When asked how she feels about the one-year anniversary of Hamas’ attacks on Israel, Yamit Ashkenazi says, “I don’t feel like it’s October 7th again — I feel like I’m still in the safe room.” That’s likely because her younger sister, Doron Steinbrecher, was one of 251 people abducted — and is still missing.

Ashkenazi tells KCM that Doron is her “best friend” — and that the sisters and their parents previously lived near each other in kibbutz K’Far Aza. Says Ashkenazi, “Even though we didn’t have room for Doron in our home, she’d stay there 24/7,” spending time with her nieces and nephews and spoiling them with homemade birthday cakes.

“She’s full of compassion,” Ashkenazi says of her sister, who works as a veterinary nurse. “When she enters the room, everyone looks at her. Her laugh is magnetic.” 

Ashkenazi and her husband Oded have been speaking out about her sister, and raising awareness of the hostages’ plight for the past year. She says she’s “full of depression, anger and shame” that, one year later, the family is still telling its story and yet, the hostages are not home. “We feel like we’re disappointing them,” Oded says. But they keep making their story public as a way to remind others that the clock is ticking for the hostages in Gaza: “Every second they are there is risking their lives.” 

If she could speak to Doron, Ashkenazi says she “[would] want to tell her that we’re alive, that we are fighting for her: Be strong, as we know you are.”