Not music to Hamas ears

Some projects are measured by what they build. Others reveal themselves through what they try to destroy. Oct. 7, 2023 was an attempt at erasure: to erase lives, homes and even the idea that Israelis might one day sing and dream again in the communities of southern Israel. That day, thousands of Hamas-led attackers crossed into Israel in an assault marked by murder, mutilation, people burned alive and sexual violence—the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Some 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage. Among them was Israeli-American Sagui Dekel-Chen. For 498 days, his captors imprisoned his body. They could not imprison his mind. On Aug. 10, some 3,000 people gathered on the central lawn of Kibbutz Nir Oz—a place that since the massacre had served mostly as a site of mourning—to hear Dekel-Chen perform Minus One, an album whose nine songs were conceived during his captivity in Gaza. Wounded and not knowing whether his wife and daughters had survived the massacre, Dekel-Chen found refuge in the one place his captors could not reach: his imagination. He composed and memorized nine songs during captivity, recording them on his phone only two days after his release in February 2025. One was written for his youngest daughter, born while he was in captivity and whom he would meet only after returning home. He was composing for a child he had never held in his arms. Another song was born after he saw himself in a mirror in a dark corridor, having gone roughly two months without seeing his own reflection. He barely recognized the man looking back at him. This story may be among the worst news Hamas could receive because it exposes the limits of a project built not merely on violence, but also dehumanization. Captivity deprived Dekel-Chen of his freedom, his family and almost every form of control over his own existence. But his captors could not control what happened inside his head. The underground level where he was held gave the album its name: Minus One. Yet the songs born there are about love, family and hope. None of this romanticizes suffering. No song can transform 498 stolen days into something necessary or worthwhile. Dekel-Chen did not need to suffer to create. What is extraordinary is something else: His captors could control almost everything around him, but they could not control what he imagined, remembered or created. In that small territory of freedom, nine songs were born. There is something symbolic in the fact that the same lawn at Nir Oz that witnessed so much grief became the site of a concert that resounded with possibility. The Bibas family also lived there. Shiri Bibas was abducted with her sons Ariel, 4, and Kfir, less than a year old. The color orange, evoking the boys' red hair, became part of the campaign to free the hostages. Yarden, their father, who was abducted separately, was the only one of the four to return alive. And yet, on that same kibbutz from which so many people were dragged from their homes, thousands gathered to listen to music that one of those hostages had composed in captivity. Dekel-Chen declined to call that night a celebration or a victory. It was, he said, simply part of the story. It is a story that carries the grief of families like those of Yarden Bibas. Where there was an attempt to leave only death and silence, there was music and life again. Today, no hostages remain in Gaza. The last 20 living hostages returned to Israel on Oct. 13, 2025, and the body of the final hostage held—police officer Ran Gvili, who was killed fighting the terrorists on Oct. 7—was recovered on Jan. 26. Dekel-Chen's story may be one of the most eloquent answers to Oct. 7. He entered Gaza as a hostage and emerged from it as a composer. Hamas stole 498 days from him. But in the darkness, he created light.