This opinion article was republished in honor of the author, Rabbi Mosher Hauer, who recently passed away. May his memory be a blessing.
When Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, addressed a joint session of the United States Congress on July 19, 2023, he brought along as a guest Leah Goldin, a tireless advocate for her son, Hadar.
Lieutenant Hadar Goldin, an Israeli soldier, had been killed nine years earlier in Gaza following a UN-sponsored humanitarian cease-fire negotiated by the United States.
His remains continue to be held hostage by Hamas.
Of all the existential issues facing Israel, the President of Israel chose to highlight before Congress the plight of this one young man held hostage, underscoring the primacy Judaism and the State of Israel place on redeeming captives.
He could hardly have known that less than three months later, Hadar would be joined in Gaza by 250 additional hostages from Israel, but his choice underscored the essential nature of the conflict between Israel and its enemies.
In the 1970s, secular Palestinian terror groups such as Black September and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) used hijackings and mass hostage-taking as their tactics of choice.
Iran's use of brutal tactics
The revolutionary Islamic Republic of Iran then burst onto the world stage by co-opting these brutal tactics during the hostage crisis of November 1979, when 66 Americans, including diplomats and other civilian personnel, were taken hostage at the Embassy of the United States in Tehran.
Iran’s terror regime soon moved from embracing the tactics of Palestinian terror groups to adopting their goals, focusing its resources on the destruction of Israel by increasing the capacity of Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and others to terrorize Israel from up close and by building its own nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities to destroy it from afar.
The line connecting the Palestinian hijackers to the Iranian hostage-takers extends to the hostage crisis of October 7th, when Hamas, with Iranian funding, invaded southern Israel, murdered more than a thousand, and took 251 people captive, most of whom were civilians, including at least 12 US citizens.
Israel's enemies have taken hostages throughout history
This ongoing hostage crisis underscores the primacy that Israel’s enemies place on taking captives.
Since biblical times, Jews have had to make extraordinary efforts to liberate hostages from their exploitative captors.
The book of Genesis records the only battle waged by Abraham, the first Jew; a hostage rescue operation to free his nephew, Lot.
The book of Numbers – in a passage that will be read in synagogues across the world this Saturday, July 5th – tells of the Israelites following Abraham’s lead and mobilizing in response to the Canaanite king of Arad, who “engaged Israel in battle and took from them a captive.”
That legacy commitment to liberate hostages and bring them home has been upheld as a core value of the modern Jewish state of Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as a 23-year-old Israeli commando, sustained a bullet wound while storming a hijacked Sabena airliner in 1972, and his older brother Yoni was killed four years later, on July 4, 1976, leading the daring rescue of the passengers of an Air France flight hijacked to Entebbe.
The value of pursuing life and freedom for innocents is not exclusive to Judaism–nor should it be. Islam and Judaism both trace their spiritual roots to Abraham.
Faithful Muslims who are true to his legacy are horrified by the cruel disregard for human life that has become the calling card of those who – in the name of Islam – terrorize, torment, and murder.
Alas, the Islamic Republic of Iran and its rapacious and monstrous partners in Hamas have demonstrated that they have no part in Abraham’s legacy.
Now, twenty months of war have exposed and weakened these parties, at least for now, bringing the Middle East much closer to peace.
With the humbling of Iran and its proxies, conditions are ripe for the possible entry of Syria, Saudi Arabia, and others into the Abraham Accords, initiated in 2020 with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco normalizing relations with Israel.
But that peace will require all parties to reject hostage-taking as a tool of war.
Jews, Muslims, and Christians committed to Abraham’s legacy can and must come together to discard the sacrilegious methods and goals championed by the Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies, demand the immediate and unconditional release of the 50 remaining hostages in Gaza, and reaffirm Abraham’s commitment to life and loving kindness for all mankind.
That is the only way to move from terror and violence to diplomacy and peace; to the true legacy of Abraham.
Rabbi Mosher Hauer is the executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, one of the largest Jewish organizations in the United States.