Hostage rescued alive: my heart jumped for joy

Then I looked a little bit closer and my whole body cried

We knew something was coming down. We didn’t know what. We were told that the IDF spokesman was going to make an announcement at 15:00. Then that he wasn’t. Good? Bad?

Finally, at 15:25, the good news of a successful rescue operation was released to the public. Fifty-two year-old Bedouin security guard from Rahat (near Be’er Sheva) was rescued from a Hamas tunnel and is stable and in apparently good health. His smile in the photo accompanying social media announcements is so captivating and infectuous. An open face, eyes that look straight into the camera with confidence. My heart swelled with joy.

Qaid Farhan Alkadi had been abducted by Hamas on Oct 7th when he was working in security at a kibbutz packing plant. Unlike the other rescued hostages, Alkadi was rescued from a tunnel.

Soon after the announcement, a Gazan media outlet claimed that Hamas released him when they realized he had been abducted ‘by accident.’

Soon, a lifeguard was videotaped happily announcing the news of the rescue to an almost empty Haifa beach.

And then we see family members racing through the hospital corridors and grounds to meet him as he is being transferred to the Soroka Hospital to be evaluated.

And all the time my heart is racing along with them, waiting for the moment they all waited for — over ten months of waiting.

And then I saw this photo, the first time we are seeing him after his rescue.

The huge, unrestrained smile on the face of his relative dominates the photo. It reminded me of the first photo above, the one accompanying the announcement of his release. And then I noticed that there is almost only a skeleten under the hospital gown so I enlarged the image of Al-Qadi’s face:

This is what ten months in Hamas captivity did to this man:

No politics here, please.

My heart and soul are aching too much to be able to bear any political comments one way or the other. For the moment, let us just be with this man.

UPDATE: Now THIS photo makes me smile again.

And we now know that he was found alone in a tunnel — no other hostages by him, no terrorists. There was no combat necessary to rescue him — did the terrorist flee when they heard the IDF in their tunnel? Waiting to hear more details as they are released to the public.

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