In a perverse way, it felt like moments before New Years in Times Square. The TV hosts counted down: one minute to go, 30 seconds to go. Except it wasn’t to celebrate a new year with kisses and champagne. “It’s 7:00. We have officially entered a cease fire,” the morning news host reported.
Unlike a new calendar year during which we make resolutions and have hopes that it’ll be a better one than the year before, the threshold we crossed was not one of celebration but of trepidation and conflicting emotions. Even for the families of some 50 hostages set to be released in the coming days, there’s an awareness that Hamas is anything but humanitarian and anything could still go wrong. They are not making a deal because they have turned a new page, or care about the lives of those who they kidnapped. The very fact that they have kidnapped scores of women and children underscores that. One does not become good by releasing people they never should have kidnapped to begin with. They are the devil personified. And the devil will not make it easy, even at the last minute. Maybe especially at the last minute.
Israelis are conflicted. As much as we celebrate the release of some of the hostages, we know that most will be still held in captivity. As much as we understand there’s a Biblical obligation to redeem captives, we know that there’s a huge cost. We know that the Red Cross and other world bodies have abdicated their responsibility to check on the well-being of the hostages. We know that despite kidnapping hostages being a war crime, the world has already begun a duplicitous moral equivalency, pushing Israel for a long-term end of the war. We know that Hamas can, and may very well will, use the ceasefire to inflict more carnage, like Amalek attacking from behind.
We know that it’s been more than nine years since Lt. Hadar Goldin was kidnaped and killed during a 2013 ceasefire with Hamas. We know that Hamas still cruelly holds his remains.
Israelis are conflicted because we know that it’s not sound military strategy to give Hamas an opportunity to catch their beath and regroup when they are on the ropes. Now is the time for a knockout punch, not concessions, even as painful as that is for us in the losses that we continue to suffer.
We know that Hamas terror cells are surrounded in northern Gaza and will use the ceasefire to further entrench in the south. They will use this opportunity to entrench themselves, their weapons, and the remaining hostages as their human shields further. They will use this opportunity to try to ambush Israeli troops holding their ground near terror tunnels that may not have been found and destroyed yet. Or at least they will use this opportunity to be better prepared to attack Israeli troops when the cease fire ends.
We know that Hamas will continue to engage in psychological warfare including taunting the families of those who they still hold hostage, or maybe even parading out a few bodies of those who are already dead as a threat to others. Not knowing who is dead or alive adds to the psychological terror they deliberately inflict, with almost as much glee as the massacring, raping, beheading, and burning alive 1200 people on October 7. We know that their claim that they don’t even know where all the hostages are, unthinkable 49 days since they kidnapped them all, is just a way to prolong suffering and eventually, maybe inevitably, the denial that they actually have some of the hostages in captivity.
Israelis are conflicted because of the “price” of the deal, releasing three Palestinian Arab terrorists for every one hostage is less than the 2011 deal to free one Israeli hostage, Gilad Shalit, for 1027 terrorists. We know that many of those terrorists released went on to commit many heinous crimes, including Hamas commander Yahya Sinwar. None are innocent civilians but Islamic terrorists who would have killed (more) if they could. We know the trauma will be great on the victims of the terrorists being released now, seeing their attackers (in some cases neighbors) go free.
One terror victim expressed the conflict many of us have, knowing that it will be painful for him to see his attacker go free, but that if we can save one life it’s an imperative. Some don’t feel this way.
We know that while 3:1 is better than 1027:1 is better, Hamas will do everything it can to increase the “price” Israel has to pay to free other hostages. From a simple supply and demand perspective, Hamas may have a stronger hand to get even worse terrorists released in the future.
For Israel, a ceasefire is not sound military strategy, but the calculation of other factors including freeing ALL the hostages, along with diplomatic pressure. If freeing hostages is a goal of the military campaign, then maybe it’s legitimate, even if incredibly painful.
We also know that by making this deal, it gives Hamas and other terrorists the license to try to kidnap more of us, something relatively easy given the proximity of many Israeli Jews to Palestinian Arabs. We now have a price on all of us.
We know that as we celebrate the return of some, and are pained by the remaining captivity of most, with combat coming back sooner than later, Hamas can and will continue to toy with us, dangling the release of more hostages for more concessions. We know that Hamas knows they can sow conflict in Israel about how to bring the rest home.
We ask ourselves more than rhetorically, what happens if/when Hamas violates the cease fire? Do we turn a blind eye or do we resume full frontal attack on the terrorists.
And we lose endless nights of sleep worrying for the well-being of hostages freed, for whom Israel had to come up with protocol never considered before, as well as the well-being of the hostages still in captivity, and their families.
We know that as much as we may celebrate the return of some, the hard work to return ALL the hostages is ahead of us, and we need the world to stand with us, because even though the enemy is our neighbor, it is knocking on your door in the West.
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