Hostages and Missing Families Forum
forum of abductees
The Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum (Hebrew: מטה המשפחות להחזרת החטופים והנעדרים) is a body established to support and advocate for the families of the abductees who were kidnapped to Gaza as part of the 7 October attacks in 2023, and for the families of the missing persons as a result of this attack. The forum aims to return the abductees from Gaza, to locate those missing from the attack, and to handle medical, legal and other matters related to the abduction and its consequences. It is a group that represents the hostages and kibbutz community and makes announcements of relevant news such as the deaths confirmed of the hostages.
History
Within days of the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, the families of at least 341 missing Israelis, who had either been kidnapped to Gaza or whose disposition was unknown, started a WhatsApp group to share information and organize. Three initiatives, led by former Israeli politician and communications professional Ronen Tzur, Haim Rubinstein, and Dudi Zalamanovitch united as the Hostages and Missing Families Forum by 13 October. Tzur was the group's director, Rubinstein was the spokesman, and Zalmanovitch donated office space. Tzur headed the Forum until he stepped down in February 2024. The Forum, along with most individual relatives of hostages, have attempted to avoid partisan politics or confrontation with Israel's right-wing coalition government.
Shortly after the 7 October attacks, the Forum headquarters issued three demands, namely the immediate release of all hostages, the immediate opening of a humanitarian corridor to supply medicine to hostages, and intervention and aid from neighboring countries to assist in the release of the hostages.
Activities
During the first week, the group organized a fundraising drive that raised $500,000 and organized a meeting attended by 500 family members with Gal Hirsch, the Israeli government official coordinating hostage affairs.
“Hostages and Missing Families Forum” enters the record as forum of abductees. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Hostages, Missing and Families can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q123219501. None of the 4 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2023 and 2024.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hostages and Missing Families Forum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.