842: 51 Days
This American Life
This American Life
4.6 • 88.8K Ratings
🗓️ 6 October 2024
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chen Almog-Goldstein was kidnapped by Hamas along with her three youngest children on October 7, 2023. This week, she tells the story of their life as hostages in Gaza.
- Prologue: The 251 hostages taken by Hamas a year ago have become a divisive symbol in Israel. Host Ira Glass talks about the father of one hostage, and what happened to him at a protest last week when he called for a hostage deal. (6 minutes)
- Part One: On this week’s show, we’re airing excerpts of interviews with former hostages produced by an Israeli podcast, Echad Bayom. In these interviews they describe, in a remarkably detailed and complicated way, what happened to them a year ago.
- Part Two: Chen’s story continues, with a description of what it was like to be hidden in a small apartment with her children and their captors. (6 minutes)
- Part Three: Chen talks about the complicated relationship between her family and the people holding them hostage. (6 minutes)
- Part Four: Chen describes hearing the Israeli news while in captivity, including one night when her own father was interviewed. (4 minutes)
- Part Five: Chen talks about what it was like to walk around the streets of Gaza in disguise and their eventual release, 51 days after they were taken from their home. (13 minutes)
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| 0:00.0 | In Israel last week, Elle Elbag wanted to do something about his daughter, |
| 0:05.8 | Wiri, who had been captured by Hamas a year ago when she was 18 and is still |
| 0:10.0 | hostage somewhere in Gaza. And so he took a bullhorn and went to stand outside an event |
| 0:14.8 | that was being held by the Prime Minister's political party, Leacoud. Basically, he wanted the people |
| 0:20.2 | running the country to make some kind of deal with Hamas and bring his |
| 0:23.7 | daughter home. And so okay he's standing there with his bullhorn, this grieving |
| 0:28.5 | worried parent who doesn't know if he's ever going to see his child again and |
| 0:32.0 | someone throws an egg at him. |
| 0:35.0 | And another egg. |
| 0:37.0 | Somebody yells and calls him a cancer on Israel. |
| 0:39.0 | Somebody else accuses him of being funded by Yachya Seymour, the head of Hamas. |
| 0:47.0 | This is not unusual in Israel. |
| 0:49.0 | The country was bitterly divided between people like these hostage families who are saying stop the fighting, make a deal |
| 0:54.4 | with Hamas, bringing home the hostages. |
| 0:57.9 | And on the other side, the Prime Minister's supporters and his coalition, people running |
| 1:01.9 | the government, |
| 1:02.6 | want to press on with the war, |
| 1:04.2 | and get to a more complete victory over Hamas. |
| 1:07.0 | I have an Israeli friend who said to me that this war is different |
| 1:09.7 | from ones in the past in Israel, |
| 1:11.0 | because in the past he said once the war started everybody united |
| 1:15.8 | this time it's driven people further apart to the point where even these anguish families |
... |
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