'I Want To Believe': Advocate For Israeli Hostages Keeps Hopes Pinned On Joe Biden

Diplomacy freed Gili Roman's sister Yarden after she was abducted on Oct. 7, 2023 — but more than 100 hostages remain in Gaza.

One family’s story offers a snapshot of the devastating impact of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack inside Israel — and the agonizing personal toll that choices by Hamas, Israel and the U.S. have taken in the year since.

Members of the Palestinian militant group overran Kibbutz Be’eri that day, ravaging the town, killing more than 100 of the community’s 1,100 residents, including children, and kidnapping hostages to take back to the Gaza Strip.

The Gats were among the families whose lives were upended in the attack. Hamas fighters pulled Kinneret Gat, 67, out into the streets and eventually shot her. They abducted Kinneret’s daughter Carmel Gat, 39. Another group of assailants took Kinneret’s son Alon Gat, daughter-in-law Yarden Roman-Gat, and their 3-year-old daughter. Alon escaped with the toddler before they reached Gaza, but Yarden, 36, remained captive.

The family only learned of Kinneret’s death after seeing a video Hamas posted of her execution. Several weeks later, Yarden was reunited with her loved ones as part of a prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas negotiated by the U.S. and Qatar.

Then, this September, the Israeli military said it had finally located Carmel, dead. An autopsy showed that she and five other hostages, among them American citizen Hersh Golberg-Polin, were shot at close range in the back of their heads hours before Israeli forces discovered their bodies in a tunnel in Gaza.