Holocaust Memorial Day
VOICE OF THE COMMUNITY 29 January 2026 • 11 Shvat 5786 • Issue No.1456 •
@JewishNewsUK
Why it matters now more than ever Pages 4, 5, 6, 11, 16 & 19
Finally, it’s 8 October After 843 days, the last hostage comes home
VOICE OF THE JEWISH NEWS Since 7 October 2023, the yellow ribbon has been more than a symbol. It has been a flag of hope – as potent as the masking tape worn by hostage families, scrawled with the number of days since the Hamas attack, like tally marks scratched into a prison wall. This week, every day finally stopped feeling like 7 October. The counting ended at 843. Of the 251 taken, 168 came home alive. Of the 83 who did not, the remains of the final hostage,
Ran Gvili (pictured), have now returned to Israeli soil. Every Israeli hostage taken on 7 October has been accounted for, returned alive or brought home dead – closing the darkest chapter in Jewish history since 1945. For nearly two and a half years, every day was measured against that cruel calendar. Every morning we resumed the count. Every night we
went to sleep with a quiet dread. We lived and breathed every moment waiting for this moment. As Nivi Feldman, head of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum UK, writes in Jewish News this week: “Bring Them Home was never just a slogan. It was a promise. A demand. A moral line in the sand.” And yet the next chapter will be, in its own way, just as complex.
The return of Ran’s body closes one nightmare but opens another. One focused on the future of Gaza and the Israeli communities that must surround it. But despite the questions that remain, the Jewish people can acknowledge that this burden, at least, has been borne to its end. In the end the ribbons are coming down not because the war is over, but because the last daily number has been counted. Now a different kind of reckoning begins.
Beit Halochem’s four centres deliver life-changing rehabilitation for Israel’s 70,000 disabled veterans and victims of terror — from physiotherapy, hydrotherapy and PTSD care to specialised sports, social support, education and creative programmes.
THE CONFLICT MAY BE OVER. OUR WORK IS JUST BEGINNING.
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