People gather demanding Hamas release hostages after they have been in captivity for six months during a rally in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on Sunday, April 7, 2024.
Photo by Paul Frangipane
They will not be forgotten.
Six months since the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks in Israel, scores of hostages whom Hamas militants abducted that day remain captive in Gaza — and New Yorkers rallied on Sunday demanding their immediate freedom amid the bloody war.
More than a thousand people — many of them waving the blue-and-white Israel flag and wearing hats reading “Bring Them Home Now” — gathered steps away from the United Nations at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, at 47th Street and 2nd Avenue, for the April 7 rally that the Anti-Defamation League hosted.
Hamas’ sudden incursion into Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 in a surprise attack left more than 1,500 people dead, and hundreds of others taken hostage. Soon after, Israel launched a war that led to her invasion of Gaza in a joint effort to free the hostages and eliminate the terrorists who carried out the attack and continue to threaten the country’s existence.
While some hostages wound up being killed during captivity, scores of others were freed last November through negotiations. As of April 7, according to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, at least 111 hostages remain in Hamas’ clutches six months after the attack — their fate and condition unknown.
Meanwhile, the war in Gaza — a Palestinian enclave run by Hamas that is about twice the size of Washington, DC (140.9 square miles) and home to more than 2 million people — has wrought one of the worst humanitarian crises of the 21st century.
While the reported death toll of over 30,000 people has been disputed, a UN-backed report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification indicated that more than half the Gaza population is facing famine while supply lines have been either cut off or destroyed. Israel has agreed to increase…
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