Israel president says 'moral imperative' to bring home Gaza hostages
Israel's president said at a Holocaust remembrance ceremony on Thursday that the return of hostages held by Palestinian militants in Gaza was a "universal moral imperative" and called on the international community to help end "this horrific humanitarian crime".
Isaac Herzog spoke from the southern Polish city of Oswiecim, the site of the former Nazi German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, on the occasion of the annual March of the Living to commemorate its victims.
Auschwitz was the largest of the extermination camps built by Nazi Germany and has become a symbol of the Holocaust of six million European Jews. One million Jews and more than 100,000 non-Jews died at the site between 1940 and 1945.
"With a broken heart, I remind us all that even though after the Holocaust we swore 'never again', today -- here and now -- the souls of dozens of Jews are once again yearning within a cage, longing for water and freedom," Herzog said at a ceremony.
Nearly 60 "of our brothers and sisters remain held by terrorist murderers in Gaza, in a horrific crime against humanity", he added.
"The return of the hostages is a universal moral imperative, and I call from here -- from this sacred place -- for the entire international community to mobilise and end this horrific humanitarian crime."
Some 251 people, including women and children, were seized during Palestinian militant group Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, which left 1,218 Israelis dead according to an AFP tally based on official data, and sparked a deadly war in Gaza.
Fifty-eight hostages are still being held there, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel's military response in Gaza has unleashed a humanitarian crisis and killed at least 51,355 people, mainly civilians, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Herzog did not mention Israel's military operations in Gaza at the ceremony on Thursday.
But Polish President Andrzej Duda said they had talked about the situation in the Middle East.
"We both expressed the hope that the war that is going on in the Gaza Strip -- which began with the Hamas attack on Israel -- will be brought to an end," Duda said at the ceremony.
- 'I want my grandson home' -
Thousands of people, many draped in the Israeli flag and with tears in their eyes, took part in this year's March of the Living, which began under the sun and ended in a heavy storm at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Participants lit candles along the railway tracks of the site and left placards with the names of loved ones killed at the camp.
Holocaust survivors and former Gaza hostages were among those present.
Eli Sharabi, an Israeli who was held hostage by Hamas for 16 months, said: "All the representatives present here today... it is a victory of the spirit of the Jewish people."
It is also "a reminder that the Jewish people will exist forever", he told reporters.
Faina Kuperstein, the grandmother of a hostage still being held in Gaza, said: "I want my grandson home as soon as possible."
She told reporters she believed he was "going through almost the same thing that Holocaust survivors went through".
Qatar, with the United States and Egypt, brokered a truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas which began on January 19 and enabled a surge in aid, alongside the exchange of hostages and prisoners.
Israel resumed its intense air strikes and ground offensive across Gaza on March 18 amid disagreement over the next phase in the ceasefire that for two months had largely halted the fighting.
Last month, Herzog said he was shocked that the hostage issue was no longer a top priority in the country and criticised the war policy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.
Thousands of Israelis have been holding daily protests in Jerusalem, angry over the government's policies including a return to war, which many see as forsaking the hostages still being held in Gaza.
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