Song of freedom: Tears flow as former hostage, Eitan Horn, leads Israeli national anthem at soccer game

Soccer has been a bit of a sore spot for Israel since war broke out with Hamas, but there was an outpouring of emotion as Eitan Horn poignantly sang Israel’s national anthem at a game at the Turner Stadium in Beersheva on Sunday.

Last year, Israeli football fans were hunted down in pogrom-style attacks in Amsterdam and they have been banned from the Maccabi Tel Aviv - Aston Villa game in the UK due to take place next Thursday, but safely on Israel's soil, soccer fans have been able to enjoy a moment of joy and relief, encapsulated in the words of the national anthem.

The thought of football kept the former hostage going during his long captivity. "I thought about Hapoel Beersheva every day," he told the fans.

Horn was among the last living hostages to be released, finally returning to Israel on Oct. 11 of this year, along with another 19 living hostages, as part of a ceasefire deal. He was kidnapped by Hamas along with his brother, Iair, on Oct. 7, 2023, and survived 738 days in captivity.

Dalia Cusnir, sister-in-law to the two brothers, told Israeli media that both Eitan and Iair Horn were kept in a tunnel packed with explosives. “Hamas constantly warned them that if the IDF got close, they’d all die – the hostages and the terrorists,” she said, according to the Jerusalem Post. “They lived every second knowing that the tunnel could collapse or explode at any moment.”

Iair Horn was released in February, some seven months earlier than his brother Eitan, as part of a prisoner exchange deal. The brothers were told that they had to make the agonizing choice between themselves which brother would be released. Now, finally, they have been reunited.

Horn was discharged from Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center on Thursday, together with fellow hostage Nimrod Cohen, and invited to sing “Hatikvah” at Sunday’s soccer game, where he had gone to support his favorite team, Hapoel Beersheva F.C., with his brother.

“What a welcome – I’m speechless,” Horn told the delighted crowd in the Beersheva stadium. “I waited so long to be here with everyone at Turner. Football kept me going there. I thought about Hapoel Beersheva every day: who joined, who left and whether we won the championship,” he shared. However, even in the exhilarating moment, he made a point of mentioning the hostages being withheld by Hamas.

“As happy as I am, until the last hostage returns home, I can’t be truly happy. I ask the entire nation not to stop until the last hostage comes back,” he said.

Horn then led the stadium in Israel’s national anthem, “HaTikva,” which means “The Hope.” Given his experiences of surviving Hamas captivity, the words were all the more powerful:

As long as in the heart within,
The Jewish soul yearns,
And toward the eastern edges, onward,
An eye gazes toward Zion.

Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope that is two-thousand years old,
To be a free nation in our land,
The Land of Zion, Jerusalem.

The song was written in 1886 by poet Naphtali Herz Imber while he was living in Romania but only became the official national anthem in 2004.

The words resonate deeply with all those who have waited and longed for a return to Israel, and the music is moving and evocative, but seeing Eitan Horn singing that song of freedom after all he had been through brought many grown men to tears.