The UK can help end the war in Gaza and save my son. His time is running out

Alon is one of the 50 remaining hostages held in Gaza, and one of only 20 confirmed living.

On 7 October 2023, Alon, then a 22-year-old emerging musician, was attending the Nova music festival in southern Israel when Hamas began its brutal assault. He hid from barrages of rockets in a roadside bomb shelter, which was soon attacked with grenades and automatic weapons. Seventeen young people were killed in that shelter, now known as the “shelter of death”.

My son and three others, including American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, were kidnapped and taken to Gaza, bleeding and broken in the back of a pickup truck. Many videos show the horror of what unfolded there and the kidnapping of these four young men.

Goldberg-Polin was murdered in captivity last year. The two others taken with Alon – Or Levy and Eliya Cohen – survived over a year of hell and were released in February. It is from them that I learned my son is still alive; it was also from them that I learned of his devastating injuries and that he is being held alone and in extreme suffering.

They told me that a 19-year-old Hamas member attempted to stitch his wounds without anaesthetic and that his remaining eye may only be saved with proper medical care – care he has not received.

Alon and the other hostages – especially those gravely wounded – are running out of time. This is not just a plea to save innocent lives; it is a cry from the heart to protect what remains of our shared humanity. The horrifying images and videos Hamas has released – of hostages starved, broken and barely clinging to life – haunt us all. Alon is one of them. We must bring them home now, before one more mother’s child is lost forever.

We are now almost two years into this war, and the suffering has deepened on all sides. In Gaza, the humanitarian crisis is unbearable, with countless families enduring devastation and despair. But the hostages are in even more immediate danger – starving, beaten, and still held in chains. Every day in captivity pushes them closer to death. Their time is running out, and if we do not act now, we will lose them.

As a mother, I am pleading not only for my son’s life, but for a renewed commitment from global leaders – especially in the UK and across Europe – to prioritise ending this war and bringing the hostages home. The UK has a long history of moral leadership in times of conflict. I urge your leaders to be brave, to act and to advocate for the lives of those who still might be saved.

My son and the other hostages, most of them young men, still have their whole lives ahead of them. I know that my son will play the piano again, filling the air with everything from Beethoven to Elton John to his own songs. I know my son will begin his studies at the music school where he was accepted, that he will surf again, cook again and do all the other things that brought a smile to his face. I want to believe that I will hug him again.

Please, help make that possible.

Alon Ohel has been held hostage by Hamas in Gaza for 674 days at the time of writing

Photograph by Syndi Pilar/SOPA/Getty