Ran Gvili’s return home – and Israel’s 843-day mission accomplished, accounting for every hostage while freeing 168 – should have united the nation.
Yet, four days later, the front page of Haaretz absurdly called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “responsible for… abandonment of the hostages.” Meantime, the government’s hostage negotiator Gal Hirsch mocked the hostage protest slogan “All of them – now,” saying, “there was no need to create a sense of urgency on our side.”
Moderate Me regrets Israelis’ inability to take victory laps with our left and right feet. How else can we avoid falling? And Historian Me has a politically-incorrect theory: the clashing strategies produced the miraculous result.
First, that winner’s lap: WE DID IT. As we mourn the hostages murdered, did anyone really expect that 168 would return home alive? And did anyone expect that Israel would find every hostage – with none lost amid Gaza’s rubble or purposely cemented away in some tunnel’s foundation? Israel’s absolute success exposes the evil of Hamas and many Gazans – and Zionism at its best.
Paradoxically, Israel retrieved every hostage because Hamas commodified humans, treating people as trophies.
Hamas uses hostages as pawns to exploit
These cruel mass kidnappers tracked each body, knowing how Israelis mourned each loss and wouldn’t abandon anyone, dead or alive. Viewing suffering innocents as pawns to exploit, these brutes boasted about holding them.
That’s why a Palestinian Islamic Jihadist, finally captured in southern Gaza City, could specify when interrogated that the body he buried in a few different places as IDF pressure intensified, was Ron Gvili’s.
By contrast, the time, resources, care, skill, and passion that the security establishment – led by the IDF, and yes, Netanyahu’s government – invested in bringing everyone home was soul-stirring. The finale, Operation Brave Heart, with 20 dentists and hundreds of soldiers sifting through 250 bodies, in an exposed area, was extraordinary. It showed how Jews value life, how Israelis love family, and how Zionists cherish community and posterity.
Historians dislike the word “if.” The hostage activists believe that “if” they had been in charge, they would have freed every hostage much sooner. Many coalition members believe that “if” there hadn’t been protests, Hamas wouldn’t have demanded such a staggering price – Israel freed 2,058 security prisoners, including 250 murderers with “blood on their hands.”
And I kept arguing that “if” the demonstrators had only protested outside Israel, pestering every European Parliament, every Qatari and Turkish embassy and property, the issue wouldn’t have divided Israel so badly, and the world might have mobilized to press Hamas.
All “ifs” aside, here’s what we know: Israel defied the odds by whupping our enemies on seven fronts, while freeing every hostage. If I were commissioned to write a book about the hostage crisis, I would treat both extremes as caught in their own self-serving half-truths. Neither sheer military force nor weak-kneed pleas to Hamas’s humanity succeeded without the other.
The facts confirm that we crazy, passionate, divided, gritty Israelis created a nationwide, 843-day living laboratory validating kite-flying, the Talmud, Hegel, and some modern political theories. Kites rise from the tension between the wind pushing them and the string holding them back. The Talmud celebrates Mahloket, constructive clashing, as did George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s formula pitting thesis against antithesis to yield the best synthesis. The Belgian political scientist Chantal Mouffe explains that democracies naively prize consensus, yet conflict, clashing forces, and antagonisms are inevitable – and produce the best outcomes.
In fact, diplomacy, spearheaded by Israeli negotiators – along with previous and current presidents Joe Biden, then Donald Trump – liberated 160 hostages, in stages. But the negotiations needed Israel’s hard-hitting military pummeling of Hamas. We should salute the mind-boggling heroism and unspeakable sacrifices from IDF soldiers and pathbreaking leadership from the IDF’s top brass – and, yes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s courageous, strategically-oriented ability to sometimes say “yes” to American pressure, while often saying “no.”
Try explaining the hostages’ freedom without Israel’s repeated blows against Hamas, its humiliation of Iran, elimination of Sinwar, and bombing of Doha, which expanded America’s deal for ten live hostages and possibly abandoning the last ten, to all twenty, immediately, last October. Sacrificing its one real constraint on Israeli might enfeebled Hamas.
But also try telling this story without the effective, dignified advocacy of so many parents, especially Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, which melted hearts worldwide. You also can’t ignore the hostage pins and posters. The global campaign helped many world leaders understand why freeing the hostages, alive and dead, was so important to all of us.
Consider a couple of other major cultures. America, the Superpower, ignores about 40 civilians held hostage, especially in China and Russia. Europe, the Super-appeaser, disappoints about 50.
Much remains for Israelis to fight about, including the “conceptzia”: how the two-state solution’s supporters and opponents both suggested before October 7 to pay off and tolerate a supposedly pragmatic Hamas.
For now, Israelis should enjoy a moment of shared national pride and thanksgiving. Hug families who tragically buried their hostages – or soldiers or concert-goers or kibbutznikim. Stop demonstrating, maybe for a week?
Apologize to Ron Dermer’s family and the families of other Israeli leaders whom some hostage-activists harassed so unfairly. And keep thanking every soldier, reservist, and intelligence analyst – especially the 22,000-plus wounded – and their families, for their collective effort.
Finally, let’s ponder the Talmudic teaching about constructive conflict. Perhaps our passionate, polarized fellow citizens, tackling other searing dilemmas, can find the sweet spot of political friction. Let’s try, as a nation, to soar like kites, or eagles – who need their left wings and right wings flapping, sometimes in synch, and sometimes contrapuntally.
The writer is an American presidential historian and Zionist activist born in Queens, living in Jerusalem. Last year he published, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream and The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath. His latest E-book, The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism and Jew-hatred was just published and can be downloaded on the website of JPPI – the Jewish People Policy Institute.