
“I remember seeing him, hugging him, hearing him… I remember going crazy,” Levy said.
Levi is currently devoted to Almog’s father full-time. Increasingly, it meant answering his son’s questions about “a distant place” that he told him about his mother that his son was being held.
“The story he said he knew was that there was a big bomb, unfortunately Mom was dead, I was taken to a faraway place and people were taking me home,” Levy said. “So he asks – he asks about his mother, what happened to her, who caused it? And he asked me about my wounds.
Levy tells his son that his mom didn’t want to leave him and that she loved him from the bottom of her heart. He then tells him a story about her and shows him a photo of her every day.
It’s difficult for Levi, who is still grieving his wife’s death, and he says he has promised that they won’t stop talking about her.
“Even when that’s difficult, it’s difficult for him (because he doesn’t remember his mother).”
Despite his daily gratitude, he reaches with his son, but Levy’s ordeal doesn’t really end until all the hostages are home.
“The fact that people are still there bothers me at night,” Levy said.
It was “very difficult” to see the progress of the ceasefire negotiations stop-and-start. In particular, Hamas knows that hostages tend to worsen in an age when those negotiations stall or backsplied. He recalled Hamas tightening up the bondage around his legs.
“It’s very easy, I might have been there yet,” he added.
He could have been at Aron Owell’s location. The 24-year-old hostage had a dream of studying music.
“I don’t think it’s worth more than bringing those people home,” Levy said. “We know we need to bring everyone home and push them to get a deal that will complete everything. We’ll finish it all.”
