Israelis, Jews and supporters worldwide breathed a long-awaited sigh of relief as they watched the hostages Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari make their way out of captivity in the Gaza Strip and into the arms of their mothers on Sunday evening. 

But alongside the joy and celebration, the primary message repeated by both the families of the hostages and Jewish communal organizations was the need to bring out the rest of the remaining 94 hostages and support them.

“In this incredibly happy moment for our family, we must also remember that 94 other hostages still remain. The ceasefire must continue and every last hostage must be returned to their families,” Damari’s mother, Mandy Damari, said in a statement after her daughter’s release. “I am also happy that during her release the world was given a glimpse of her feisty and charismatic personality. In Emily’s own words, she is the happiest girl in the world; she has her life back.”

Returning all of the hostages is a “moral imperative,” Maj. Gen. (res.) Doron Almog, chair of the Jewish Agency.

“We failed on Oct. 7 and we owe it to the hostages to return them,” Almog told eJewishPhilanthropy. “We have a moral commitment to bring them home. It is a painful moment and also very frustrating to see Hamas’ cruelty and show of power inside Gaza surrounding the three brave women…. Now we should continue to bring all the hostages back.”

The release of Gonen, Steinbrecher and Damari was only the start of the first stage of the cease-fire. Over the course of the next six weeks, another 30 hostages — living or dead — will be returned, with Hamas publishing the names on Fridays and releasing the captives on Saturdays.

Israel, in turn, will release a far larger number of Palestinian prisoners — some of them with blood on their hands — and will also begin to withdraw troops from the Gaza Strip and will increase the amount of humanitarian aid permitted to enter the enclave. The remaining hostages are to be released in the second and third stages of the cease-fire agreement, which is meant to lead to further Israeli withdrawals from Gaza, reconstruction efforts in the Strip and a permanent end to the war. 

The concessions that Israel has to make to secure the release of the hostages have raised opposition to the cease-fire deal in Israel, including from far-right factions of the government, members of which have resigned in protest of it.

For Almog, this is a personal issue: The Jewish Agency chairman has several family members who were among those killed and kidnapped in the Oct. 7 attack (the latter were released in the November 2023 hostage release deal). Almog also also lost five family members in the 2003 terrorist attack of the Jewish-Arab owned Maxim restaurant in Haifa. The Palestinian behind the Maxim attack, Sami Suleiman Jaradat, was first on the list to be released in exchange for the Israeli hostages, he said.

Almog said despite the fact that two of the four family members who survived the Maxim attack are permanently disabled, they all were willing to pay the price of the release of the terrorist responsible for the attack in order to bring back the hostages.

“They all agreed that we can’t bring back the dead, but we should do the maximum effort to bring back all our hostages who are still alive,” he said. “That is the view of my family. It is about mutual responsibility of the Jewish people. The spirit of the Jewish people. We have enough time to fight [later.]”

Almog criticized the politicians who voted against the agreement, including Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, saying that Israel’s first commitment should be to the hostages.

“First of all, bring them home and later, if there are circumstances justifying to attack, attack in order to defend ourselves, self-defense is an obligation, but right now in the circumstances that we are facing, the [foremost] commitment is to bring them home. I’m not saying my view only as an expert in the military, as a major general, but also as a member of the Almog-Avrutsky family that paid a high toll in the war against terror.”

The government’s stated goal of “total destruction” of Hamas is an unreachable one, according to Almog, a former head of the Israel Defense Force’s Southern Command, and those who believe that is possible need to “understand the limitation of power.”

“Some people think that we can destroy Hamas and achieve absolute victory. We are not going to,” he said. “There are 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. Ideologically, all of them are Hamas. We are not going to destroy our enemies. Right now we need a cease-fire to get back all the hostages, and [we need it] later for the rehabilitation of the south… to strengthen the communities demographically, economically, mentally, socially, and as the Jewish Agency this is our main role: rehabilitation of the south, rehabilitation of the north, building the communities, bringing olim.”

At the same time that Israel needs the support of world Jewry to help economically, socially, militarily and demographically to continue building the State of Israel, it must also continue to support Jewish communities around the world, he said.

“So this is a time we need for ourselves to continue building the State of Israel and using the power of war when it’s needed,” he said.

For Lt. Col. (res.) Avital Leibovich, the American Jewish Committee’s Jerusalem director, going forward with the cease-fire deal, it is critical that Israel advocates make clear the difference between the innocent hostages that are being released and the Palestinian prisoners being exchanged for them. 

“I want to be mindful that there really is no comparison between prisoners who have blood on their hands and the innocent young women, uncles, aunts, children who were brutally taken from their homes Oct. 7,” Leibovich said. “We will be seeing this comparison, especially in the TV coverage with split screens when they compare between celebrations in the West Bank and with the hostages being reunited with their mothers. It’s just not the right comparison to do.”

Jewish Federations of North America Chair Julie Platt and President and CEO Eric Fingerhut wrote in a public letter that was sent out shortly after the women’s release that after over 15 months of advocating for the release of the hostages, the organization is now ready to do whatever it can to help the released hostages “heal and reintegrate” into their lives. 

As with others who rejoiced in the women’s return, JFNA emphasized the need to continue fighting for the return of the remaining hostages.

In the joint letter, Platt and Fingerhut wrote that the stress-filled and emotional moments as Jews in Israel and abroad followed the progression of the women’s release on TV screens, mobile phones and social media, was an expression of the unity of the Jewish people.

“Today we are experiencing emotions that are at once both ancient and modern. As the first three hostages – Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher – have been released from captivity, the entire Jewish people in every corner of the world are joined today as if we are one body and soul, so connected to each other that we can feel the emotions surging between us. This unity of the Jewish people is as old as the patriarchs and the matriarchs. It is what we felt at the foot of Mt. Sinai, and how we felt at the birth of the State of Israel. We celebrate as one, and we mourn as one. May we never lose that connection to each other,” they wrote in the letter.

Platt and Fingerhut also noted the positive side of social media, which allowed people to follow the release in real time and share those moments with friends and loved ones.

“While social media has many negative effects, and has helped drive the demonization of Israel and the rise of antisemitism, today we are grateful for the intimacy,” they said.