‘It’s tearing me apart’: A week on, hope wears thin for families of those taken hostage by Hamas

TEL AVIV — A Bar Mitzvah is meant to be a time of ceremony and celebration marking a child’s coming of age, but for one family on Saturday, the young man at the center of the ritual may have already been forced to grow up far too fast after his older brother was one of dozens of people taken hostage by Hamas one week ago.

“Itay was very missed,” Orly Chen, the aunt of Itay Chen, a 19-year-old U.S.-Israeli dual citizen who was working for the Israeli military when he was believed to have been taken hostage by Hamas during its deadly ambush on Oct. 7.