This is the little that Gilad Korngold knows about what happened to his son on October 7. He knows that Tal, the 39-year-old father of Yahel and Nave, and husband to Adi, was taken from Kibbutz Be’eri by Hamas. That he was thankfully uninjured, that he was clothed, that he was stuffed into the boot of a car, and that he then vanished into the hell that is the fate of an Israeli hostage in Gaza.
He believes Tal is alive, or at least tells himself that he must believe Tal is alive. He also knows from other hostages that they sometimes were allowed to listen to Israeli radio, or saw their families on Al Jazeera, the Qatari news channel omnipresent across the Arab world.
And so, Korngold, 62 and struggling to remain strong, never misses a chance to appear on the radio. Perhaps, he hopes, the airwaves will carry his voice the 15km or so across the border with Gaza, and let Tal know his family hasn’t abandoned him, even if he believes the Israeli government and the world have done so.