'For a mother, when a child is a hostage, he's a hostage. It doesn't matter if he's dead' (2025)

In January, Yael Adar received the news that her son, Tamir, was murdered by Hamas and that his body is being held in Gaza. Nine months later, she says that the fact that he was pronounced dead does not diminish the government's obligation to bring him back.

"For me, he is alive," she said, "cognitively, I know he's not, but emotionally I allow myself the illusion that maybe there was a mistake, that maybe he will be found injured, that he'll return and with his sense of humor say, 'You were quick to eulogize me.' As long as he's not here, nothing is concrete."

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Adar said that her son, who was a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz's security squad, is present with her every moment: "I go to sleep and wake up with him, everything reminds me of him." Adar emphasized that only when her son is laid to rest will she be able to accept his death. "I can't continue with life until Tamir is here."

Adar said she feels that the state and the public are not showing the required sensitivity toward the families of deceased hostages. For example, at her workplace, a local authority in southern Israel, they are demanding that she return to work.

"They say if there was a shiva, I should come back, that he's no longer a hostage but a deceased hostage. But for a mother, when her child is a hostage, he's a hostage, and it doesn't matter if he's alive or dead," she explained. "The state is obligated to him; I am entitled to the final right, the right to close the circle; he deserves that."

According to Adar, she will never forgive the loss of her son. "If we had learned something from this about humility, modesty, compassion, if there had been some kind of healing, I would stand over his grave and say at least they learned a lesson from this, and his children will grow up in a better world," she said. "But a year later, I can't say that, and I even say it's worse. I'll say something terribly difficult, but this country raises children only to kill them."

According to Adar, the urge for revenge is natural after everything that happened. "I, too, wanted Gaza to be erased, emotionally," she admitted, "but on the other hand, after a month, two months, there were proposals on the table."

She said, "First, we needed to free our children, rebuild ourselves so we could later deal with the problems. Instead, they chose more fighting and more fighting. And who decides? Ben Gvir, Smotrich, and Dery – all those whose children don't go to the army. So many are killed and murdered, and we keep doing the same thing – it's illogical."

On Sunday, one day before Kibbutz Nir Oz's official ceremony, the Adar family attended a quiet ceremony to inaugurate a monument and a memorial corner in memory of Tamir Adar and Aviv Atzili, who was also a member of the kibbutz's emergency response team, and whose body is held in Gaza as well. The monument was placed where the two were shot in the center of Nir Oz.

"After the ceremony, I said, 'What now? A year has passed; what now?'—and I have no answer," Adar shares. "How do you go on? I don't know. I need to breathe, get through this week, and then we'll see," she said.

"Everyone should ask themselves, if tomorrow your child was kidnapped and the captor demanded a ransom, what would you do? Is there a price for your children?" she wondered, immediately answering, "If the kidnappers called and said they demanded a billion shekels for his release, I would get it. I'd sell the house, walk barefoot, and eat one slice of bread a day my whole life, but I would bring the money. We were abandoned before, and we're abandoned now, and I'm supposed to explain why they need to release my son? My son is worth every price in the world."