Ruby Chen does not have to speak to drive his message home. He wears his sorrow etched upon his face, his mouth set in a firm flat line.
When he does speak, at a breakfast for the Israeli ambassador during the recent Democratic National Convention in Chicago, he speaks plainly.
“We are 240 families,” he begins, explaining that he will avoid politics. “We are not spokespeople for the state of Israel. We’re just people who have this tragedy. We are families. Our loved ones have been abandoned, and have to come back.”
Chen, 55, outlines his story.
“I am a U.S. citizen, grew up in New York City,” he says. “We moved to Israel about 25 years ago. Have a family, three sons. My eldest is here with me, also in the IDF” — the Israeli Defense Forces, aka, army. “That’s how we taught our kids. To give. To commit, when you can. My wife’s dad is a former IDF Air Force fighter. He fought in the 1967, 1973 wars.”
He is holding up a large plasticized photo of his son, Itay Chen, bearded, grinning slyly, 19, along with the imperative, “Bring them home now!”
“When the time came, at age 18, to join the IDF is mandatory. In the Israeli army, he joined the tanks division. He excelled, as he has always been as a kid. He is the ‘sandwich,’ the middle one that needs to always find his path. A lot of extracurricular activities, from singing, dancing, climbing on walls. Playing professional basketball. Being in the Israel Boy Scouts, so he was big on giving back,” Chen says.
” He was in a special tank, with special capabilities. On the morning of Oct.7, he called — not us, he has a girlfriend. She got the last call from him. ‘They’re here now,’ he said. … He was at a base, the one with the female soldiers who had their tragedy as well.”
“At the time, it was hard to figure out what was going on. The videos started coming out and we knew it was something different. We were not able to get in contact with him. The day after, state of Israel, the police created a lost and found, a lost people compound.”
“He is not physically identified. Not in one of the hospitals. We, as U.S. citizens, said ‘OK, let’s go to the U.S. embassy.’ I don’t want to get into politics. We are very much bipartisan. But I do have to say, we have been blessed by this administration. After four days, Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken came in, sat with all the U.S. families. President Biden had a call with the U.S. families on the first Friday. It was supposed to be a 15-minute call. He stayed on the phone an hour and a half.”
He describes how a dozen U.S. citizens taken hostage, including a family from Chicago, were released after a few days, with two more in November.
“Since November, we’re kind of waiting. We were told by the prime minister — a little more military pressure will get them down to their knees. That was 320 minus 50 days ago and we have not seen a deal happen. We could talk a lot about other people to blame. The person responsible to get my kid back is the prime minister.”
Chen talks about his son in the present tense, so the next part is surprising.
“In March, we get another visit, a knock on the door. This time the knock was not that lucky. We were notified that Itay is not going to come back alive.”
He had been killed Oct. 7. Chen was moved by the number of calls he got from the United States.
“I haven’t lived in the United States for 25 years. Good people — congressmen, senators, the secretary of state, the vice president, the president himself found 15 minutes to call, to talk to me and my wife, like a grandfather telling his son that something bad happened and we have to cope with it somehow. We’ll always be grateful for what he did.”
U.S. ‘is not just a facilitator. They have equity in this’
Chen reminds the people who call about the Jewish seven-day period of mourning.
“We have this beautiful tradition we call ‘shiva,’” he says. “And I asked the president, ‘Do you know what shiva is?’ He said of course. When you get notified, there’s always a rabbi, and he said, ‘We can have the shiva.’ And we said, ‘It doesn’t make any sense, as Itay is not physically here. For that, we decided not to do a shiva. I asked the prime minister multiple times: ‘What about a shiva? When is that going to happen?’ Itay enlisted in the IDF. The prime minister has an obligation. A legal obligation, a moral obligation. These 240 family members were abandoned and need to come back. From our perspective, Hamas did not attack the IDF or the state of Israel. … They attacked the social framework of the people of Israel. That’s why they took kids and women and elderly. That is the playing ground that Hamas is playing on. And we need together to find a deal, we’ve heard multiple times: Hamas is not a strategic threat to Israel anymore.
“It’s unfathomable to think of having a family member either alive or killed. The psychological warfare that we have from Hamas, we unfortunately have this type of psychological warfare from our government. A deal is happening, a deal is about to happen, then we’re back to Square One. We love this administration. They did a lot for us. But we are critical as well. U.S. citizens need to come out. The U.S. is not just a facilitator. They have equity in this.”
He points out that those taken hostage Oct. 7 were of many religious faiths — Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Druze.
“My son joined, and is part of 45 U.S. citizens killed by Hamas. This is the single largest number of U.S. citizens killed in a terrorist attack since 9/11. It’s not the U.S. just being a bystander and facilitator. Where’s justice for these 45 U.S. citizens? We are critical, and we need to do what I need to do. It’s sometimes unimaginable. We need to fight for something so basic as getting our family members back.
‘I do not understand how this topic has been politicized’
“For the love of God, I do not understand how this topic has been politicized, not just in Israel, but in the States as well. We just want to go back to our simple lives. We just want our family members back. Think of us. It’s easy to put blame on other people, My mother, may she rest in peace, used to say, before you blame others, look at yourself. Look in the mirror and see what you could do? I challenge each and every one of you: What could you do today? With our prime minister, I would say the same thing. Go wherever you need to go, get these people back. Why? Because it happened on your watch.
“We started getting messages from the state of Israel, asking us, ‘What do you want to do on the one-year anniversary?’ That’s what you’re asking us? That’s what you care about? Get these people out. I don’t want to have a one-year anniversary of doing this. Enough.”
Update: I phoned Chen at his home in Netanya, Israel to check on developments since August, and we fell to talking about baseball. He’s following the playoffs. “I watch the games with the boys, and one of the boys are missing,” he said. Chen will not light a yahrzeit candle for Itay, as Jews do on the anniversary of a death, because he is holding out hope since no body has been recovered. He will, however, do so for the other victims, and Jews around the world are selecting a name from The Times of Israel page of remembrance and lighting a candle in that person’s memory on Oct. 7.