The 25-year-old Canadian-Israeli fighting for the return of her cousin

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Yasmin Magal rode into Calgary — in the midst of the city’s annual foot-stomping, yahoo’ing, yeehaw’ing Stampede — bearing a sobering message about the fate of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

This 25-year-old medical student, a former graduate of Calgary’s Henry Wise Wood high school now living in Israel (courtesy of dual Canadian-Israeli citizenship), is meeting with people in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. She aims to ensure Canadians know what’s happening with the 120 Israeli hostages taken by Hamas on October 7 who remain in captivity.

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One of those hostages, Omer Neutra, a 22-year-old American-Israeli, is Magal’s first cousin. He was abducted while serving in an outpost near the border of Gaza. Nine months later, Magal’s family doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive. But they aren’t giving up hope.

When we meet, in an office tower in downtown Calgary, country and western tunes are blaring on every street corner and I’m dressed in over-the-top Stampede regalia: well-worn pony boots, feather earrings, plaid skirt and a mustard-coloured cowboy hat that would make Beyonce proud. In a nod to local festivities, Magal is sporting bluejeans. But the T-shirt — bearing her cousin’s face — and an urgent appeal to “BRING OMER HOME NOW! — brings an abrupt end to any lightheartedness. That, and her penetrating look.

“I don’t feel like my government here (in Canada) has my back,” Magal declares. “It’s a lonely place, to be fighting for your cousin’s life alone, when there’s such a big country that could be united behind me.”

Wearing this T-shirt in Toronto attracted some very negative attention, Magal reports. “In the Canada I knew and the Canada I was familiar with, people don’t walk up to you in the streets and start yelling at you.” This is disconcerting; if it’s OK for activists to demand that universities free Palestine and divest from Israel, why is it not OK for Magal to demand that Hamas free her cousin?

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My cowboy hat is now resting on the table between us and I lean forward; this serious young woman has my full attention. And it becomes rapidly apparent that she doesn’t want my pity. Rather, she’s challenging me (and every other Canadian) to pay attention and to do something.

“My boyfriend is from Edmonton,” Magal shares. “And we were kind of thinking that once I graduate, we’d move back here,” she continues. “But I don’t know,” she pauses, “I mean, I need to be able to trust my country and to trust the values of the country … and I’m a little worried about Canada.”

In her cross-country jaunt, Magal didn’t stop in Ottawa — everyone there was already on holidays, she shrugs. This year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has skipped the pancake-flipping in Calgary, so she can’t talk with him here, but if she could, what would she ask for?

“Take a clear stand,” is her retort. “It’s clear what’s right and wrong here. Hostages should be free.” It’s frustrating to Magal that the Canadian government has spoken out, recently, about settlements in the West Bank but rarely comments on the imperative to free hostages.

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From my perspective, Trudeau’s cabinet seems mired in ambivalence. Case in point: Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly’s continued slow-walking of Israel’s request for permission to import non-lethal armoured vehicles to Israel, for the purposes of defence. According to Roshel, the manufacturer of this equipment, the vehicles remain in storage and Joly hasn’t responded. “It’s not a no but it’s not a yes,” the company reports.

When the Canadian government doesn’t speak up, it doesn’t create the conditions for Canadian citizens to speak up, Magal asserts. She’s hit on a sensitive nerve; many Canadians — the silent majority — fail to speak up, to advocate for the release of the hostages. When the public is silent, says Magal, “it leaves a void and room for insane opinions to be heard.”

From her perspective, this silence risks creating a worrying situation where “Canadian values are being pushed aside for values that are so different from Canadian values.”

How does she engage with people who blame Israel for October 7 and its aftermath? “Some people actually believe that Israel doesn’t have the right to exist,” she acknowledges. “I can’t argue with belief. I can argue with facts. I can argue with fake news.” And she reiterates, more slowly this time: “I can’t argue with belief. Just like I can’t argue with Hamas’s belief that an infidel (a non-believer in Islam) should die.”

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As we speak, hostage negotiations are playing out in Doha, Qatar. A three-phase framework agreement, brokered by the U.S., would give priority to the return of female, elderly and wounded Israeli hostages, as part of an exchange. Assuming Neutra is alive, and relatively unharmed, he would be among the last hostages to return home. That’s a bittersweet thought for Magal.

“I understand the physical differences and the biological differences, and I understand why the women need to be released,” she sighs. “It’s been nine months. I think we all understand what happens in nine months and what could happen. I mean the rapes.” And then she continues, that penetrating look in her eyes boring a hole through my conscience: “… Men get raped as well. Men get tortured as well.”

It’s a terrifying thought. So is the possibility of hostages being used as human shields. Hamas has used citizens as human shields for years now, Magal explains, “hiding in hospitals and schools, using the patients and children as human shields, and the neighbourhoods where civilians live.… Why would it be hard for us to believe they’re also using the hostages as human shields,” Magal asks, rhetorically. “Of course, they’re doing it.”

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Trying to rally to the positive, I ask Magal if she’s seen Anthony Hopkins’ latest movie — One Life — based on the inspiring story of Nicholas Winton, a British stockbroker who helped arrange the escape of 669 children, mostly Jewish, from Czechoslovakia in 1939. She’s shared with me that she and Neutra share a grandfather who was born in Czechoslovakia (now Slovakia) during the Holocaust.

“I haven’t seen any movies in the past nine months,” Magal replies, her voice quiet. After a pause, she explains the sense of being overwhelmed, the feeling of going through some type of new Holocaust.

“The first few years of his (our grandfather’s) life was about survival,” Magal shares. “Now, he’s in his eighties and his grandchild, my cousin, is being held hostage for nine months. I hope that Omer gets released in time so my grandfather can see him.”

Magal’s life, these past nine months, has been focused on the return of the Israeli hostages. When she has time, she attends to patients as a medic, treating both Israelis and Palestinians, she adds.

“A human is a human,” she declares, “and I treat them all equally. Omer is on my mind and I want to believe there is also someone on the other side with the same values who is treating Omer.” She looks up at me, again, with those penetrating eyes.

I desperately want to believe that too.

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