# 2025-10-12 - Watching the Hostages Come Home at the Hotel Van Zandt
> [!note] Photo Journey No. 59
> Published October 25, 2026, in [[photo journey/welcome|Photo Journey]].
*Bryant and his friend from Brooklyn in bed at the Hotel Van Zandt in Austin, Texas, late on Sunday night, October 12, 2025, bare feet crossed on rumpled white sheets, watching the live broadcast on a laptop as morning broke in Israel on the day the last 20 living hostages came home. They had been taken on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants launched a massive surprise assault from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel, killing at least 1,195 people and carrying 251 hostages into Gaza. On Monday, October 13, after 738 days in captivity, the last 20 living hostages were handed to the Red Cross in two groups and returned to Israel.*
## Reflections
Some moments in history arrive in a hotel room late at night, on a laptop balanced between two people who have waited two years to see them. My friend and I were in bed at the Hotel Van Zandt, both of us crying, as the live broadcast carried the release of the last living hostages taken in the October 7 terror attacks. We were there, watching history happen, and neither of us pretended to be composed about it. {{Some news is received by the mind and some by the whole body; tears are how the body confesses it was keeping count all along.}}
Advocacy online is a long and lonely kind of battle. My friend and I had both fought it for Israel, for a long, long time, posting into the noise night after night without ever seeing what our words moved. That night we finally saw the doors open, and the long fight was answered in the faces of the people coming home. {{An advocate fights for years without a receipt; the reward, when it comes, is to watch the people you fought for walk free.}}
> [!quote]- Original dictation
> We were at the same hotel, my friend and I, literally in bed, both crying, watching the historic release of the hostages from the October 7 terror attacks, when Hamas-led militants launched a massive surprise cross-border assault from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel. We were both there, watching history happen, after both having fought a long, long battle advocating for Israel online.
## Related
### Writing
- [[articles/Judeo-Christian Identity and the Islamist War of Extermination|Judeo-Christian Identity and the Islamist War of Extermination]] *(Oct 2, 2025)*: written ten days before this night.
- [[articles/The New Gang Symbol of Hate in the West|The New Gang Symbol of Hate in the West]] *(Nov 10, 2025)*: on the harassment campaigns since October 7.
### Wiki
- [[wiki/Hotel Van Zandt|Hotel Van Zandt]] · [[wiki/Austin, Texas|Austin, Texas]]
### Photo Journey
- [[photo journey/2025-10-10 - Breakfast at the Hotel Van Zandt|Breakfast at the Hotel Van Zandt]]: breakfast with the same friend two days earlier.
## Location
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[Open in OpenStreetMap](https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=30.2601417&mlon=-97.7391389#map=16/30.2601417/-97.7391389) · [Open in Google Maps](https://www.google.com/maps?q=30.2601417,-97.7391389)