Many major Jewish organizations, have failed the hostages and the Jewish people by not taking an unequivocal stand for the hostages, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose son Sagui was released from Hamas captivity in the most recent hostage deal, told The Jerusalem Post.
“History will also not look kindly on some, not all, of the leaderships of major Jewish organizations, in North America certainly,” he said, calling out their “inability, unwillingness, or fear” to advocate for the Jewish people if it meant going against Israel’s government.
“All of these organizations, all of them, were created for the betterment of the people of Israel; the people of Israel, not this or that politician of Israel,” he stressed.The organizations should have understood the historical importance of solidarity and pidyon shvuyim (the commandment to bring hostages back), looked at the present to see what is important for Israelis and the Jewish people, and looked forward to what it would mean to abandon the hostages, Dekel-Chen said.He touched on what it would mean to “allow hostages to die in captivity or a terrorist organization,” saying, “The damage could be irreparable to the basic values of Jews everywhere.”
These organizations should have “put the force, such as it is, of the Jewish organizational world behind prioritizing getting these hostages home above all else.”They should have said in a clear voice that pidyon shvuyim “is an irrefutable Jewish value” that has “been a practice in Jewish history for over 1,000 years.”“The abandonment of that principle in favor of anything – turf wars, fear of anger from within their own communities, and their own positions in leadership, I think is an embarrassment,” he added in the Wednesday interview.This practice has never been done under perfect circumstances, Dekel-Chen highlighted.“We don’t have to ransom captives from Switzerland. Obviously, it’s going to be with problematic parties.“I am sure history will not judge them well,” he said, adding, “There is still time for course correction.”
Irony and a betrayal
Asked about his and other hostages’ families’ efforts for the captives and how the families and the kidnapped themselves have been forced to advocate for the remaining hostages, Dekel-Chen said it is ironic and a betrayal.“In a perfect world, the biggest single advocate for the hostages, in action and not just lip service, would be the government of Israel. That simply hasn’t happened,” he said.“As a result, hostage families themselves have had to take it on.“Speaking as a historian of the Jewish people, history will not judge these leaders well for what they have already done and for what I fear they might continue to do,” he added.When discussing the unique difficulties of those evacuated from Israel’s destroyed southern kibbutzim, Dekel-Chen asserted that the government “has made a point of kind of erasing the destruction of the kibbutzim in the public eye.”“The prime minister has yet to visit Kibbutz Nir Oz or to speak with us directly despite [us] inviting him many, many times.”
Feeling of abandonment before October 7
He emphasized that many community members felt abandoned long before October 7, 2023.“There are two Israels,” he explained. “There is the Israel of a portion of the coastal strip and Jerusalem that receives a disproportionate amount of funding and government attention, and then there’s everything else.”“This is a long-term problem,” he added, saying, “Benjamin Netanyahu or this government didn’t invent this gap, but it’s built and become much more serious as a result of the specific coalitions that he has put together over time since 1996, and their priorities vs the needs of the country as a whole.“We felt pretty much abandoned, certainly since 2008 [and Hamas’s rise to power] when we had to fend for ourselves for the most part in figuring out how to deal with ever-present daily danger from Gaza.”Part of the “colossal failure” of October 7 was not just because of Hamas’s extensive planning but because of government neglect and a lack of government and army recognition of the real needs of the periphery, he said.“I suppose it’s only natural that the neglect continues after October 7, lip service and political posturing aside,” he added.“Actual engagement and actual solutions simply aren’t there because the government has different priorities.”Dekel-Chen highlighted that the public has been a bright spot since October 7.“The vast majority of Israelis, whatever their background, whatever their political orientation, whatever their religious orientation, have been embracing of the hostage families and, generally speaking, our communities,” he said.“I feel it in Kiryat Gat; I feel it wherever I go in the country.”There is a sense of “ground-up” reconciliation among Israelis, he said, highlighting that this has been especially true between national-religious communities and the kibbutzim.It’s “horrific” that it took the crisis of October 7 to bring the recognition of how much the communities have in common, but it’s happening, he said.“It’s ground-up,” he stressed. “All of our politicians, all of them, do not do us proper service in terms of finding common ground.”