A nation rejoices

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NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 14th of October.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

SOUND: [HOSTAGES SQUARE]

First up: Celebrations in Hostages Square.

That’s the sound from a crowd singing before the hostages were released.

EICHER: Regular listeners may know our breaking news reporter Travis Kircher has been in Israel for the last month. He went expecting to cover the 2nd anniversary of the October 7th attacks, but also ended up being there for the hostage release that Israelis had been hoping for.

REICHARD: WORLD’s Lindsay Mast recorded a conversation with Travis and takes it from here.

LINDSAY MAST: Yeah thanks—I called him up while he was in Hostages Square in the hours just after that release. Travis, thank you for being with us.

KIRCHER: Yeah, Lindsay, thanks for having me.

MAST: You’ve visited Hostages Square multiple times over the last week or so… Mood—compare/contrast from last week and over the course of the day Monday.

KIRCHER: Oh, Lindsay, I can't imagine just covering this over the past couple of weeks, the words that came to my mind a little while ago was emotional whiplash. I mean, I was, I was here in Hostages Square. I guess it was maybe two weeks ago, shortly before the October 7 second anniversary. And wow, what a change. Back then it was, it was practically deserted, very melancholy. There's like a single guy sitting there playing a piano under a tree. It was, it was just a, just a very somber, somber scene.

And now, to come back today, I mean, there's, there's, there's people dancing. It's a concert really. It's really a concert field, people dancing, people crying, people cheering, clapping, chanting, Lindsay. There is a guy, a 10 foot guy on stilts, handing out balloons. You know when balloon guy is there, it's a good day.

MAST: So really celebratory it sounds like. What have people said when you talked to them?

KIRCHER: Well, Lindsay, I talked to a guy named Brad Myers. He's actually an immigrant to Israel from Australia. Here's what he had to say.

BRAD MYERS: Today it kind of feels like a bit of—I don’t know how to put it into words—but it feels like putting the wrong to right to a certain extent. It feels like the Jewish people in Israel can finally start to heal a bit. Can start to process what’s been but at the moment, we just have to be in the moment that everyone is coming home.

KIRCHER: How big a deal is this? Put this into context.

MYERS: This is huge. I’m 26. I haven’t been alive for all of Israel’s history. But this is the biggest day in my lifetime in Israel 100 percent. 100 percent.

KIRCHER: He really summarized what I heard from a lot of people, namely, that this whole ordeal with the hostages, with October 7th in general, it's really been like a weight, a heavy weight, on the shoulders of not just the families, but really the whole country here. I had one woman told me that, you know, since October 7th, they haven't been able to just go about daily life or do the things that, you know. It's like their lives have been set aside, and they've just been dealing with, you know, getting the hostages home, and now, you know, they feel like they could finally move on, like there's a new chapter in Israel's future. So very much, he very much summarized what the whole country seems to be feeling.

MAST: Well, President Trump addressed the Knesset in Jerusalem. Of course, that’s a couple of hours away from where you are, but what was the reaction in the square?

KIRCHER: Oh, let me tell you, Lindsay, President Trump is very popular here. One of the chants that they were chanting here was, was, “thank you, Trump.” And it's just amazing. I talked to a guy last night who told me that, honestly, Trump was not his choice. He was not, he was not the one that he wanted to win the U.S. election, but he told me he was wrong. He told me, after what Trump did, arranging the hostage deal, arranging the ceasefire deal, he said I was wrong.

Trump is the right man for the job, and I wish we had similar leadership here.

I talked to Ori Nachmani, some another, another person here participating. And here's what she had to say.

ORI NACHMANI: I really hope that we’re not only going to get the hostage back. I really hope the end is really over and the suffering from our side and the other side can stop and we will—we can rehabilitate. We need our time and they need their time. And I really hope—I don’t know, the words of President Trump is true and we will see peace. It will be the greatest end to this hell that we felt for two years.

KIRCHER: And that's another theme that we've heard here from a lot of folks, is just that it's great to get the hostages back, but it's not over. There's going to be a healing time, not just for the hostages and their families, but for the whole country. The whole country has been through trauma and needs to heal, and then they need to look forward to, you know, how do we prevent this again, what does it mean to have, you know, relationships with Gaza and the West Bank. What does that look like?

And, and so there's a lot of, a lot of, actually, disagreement. I heard disagreement on the, on the ground this morning, I was talking to a group of people and, and, you know, one of the one of the young ladies there who was talking to me said that in the future, you know, we're going to have to learn to, you know, look at, look at Gaza and the West Bank and the Palestinians and and see what we need to do to facilitate a better relationship. The other gentleman who was there said, No, we don't. It's all, it's entirely on them. They're the ones that launched October 7. They're the ones that started all this, and really it's up to them. So a lot of different views here about how to proceed.

MAST: Sure. I want to ask you about, you know, another source of division has been how people feel about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Can you sense, is there any change in feeling toward Netanyahu at this point?

KIRCHER: I think, I think they kind of feel the same. There might be a little bit more approval of Netanyahu today, I can tell you that the vast majority of people I talked to are crediting President Trump, not Netanyahu, for this, for this peace deal. Now whether they’re right or whether they’re wrong, that’s not for me to decide. But I can tell you that the gentleman I talked to last night said that one of the things that he admired about President Trump is that he puts the people first. He puts his own country first, and he says he's not getting that from Netanyahu.

MAST: Any reaction from Gaza Strip/Palestinian side? Have you been able to talk to anyone there?

KIRCHER: I haven't talked to anyone since the peace deal. I did spend a couple of days in the West Bank, both in Bethlehem and in Hebron, and I spoke to some of the Palestinian Christians there. And obviously, before the peace deal and it, they obviously have a very different feeling for all of this. It's, somebody told me this region is complicated, and that's, that's, that's the perfect word for it, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's hard to find an answer for that, and the only, the only one I could really give is, I talked to a messianic pastor. And I put that question to him, you know what's, what's the right answer in this situation? And he said, All I can tell you, I'm paraphrasing, is that one day, Jesus is going to come back, and he's going to set it all right, and it's it's all going to be just and that's all we can hope for. So a lot of hard, hard situations here.

MAST: So glad you’re there Travis. Thank you so much Travis Kircher speaking with us from Hostages Square in Tel Aviv. Thank you Travis.

KIRCHER: Thanks, Lindsay.

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