As Israel marks its 77th Independence Day and President Donald Trump completes his first 100 days in office, my heart is somewhere else entirely: in the darkness of Gaza, where my son Bar remains in captivity — frail, frightened, and forgotten by far too many.
Bar Kupershtein is 23 years old. He was abducted by Hamas terrorists at 9:15 a.m. on October 7, 2023, from the Nova Music Festival. Just three hours earlier, at 6:30 a.m., Bar called to check in on his grandmother as sirens sounded across Israel. He assured her that he was ok and would soon be returning home. He never made it. Instead of running, Bar stayed and helped others flee the area. He provided medical aid to the wounded, organized the evacuation of thousands, and — despite opportunities to run for his life — chose to remain behind to save lives. Survivors have testified to his heroism.
<div id="attachment_913445" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-913445" class="size-large wp-image-913445" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-29-Apr-2025-10-42-AM-2184-1024x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Kupershtein family. Bar Kupershtein." width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-29-Apr-2025-10-42-AM-2184-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-29-Apr-2025-10-42-AM-2184-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-29-Apr-2025-10-42-AM-2184-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-29-Apr-2025-10-42-AM-2184-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-29-Apr-2025-10-42-AM-2184-2048x1152.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Credit: Kupershtein family.</div>
That decision, one rooted in bravery and selflessness, led to his capture.
This is who Bar is: a caregiver, a leader, a young man of tremendous character.
I myself was seriously injured in 2019 while volunteering as a medic, on my way to resuscitate a 4-year-old girl. A terrible car accident left me disabled and struggling to speak. This is where Bar really stepped up. He moved in with his grandparents to make space for my caregiver and began working at the festival to help support our family, including his four siblings. He became the pillar of our family.
Now, that pillar is crumbling in an underground tunnel beneath Gaza.
In a recently released video by Hamas, used as psychological propaganda, Bar appears gaunt, drastically thinner, his eyes hollow, and his body weak. He did not speak, we did not hear his voice. He looks like a different person — one shaped not by time, but by torment.
Our entire family is struggling to maintain hope. I am learning to speak again so I can be Bar’s voice, calling out from the silence of the tunnels. My father, Bar’s grandfather, is a Holocaust survivor — he has suffered two strokes since Bar’s abduction. My mother is battling bowel cancer and undergoing chemotherapy. The pain has seeped into every corner of our home and yet nothing is as severe as painful as longing for Bar’s release.
<div id="attachment_913447" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-913447" class="size-large wp-image-913447" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-29-Apr-2025-09-44-AM-9910-1024x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Kupershtein family. Tal Kupershtein speaks at a rally on behalf of his son, Bar." width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-29-Apr-2025-09-44-AM-9910-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-29-Apr-2025-09-44-AM-9910-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-29-Apr-2025-09-44-AM-9910-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-29-Apr-2025-09-44-AM-9910-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/MixCollage-29-Apr-2025-09-44-AM-9910-2048x1152.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Credit: Kupershtein family.</div>
President Trump, your first 100 days have shown boldness and decisiveness on many fronts. You have demonstrated strength and urgency during this period. I implore you now to bring that same resolve to this urgent humanitarian crisis. The United States has long prided itself as a beacon of moral leadership. You have the power to rally the international community. You have the influence to pressure Hamas. You have the ability to make a deal happen. Please use it.
Now I ask you — beg you — to apply that same determination to the ongoing hostage crisis. Use your influence to rally international partners. Press every available lever. Show the world that America stands for life, for freedom, and for human dignity.
To the global community: do not let these hostages fade from view. Their suffering continues every day as negotiations stall and the world grows quieter. Bar and the 58 others held in Gaza are not just numbers — they are our children, our parents, our friends, and loved ones.
If your child were held underground in darkness, I’m sure you would not stop short of anything to bring them home. So I will never stop! The world must never stop until they all come home!
My son is still alive. But we are running out of time. Let these 100 days be remembered not just for politics, but for courage — for choosing life over fear, action over delay, hope over silence. And please help me hug my son again!
I promise, when Bar finally returns — when I see him again — I will summon every bone in my broken, wheelchair-bound body to rise. I will teach myself to walk again, if only to take one step closer to my son. To hold him. To remind him that he was never alone.
Bring my Bar home.
* * *
Tal Kupershtein is the father of Bar Kupershtein who was kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023.

ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICT-HOSTAGES

Bring My Son Home: A Father’s Plea To President Trump And The World

Bring My Son Home: A Father's Plea To President Trump And The World

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On the first anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 terror attack on Israel, one survivor is recalling his harrowing experience.
Daniel Vaknine, 30, was at the Nova Music Festival with his girlfriend and friends when terrorists began firing missiles from Gaza. He recalls a tense moment after the first missile made landfall. 
“After a few seconds it was just a barrage that didn’t stop for 15 minutes,” Vaknine told The Daily Wire.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
On the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, one survivor is recalling his harrowing experience.
Meet Daniel Vaknine who fled the Nova festival and was protected by a Holocaust survivor.
My latest: <a href="https://t.co/YfVcY4y5Nn">pic.twitter.com/YfVcY4y5Nn</a>
— Kassy Akiva (@KassyAkiva) <a href="https://twitter.com/KassyAkiva/status/1843338375778185333?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 7, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> 
He and his friends took cover and eventually made it back to their car. But when they drove away from the festival grounds, they began to realize the extent of Hamas’ attack.
“After 10 or 15 minutes of driving we headed to one of the routes that leads to Kfar Aza,” where two people “Stopped us, waving their hands, like, you cannot go further, there’s a terror attack in front of us.”
“That’s the moment that we started to realize that something’s going on. We were just getting shot at, we just came from the same situation.”
“We cannot go anywhere, because both sides are getting shot at.”
Eventually, a stranger led Vaknine and others fleeing the attacks to a religious Kibbutz nearby. About 60 people took shelter at the compound for hours, where Vaknine met an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor named Sarah Jackson, who took them into her home and provided them protection in her bomb shelter for over 10 hours.
Vaknine recalls a friend sheltering further back in the Kibbutz calling him to say she had heard that terrorists breached the gate and were entering the compound.
“I think all of us kind of had a complete feeling that maybe we’re done,” Vaknine said. “For almost half an hour, but for us it was eternity, we thought, we’re gonna be next, we’re done.”
Fortunately, Vaknine and his friends survived the attack. At first, he said he found it hard to listen to trance music, the style featured at the Nova Music Festival, because it reminded him of October 7.
“I can’t believe this music that was my home, that was my safe house, became something so hurtful,” he said. “And I was so afraid that I would never be able to listen to this music again” because “it would symbolize a terror attack, it would symbolize death.”
But, after a year of reflection and conversations with friends, Vaknine is optimistic.
“We will sing again, we will dance again, we will laugh again, we will love again, we will live again. We will do exactly what we did before, but even stronger now.”

Nova Rave massacre site

Nova Music Festival Survivor Recalls Oct. 7 Attack: ‘We Thought, We’re Gonna Be Next.’

Warning: The below report includes graphic sexual content that may be disturbing to readers. 
The first official report documenting Hamas’ widespread sexual atrocities released on Wednesday claims the terror group’s use of sadistic humiliation, genital mutilation, and gang rape is part of its operational strategy both during and after its October 7 massacre.
<a href="https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/arcci-submits-first-report-to-un-21-feb-2024">The report</a>, submitted to the United Nations by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, leaves “no room for denial or disregard,” according to the organization’s CEO Orit Sulitzeanu.
“The terrorist organization Hamas chose to harm Israel strategically in two clear ways – kidnapping citizens and committing sadistic sexual crimes,” Sulitzeanu said in a press release. “Silence will be remembered as a historical stain on those who chose to remain silent and deny the sexual crimes committed by Hamas.”
The report includes testimonies from survivors and first responders who encountered corpses with signs of sexual assault, and concludes that sexual violence took place in all areas of the October 7 massacre, including the Nova festival, villages, and military bases. It adds that hostages taken were also subject to sexual violence while in captivity.
Quantitative information is not given about the assaults because most of the victims were killed, making the extent of the atrocities difficult to know, the release states.
At the Nova festival, the report states a woman who was seen in a viral video with a burned face, torn dress, and no underwear was raped, according to police investigators. The woman who took the video reported she saw a cut wound on the victim’s legs which she believes was to cut off her underwear. Several more survivors gave eye-witness testimony of women being gang raped, beaten, and then killed at the festival.
“​​One survivor who wandered the area after the massacre described it as an ‘apocalypse of bodies, girls without clothes, some missing their upper, some their lower parts,’” the report states. “These descriptions align with accounts from personnel that treated and removed the bodies, who testified about many bodies arriving partially clothed or unclothed, heavy bleeding from the pelvic area, and mutilation of genital organs.”
Another survivor named Sapir said she saw five different cases of rape, bodies being mutilated and a large group of terrorists “passing injured women between them.” In one case she said she saw an injured woman being raped by a terrorist while another pulled her hair. Each time the woman resisted, she was stabbed in the back, according to the report.
Sapir also said she saw a woman’s breast being amputated with a box cutter by terrorists who “passed it between them like a toy.”
<div id="attachment_655763" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-655763" class="wp-image-655763 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/6-1024x576.png" alt="Kfar Aza houses, one with shrapnel holes and another with blood." width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/6-1024x576.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/6-300x169.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/6-768x432.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/6-1536x864.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/6-2048x1152.png 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Two Kfar Aza homes, one with shrapnel holes in the ceiling from a grenade and another with blood on the walls. / The Daily Wire</div>
Rami Davidian told the investigators that women’s bodies were tied to trees with some that had iron rods inserted into their sexual organs.
Yoni Saadon, testified to witnessing a woman getting raped who screamed, ‘‘Stop it – already I’m going to die anyway from what you are doing, just kill me!’ before she was shot in the head and killed.
One survivor said he saw girls “whose pelvises were simply broken from being raped so much.”
Yoni Saadon who also survived the massacre at the festival said he witnessed eight to ten terrorists rape the same person.
Another survivor told police that girls were burned after being raped. 
Signs of sexual assault were also found in the homes within several villages including indications that spouses and family members were forced to witness the violence, according to the report.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/video-inside-the-day-long-terrorist-siege-on-israels-sderot-police-station" target="_blank" rel="noopener">VIDEO: Inside The Day-Long Terrorist Siege On Israel’s Sderot Police Station</a>
ZAKA volunteers who worked in Kibbutz Be’eri gave testimony to bodies they found of women and girls who were stripped of underwear, had signs of semen, and a case with a knife found inserted into a genital organ.
“Chaim Otmazgin, commander of the special units in ZAKA and an officer in the National Rescue and Fire Command, describes another kibbutz where he saw two naked bodies of women with objects penetrating their bodies,” the report states. 
One of the bodies was stabbed with a serrated knife “that was used to remove the woman’s internal organs leaving them between her legs,” the report adds.
Otmazgin said he saw another case where a mother’s body was found handcuffed behind her back while her daughter’s body was found in the next room with her pants and underwear down.
Nira Shpak, a resident of Kfar Aza who took upon herself the task of identifying the bodies of the 60 killed in the kibbutz, recounted several bodies found with exposed intimate organs, sometimes with their clothes seemingly torn apart.”
WATCH: AFTERMATH OF HAMAS MASSACRE ON KFAR AZA, ISRAEL
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Inside The Israeli Kibbutz Where Dozens Were Murdered By Hamas" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iXcXuB3PqN8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
ZAKA volunteer Itzik Itach said he saw a couple tied together with signs of rape on the woman’s body. 
“Nachman Dyksztejna, another volunteer, described the bodies of two women found tied by their hands and feet to a bed, one having been sexually abused and found with a knife in her genitals,” the report states.
IDF paramedics reportedly found the bodies of two girls, one of which had her pants down and remains of semen on her back.
An emergency security team member of Kibbutz Re’im, Noam Mark, said he found three naked bodies of female Nova festival attendees with signs of “clear signs of severe sexual violence.” Mark provided testimony and a video supporting his claims to police, according to the report.
Men&#8217;s bodies were also reportedly found with signs of sexual abuse and mutilated genitals, according to the report. 
<div id="attachment_655759" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-655759" class="wp-image-655759 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/4-1024x576.png" alt="Kfar Aza massacre sight in southern Israel." width="1024" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/4-1024x576.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/4-300x169.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/4-768x432.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/4-1536x864.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2023/11/4-2048x1152.png 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Each house on a particular street in Kfar Aza faced a different fate. Some were entirely burned, some had bullet holes, others still had blood on personal items.</div>
“There were a lot of gun wounds there. Shooting was targeted at sexual organs,” a paramedic testified. “We saw that a lot. They had a thing with sexual organs.”
On an IDF base, Lieutenant Tamar Bar Shimo said she was threatened with a weapon by a terrorist to remove her uniform until another terrorist intervened, the report states.
“Shari Mendes, a volunteer who attended to women’s bodies at the “Shura” camp, reported seeing four bodies of female soldiers with signs of sexual violence, some with extensive bleeding in the pelvic area,” according to the report. “Maayan, a dentist and military officer who also worked at the camp, said she saw at least 10 bodies of female soldiers with clear signs of sexual violence.”
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/i-couldnt-breathe-watch-arabs-react-after-screening-footage-of-hamas-slaughtering-civilians">RELATED: ‘I Couldn’t Breathe’: Watch Arabs React After Screening Footage Of Hamas Slaughtering Civilians</a>
The report adds that The New York Times was shown a video taken by terrorists of two soldiers who were shot in their genitals.
While hostages, both men and women were sexually assaulted and others still in captivity may still be facing sexual violence, according to the report.
“Chen and Agam Goldstein, a mother and her teenage daughter who were kidnapped from their home in Kfar Aza and released after 51 days in captivity, noted that they encountered at least 3 female hostages [who] suffered sexual assault during captivity,” the report states. 
Another former hostage, Aviva Sigal “spoke about sexual assaults on young women, including a case where she saw a young woman immediately after being assaulted when taken to the bathroom,” according to the report.

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‘Sadistic’ Humiliation, Mutilation, And Gang Rape Were Part Of Hamas Strategy, Israeli Report Shows

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Bring My Son Home: A Father’s Plea To President Trump And The World

Nova Music Festival Survivor Recalls Oct. 7 Attack: ‘We Thought, We’re Gonna Be Next.’

‘Sadistic’ Humiliation, Mutilation, And Gang Rape Were Part Of Hamas Strategy, Israeli Report Shows