Ran Gvili's return: Israel did not 'win,' it negotiated and paid a price - opinion

There are moments in Israeli life that feel less like news and more like a verdict.

His body was abducted into Gaza by Hamas terrorists, dragged across the border alongside 250 other Israelis who were taken that day: babies, grandparents, soldiers, civilians, the living and the dead.

For 842 days, Ran remained a captive even in death, a hostage whose silence screamed.

Now he has been brought home.

It should feel like relief.

Instead, it feels like grief settling into permanence.

Ran Gvili did not fall in a war planned by generals or debated in cabinets. He fell in the first, chaotic hours of an invasion designed not to defeat Israel militarily but to shatter it psychologically. And it succeeded horrifically in that goal.

While Hamas terrorists rampaged through kibbutzim and towns, murdering families and burning homes, Ran was among those who ran toward the fire.

As a fighter in police special forces, he did what Israelis have come to expect from their bravest – and perhaps unfairly rely upon: he stood in the breach when the state itself staggered.

He fought knowing he might not come back. He fought without knowing if backup would arrive. But he fought anyway.

That is not rhetoric. That is fact.

And yet, even after death, he was not allowed rest.

His body became part of Hamas’s strategy: leverage through cruelty, bargaining through desecration, psychological warfare stretched over months and years.

This is not incidental. It is doctrine. Hamas understands that Israel’s greatest vulnerability is not its military – it is its refusal to abandon its people.

So, they weaponized our humanity.

FOR 842 days, Ran’s family lived in a suspended nightmare. No funeral. No grave. No closure. Only negotiations conducted in shadows, public arguments that spilled into the streets, and a nation arguing with itself over how far it must go – and how much it must pay – to bring its own home.

Each ribbon was an accusation and a promise: We will not move on. We will not forget. We will not accept this as normal.

But time does not stop for yellow ribbons.

As weeks turned into months, and months into years, the ribbons began to symbolize something even more painful: the slow normalization of the unthinkable.

Hostages became “files.” Bodies became “bargaining chips.” Moral clarity blurred into political trench warfare.

And through it all, one truth remained brutally constant: Hamas was holding Israelis – alive and dead – because it could.

The return of Ran Gvili’s body does not mean Hamas has been defeated. It does not mean justice has been served. It means something narrower, heavier, and more tragic: that the price has finally been paid.

This is the bitter core of the moment: Israel did not “win” Ran’s return.

We endured it. We negotiated it. We waited for it. And when it finally came, it came wrapped in a flag, not in hope.

And yet it came – and it matters.

It matters greatly.

FOR THE first time since October 7, no Israeli family wakes up wondering whether their loved one is alive or dead in a tunnel.

For the first time since the sirens of that morning, the list has stopped growing and, finally, stopped existing.

That is not nothing: It is the thin line between collapse and recovery.

Ran’s return closes the last open wound of that horrific day’s abductions.

It allows a family to mourn properly.

It allows a nation to exhale – not in relief, but in acknowledgment of reality.

It forces us to confront the full cost of Hamas’s war against our humanity, and the staggering burden Israel carries precisely because it refuses to become like its enemies.

We are often told that yellow ribbons are symbols of weakness. That caring too much invites exploitation.

That may be true – but we are human and we must never stop displaying our humanity – even if it costs us.

Strength at the expense of our souls is a strength we cannot afford.

October 7 proved the opposite.

It proved that our enemies already assume the worst about us – and fear something else entirely: that we will continue to choose life, memory, and responsibility even when it hurts.

So today, as the last yellow ribbon is untied, we do so with shaking hands.

Not because the danger has passed.

Not because the trauma is over.

But because the vigil has ended.

May we never again have to tie those ribbons.

May we never again negotiate over bodies.

May we never again allow terrorists to dictate the emotional rhythm of our lives.

And may the bravery of Ran Gvili – who ran toward terror when others fled, who fought on the day the world cracked open, and who was finally brought home – remind us of what this country demands from its best, and what it owes them in return.

The waiting is over.

The mourning remains.

And the hope – battered but unbroken – is that this chapter will never, ever be reopened.