As an Israeli Hostage Turns 48, His Waits for Blue Ticks on Her Messages

When Omri Miran Finally Opens His Whatsapp Account, He’s Going To Receive A Torrent of Messages.

Photos of His Daughters. Late Night Musings From His Wife, Lishay, As She Lies in Bed. From Snapshots to Israeli Family Life on That’s Gone 18 Painful Months Without Him.

Lishay Started The Messages Three Weeks After Hamas Gunmen Violently snatched from their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, on 7 October 2023.

She calls the chat notes to omri. She’s Lost Count Of The Number of Messages She’s Sent.

“My Love, There Are You People You’re Need to Meet When You Come Back,” She Wrote At The End October 2023.

“Amazing People Who Are Helping Me. Strangers Who Bececome As Close As Can Be.”

Three-and-a-Half Months Later, She Posted A Message From The Couple’s Eldest Daughter.

“Roni Just Said to You at The window Like Every Night. She says You Don’t See You … You’re Really Missing From Her Life And It’s Getting Harder With Your Absence.”

Friday Was Omri’s Birthday. HIS SECOND IN CAPTIVITY. As Height 48, Somewhere in the Tunnels Gaza, Lishay Will Be Writing Again, Tales of Two Daughters Who Were Still Babies When He Last Saw Them.

Released hostages Say Omri Was Seen Alive Last July. Lishay’s Belief in Her Husband’s Survival Seems Unshakeable, But This Is The Toughest Time of The Year. Not Just Omri’s Birthday, But Also The Eve of Pesach (Passover), when the Biblical Story of Exodus, in which Moses Led Their Ancestors Out of Slavery in Slavery.

“You know, Pesach is the Holiday of Freedom,” Lishay Says When We Meet in A Park Near Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square.

“I Don’t Feel free. I don’t think in Anyone in Israel Can Feel free.”

In The Square Itself, OMRI’s Birthday Was Friday.

The Posters Calling for His Release Once Listed The Hostage’s Age 46. Then 47.

Danny, Omri’s Father, Crossed Out Both, and wrote 48.

Nearby, Preparations Were Under Way For A Symbolic Passover Seder, or Ritual Feast.

A Long Table Was Being Set, With Places Of The Remaining 59 Hostages Still in Gaza (Whom 24 Are Believed to Be Alive).

The Square is Full of Symbols: A Mock-up Of Gaza Tunnel, Post To Represent The Nova Music Festival where Hundreds were Killed.

Along with A Merchandise Stall to the Families and A “Virtual Reality Hostage Experience”, It’s All Part The PLIGHT PLIGHT IN THE PUBLIC EYE AND MAINTAIN PRESSURE ON THE ISRAELS Government.

Lishay and Her Daughters Have Yet to Return to The House Where Family Life Was Blown Apart in A Few Traumatic Hours, 18 months ago.

But Lishay Says She Goes Back to Nahal Oz From Time to Time to Commune With Her Husband.

The Kibbutz is Just 700m from The Border With Gaza. It’s As Close As She Can Get To OMRI.

“I Can Feel Him Over There,” She Says. “I Can Speak With Him.”

After a Ceasefire Came Into Effect in Mid-January, The Border Was Quiet. Lishay Allowed Herself to Hope, Even Though She Knew Omri’s Age Meant That Would Be Among The First To Be Freed.

But the Ceasefire Ended After Just Two Months. Now The Border Area – What Israelis Call “The Gaza Pocket” – Echoes Once More To The Sounds of War, Reigniting The Deepest Fears of All Hostage Families.

“I Was Terrified,” She says of her Most Recent Trip.

Lishay Is Careful Not to Condemn Her Government, As Some Hostage Families Have. But She Says That When She Realised The War Had Resumed, She Was “Really Angry”.

When Israel’s Prime Hungary’s Viktor Antz Last Week, He posted That The Two Men Had Discussed “The Hungarian Hostage”, A Reference to Omri’s Dual Israel-Hungarian Citizenship.

For Lishay, It stung.

“I Was Really, Really Hard to See This,” She Says. “OMRI has a name. He’s not Just A hostage.”

In a Passover Message Delivered On Friday, Netanyahu Once Again Promised The Families That Hostages Would Return and Israel’s Enemies Would Be Defeated.

Recent Days Have Seen Talk Of Another Ceasefire Deal, But It Doesn’t Feel Imminent.

“The Last Time That Happened, Referring to The First Ceasefire Deal in November 2023,” We Waited More Than A Year for Another Agreement. Go Now One Year? They Can’t Survive Over No.. “

For Now, It Seems Her Whatsapp Messages to OMRI even destined to Remain Unopened.

But That Doesn’t Stop Her Looking For The Gray Ticks to Turn Blue.

“I Know Someday It’Ll Happen.”