Liat Beinin Atzili was held hostage by Hamas in Gaza for 54 days. When she returned to Israel, she learned her husband was murdered on Oct. 7. In this episode of “The Opinions,” the editor Sarah Wildman speaks to Beinin Atzili about her radically different experience from most other hostages and why she doesn’t believe in revenge.
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The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Sarah Wildman: I’m Sarah Wildman. I’m an editor and writer for New York Times Opinion.
I first met Liat Beinin Atzili a little over a year ago by email. I edited an essay she wrote about the concept of tekumah, or rebirth after the Holocaust. She is a Holocaust educator and a history teacher for teens. She’s also a former hostage. She was abducted from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, 2023. She was held for 54 days and released during a one-week truce agreement. Liat returned to a changed landscape. Her home burned, her family displaced and her husband, Aviv, murdered during the attacks.
Her family’s efforts to bring her home are the story of a new documentary called “Holding Liat.” In it we see both the efforts to secure her release and her return. After I watched the film, I couldn’t stop thinking about how when Liat returned to Israel, she didn’t turn away from Palestinians. She turned toward them, turning to her grief to find a path to peace and rejecting revenge.
Liat, thanks for joining me.
Liat Beinin Atzili: Thank you.
Wildman: It’s been more than a year since you came back, and I find grief to be this terribly strange emotion that changes every day. I can’t predict it, and I wonder how you hold it today.
Beinin Atzili: Wow, that’s a tough one to start with.
Wildman: I’m sorry.
Beinin Atzili: Well, I’ll —
Wildman: We can come back to that, and I can start someplace else.
Beinin Atzili: No, let’s try to start with that. I won’t dive right into that, but I’ll sort of go around it. I’m going to be in the States because the film is going to be screened at Tribeca and in D.C., and I’m coming back Monday morning, and Friday is Aviv’s birthday. We’re having this huge birthday party for him.
He worked at the agricultural machinery garage or workshop on the kibbutz, and every now and then, he used to invite bands and musicians to play in the workshop. So that’s what we’re doing. We’ve invited one of his favorite bands to give a concert on his birthday. These past weeks have been really, really emotional leading up to that. I keep thinking how happy he would be that this band is coming to play in his workshop.
I’ve been dreaming about him a lot. I’ve been having these weird conversations with him when I don’t know if I’m awake or asleep, and I think that sort of sums it up: that when a person dies, they don’t disappear. They’re still present, just not physically, and it’s a big deal to connect to that. Like my daughter said shortly after Aviv died, she had to figure out her relationship with him — that when a person dies, you have to reconnect in a different way, and you have to redefine your relationship with them.
I’m not saying this because he was my husband, but Aviv was an exceptional, extraordinary, unbelievable human being, so it’s easy to do that. There were very few things about him that annoyed me or that I had criticism of, and they sort of became almost nonexistent. He’s like this presence, and I wish he was really here physically, but — it’s been a journey.
I was invited to speak at a ceremony for soldiers who had been killed in the war, and one of the things that I wanted to say was that this whole process made me fall in love with him all over again.
Wildman: That’s very beautiful. I wanted to ask you about your life before Oct. 7, before the war, before the documentary. Your family is Israeli American. You can hear it in your voice. What brought your family to Israel?
Beinin Atzili: Ideology. My paternal grandparents — my dad’s parents — they were members of Hashomer Hatzair, which is a Zionist socialist youth movement, and they made aliyah in 1947. And after the ’48 war broke out, they returned to the U.S. So my father grew up in a very, very Zionist home. He and his brother and sister were also in Hashomer Hatzair, and there was no question about coming to Israel and coming to live on a kibbutz eventually.
My mother’s family is a little bit different, and it was her rebellion to join Hashomer Hatzair. My parents met in the movement, and they came to Israel together. And Aviv and I also met in the movement. So that’s how my family came to Israel and why my family came to Israel.
Wildman: And you mentioned earlier your daughter, but you actually have three children. Tell me their names.
Beinin Atzili: Ofri, he’s 24. Neta, he’s 22. And Aya is 20. She’s my daughter.
Wildman: I am going to take us now to Oct. 7.
Beinin Atzili: OK.
Wildman: I won’t linger here for a long time for a variety of reasons, mostly because I imagine that for you having to speak about this again and again is a form of trauma. In many of the interviews you’ve given, including in the documentary, you talked about how the terrorists had these strange moments of humanity. Even when they breached your home, they asked you to get dressed. Tell me about the moment when they came in. What did they say to you?
Beinin Atzili: I was sitting on the floor, and it was all very, very quiet and not rushed and not — I mean, it’s this incredibly violent act, but it wasn’t. It didn’t feel violent. And they said, “Get up. You’re going to come with us now. Get dressed.” I didn’t respond. I didn’t understand, and I understood what they were saying, but I sort of didn’t — it didn’t register.
There were two of them. One of them said, “Don’t worry. We’re not going to hurt you. We’re going to protect you. We don’t hurt women.”
I asked to take something from the bedroom. They let me do that. I said that I had to look for my glasses. They helped me look for my glasses. I couldn’t find them, so I ended up without glasses. And really, they didn’t touch me. Everything was done, like, in a conversation that was very relaxed.
Wildman: What was your emotional state?
Beinin Atzili: Nonexistent. I really — like my brain was mush. There was nothing going on. I remember leaving the house. The house was on fire already, so at some point they said, “We have to get out of here.” And I was looking around and just not registering what I was seeing.
There’s a parking lot in front of my house, and all the cars were burned, and the windows were shattered. And I was like, “What’s going on here?” I was sure that I’d see other people being taken from their houses as well, but there was nobody else outside.
Wildman: You have talked a bit about how you were treated in Gaza, which was different from other hostages. Tell us where you were taken and how you were treated.
Beinin Atzili: I was taken first to an apartment where a family lived, and there were women and children, and most of my communication was with them, but not only with them. I had a feeling that they understood what I was going through, that I was a woman alone who’d been kidnapped from her home, that I had children that I was worried about, that I had a husband that I was worried about.
So they told me: Take a shower. Change your clothes. Drink something. Eat. They let me watch television in English. So I had an idea of what was going on. And then the next morning, the father was an old guy, he brought me a toothbrush and toothpaste. I saved the toothpaste until the end. I kept saying, “I’m getting out of here before this tube of toothpaste ends.” It almost lasted the whole time, but it was a few days short.
I told them that I didn’t see well and that I wore glasses, and so they brought, like, a million pairs of glasses and said, “Try these on. Maybe they’ll work. Maybe they’ll help you.” They asked if I wanted to be alone or if I wanted to be with them. It was really — it was very, very, in some ways, strange to be treated this way and definitely reassuring. I also kept saying to myself, “OK, you know, I can deal with this. I can do this.”
But then the next day — that was on Saturday — on Sunday evening, I was transferred to a different place, so that was a little bit of a worry, even though the transfer was also OK. And then I arrived at a different apartment, and I met a woman from Nir Oz. It was such a relief knowing that I wouldn’t be alone. I’ll be with another woman. I’ll be with a woman that — I mean, I didn’t know her very well, but somebody that I know who she is.
There were other people in the apartment, but after a day or two, we just stayed, the two of us with two men who stayed with us the whole time. We were moved around a little bit. They kept saying, “It’s our job to keep you safe. Don’t worry. As long as we’re here, you’ll be safe.”
Wildman: Were you aware of the bombing campaigns? Did you hear them or see them?
Beinin Atzili: Yeah, we watched television almost every day for a few minutes. So they told us, and at first they tried to hide the fact that they had cellphones, but we realized, eventually, that they were connected. And then we asked them, “All right, we saw a few minutes of TV, but can you tell us more about what’s going on?”
Wildman: How did you not panic? Or did you?
Beinin Atzili: Well, there was nothing to panic about, really. We did have a routine. A lot of this daily routine was waiting for things to happen. I mean, things that we knew would happen, like waiting for it to be dark and to turn the light on — that was a thing. We waited for meals, and then we waited to take a shower. We ate pretty well.
Wildman: What did you eat?
Beinin Atzili: During the first few days, we couldn’t eat at all just because we were so scared and in shock. So they were a little bit worried about that, and they asked us what we like to eat. And then I told them that I’m vegetarian — I don’t eat meat. And then they said, “So what are you going to eat? How are you going to stay healthy?”
So I told them what I like to eat, and one of them liked to cook, so he kept asking, “What do you want me to cook for you?” And almost anything that we asked for and that he could get his hands on then he made for us — macaroni and cheese. At some point we said that we liked sweet potatoes, so they got sweet potatoes for us. But there was one large meal a day. Sometimes we didn’t finish it, so we’d save food for later. It was just — it’s unpleasant not to be in control of when and what you eat, but I wasn’t hungry.
Wildman: Did they ask you about yourself?
Beinin Atzili: Yeah, in this daily routine. So usually we’d have our meal and then, sort of in late afternoon, like four or five, we’d have coffee or tea with them. And then we had lots of conversations, and they asked about our lives, about our families, and they told us about themselves a lot.
Wildman: Were they religious?
Beinin Atzili: Yes, very religious.
Wildman: Did they ask you about religion?
Beinin Atzili: Yes, and we spoke about this. I’m not religious at all. It was strange to them, the concept of a person not believing in God, not being religious at all.
Wildman: How did you hold the fact that they were human, that they were kind to you, with the conditions of not being allowed to leave?
Beinin Atzili: I kept saying, “If you like me so much, then take me home.” And they said: If we could, we would, but we’ll be killed if we take you home. And it was never — the thought was never finished. I didn’t really understand who they thought would kill them. I mean, they for sure would’ve been killed. I didn’t know if they thought that the Israel Defense Forces would shoot them or Hamas would murder them for letting us go.
Wildman: I want to take us to the release. You were held 54 days, and you were released. When you first got back, what did you think about Israel’s response to the war itself?
Beinin Atzili: I knew what was happening. It wasn’t that I didn’t know anything and then all of a sudden I was exposed to what was happening. And even during the time that I was in Gaza, I thought, “OK, Israel retaliated to the attack on Oct. 7. I mean, that’s OK. That’s obvious. But all right, what now?”
I’m a history teacher, I know Israeli history. Israel is not prepared for long wars. I was really, really, really surprised that this war was taking so long. It seemed to me that not enough effort was made to return the hostages and to end the war and to let the people who live in the negative, in the area that Nir Oz is in, return home. I sort of didn’t understand what the end game was.
Wildman: What did you know about the status of your family while you were being held?
Beinin Atzili: I didn’t know anything.
Wildman: What was your biggest fear?
Beinin Atzili: My biggest fear wasn’t that all three of my children were dead but that they’d been taken hostages as well, my sons. But I prepared myself. I had a lot of time to prepare myself for the worst-case scenario. I kept telling myself, “If one of the kids or both of them had died, then I hope that at least Aviv was alive because I don’t know how I’m going to deal with the death of one of my children without him.” So that was a huge concern.
Wildman: And you didn’t know what had happened to him.
Beinin Atzili: No.
Wildman: When did you learn?
Beinin Atzili: The day after I returned.
Wildman: I know that in the film, you held a funeral, but I think his body has not been returned. Is that correct?
Beinin Atzili: Yes, that’s correct. According to Jewish burial laws, there were enough remains to be buried and to have a funeral, so we decided to do that, and I’m very, very glad that we did. I think that it gave us closure, and I think it enabled me to grieve.
And I think that it also helped me to heal or to move forward from the experience of being a hostage, because the focus sort of shifted. When I think of my status, I don’t think of myself as somebody who was a hostage. First of all, I’m a widow. And to me, the major thing that happened to me on Oct. 7 is that Aviv was killed.
Wildman: It’s devastating that you came back to this news.
Beinin Atzili: Yeah.
Wildman: And you have this strange mix between the joy of knowing your children are OK, because all three of them were OK. But I’ve seen you talk about how you don’t hold grief and anger. You went toward grief, and I wonder how you did that.
Beinin Atzili: At first it was a decision, but then, you know, fake it till you make it. [Laughs.]
I knew that if I let all this anger out, if I was in that place, then I’d fall apart. I couldn’t see myself dealing with both emotions. So at first I really decided, and I worked hard to not be angry. And now so many things have happened and so many things have changed that — it’s not that I’m not angry at all. I’m not angry that this happened to me. There’s nothing I can do about that. I’m angry at things that can be different and that I can change.
Wildman: How do you see the way the country has received you? Do you feel you’re able to meet those emotions alone, or is there a national response that you’ve sort of been put in the middle of as well?
Beinin Atzili: I think there is a national response that I’m not happy about. Well, there are different things. I think that the way I’ve been taken care of since by official government bodies, I think that a lot has been done to understand what my needs are. I have this really nice apartment, a furnished apartment that the government paid for. And volunteers came here and put houseplants and pictures on the wall, food in the refrigerator. That was an amazing thing. I don’t know any other country where that would’ve happened.
I think people are so upset about what happened and how things have been dealt with since that they sort of forget and don’t see that there are a lot of things that do function in Israel and that function well. But I think that society as a whole expected us to tell a certain story, to bring back a certain message, and people who didn’t play the role were and are criticized really harshly. I think that to me, the important thing is to be able to tell my story the way I want to tell it and not to have people be upset or furious or violent toward me because I’m not playing to what they want to think.
Wildman: When you say “criticized,” do you mean by politicians?
Beinin Atzili: Well, yes, actually also politicians.
Wildman: The narrative didn’t fit what they wanted it to.
Beinin Atzili: Yes. I do have empathy toward people who were suffering, and the fact that I was wronged, that something happened to me, doesn’t give me the right to do that to other people. I mean, I don’t believe in revenge.
In Judaism, when a person dies violently or in war, we say: Hashem yikom damo — meaning, “God will take revenge in his name.” I think that’s a pretty good translation. I think that what that means, or my take on that, is that it’s not our job to take revenge on our enemies. It’s God’s job.
Wildman: I watched the webinar you did with the Parents Circle. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that group. I can say that it’s a group of Palestinians and Israelis who have lost family members to the conflict and see more commonality in that loss than difference. But not everybody would turn toward them. So I’m curious about your choice to do so and what that’s been like.
Beinin Atzili: I mean, I felt that I needed to be able to communicate with Palestinian women — that’s the experience that I’ve had — and that I needed to be in a place where people aren’t afraid to talk about peace and hope and to share their experience and their loss and to still want a different future.
I really felt a need to be surrounded by people who relate to all these things in a similar way that I do. So that was that decision.
Wildman: What has it been like to share your story with Palestinians?
Beinin Atzili: Well, first of all, they were also very curious about how a Jewish Israeli woman related to this experience. I think they were very relieved not by the fact that I was treated well but by the fact that I’m willing to talk about it.
I think it’s a story that they needed to hear — that there are people who are willing to speak about a not horrible experience. I’m not saying that it’s not horrible, but it could have been so much worse.
Wildman: When you speak about your experience in places like the Parents Circle, is it primarily focused on explaining the trauma, or do you give a broader picture of “This is what our life was like. This is how I met Aviv. This is who Aviv was” so that they see the fullness of the picture? Or are you focused on the trauma?
Beinin Atzili: No. First of all, in general, I don’t like to focus on the trauma. These were 54 days of my life. I’m over 50. There’s so much more to my life story than those 54 days — definitely a broader picture. And also, people are curious about Aviv, and I love talking about him.
Wildman: Was he political?
Beinin Atzili: Yes, but not as much as me.
Wildman: What do you think he would think about you talking about peace and rejecting revenge?
Beinin Atzili: I think he’d support that. I mean, I keep thinking, when I do meet him again someday, somewhere, you know?
Wildman: In olam ha-ba.
Beinin Atzili: Yeah, like, what I want him to say is, “Wow, you did great.” So that’s always in my mind.
Wildman: I wonder if your history as a Holocaust educator alters how you see the conflict. You went back to teaching pretty quickly. I imagine it helped to go back to work, but in one of the final scenes in the documentary, you are explaining to your students about the ghetto wall in Warsaw and what Germans and Poles could see or couldn’t see or what they allowed themselves to see beyond the fence.
It can be very difficult to talk about the Holocaust in any context other than the Holocaust. But in the film you talk about this fence, and I wonder if you think studying the Holocaust has given you tools to see beyond this fence differently and look for peace?
Beinin Atzili: Definitely. I had a very similar conversation today with a colleague, and I think that that’s something that separates people — what you’re willing to see and what you’re willing to acknowledge and what you’re willing to know that’s happening and how you relate to that.
I’ll say — not in a delicate way — I think that a good person can’t ignore violence, can’t ignore suffering, can’t ignore death. And those things, you know, we live in a world where obviously, wars happen, and some wars are justified, to a certain extent. And I think that asking yourself, “To what extent is what’s happening now OK or not?” — is it enough? What else has to be done, or what can be done?
I don’t know if I’m saying this very clearly, but I think that these questions have to be asked. What happened in Israel on Oct. 7 doesn’t and can’t justify anything. I think that these questions aren’t discussed enough. What do we want to happen? What are Israel’s goals? How do we see the future?
To me, that’s what it means to look beyond the fence, to want to know what the price is.
Wildman: Liat, thank you so much for joining me, and thank you for sharing Aviv with us and letting us hold his memory, too.
Beinin Atzili: Thank you, Sarah.
Thoughts? Email us at [email protected].
This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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