There is no good hostage deal. There is no justice. No agreement on the release of those abducted to Gaza is going to be ideal because although Hamas and its jihadist partners in crime invaded southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and perpetrated a mega-atrocity murdering 1,200 people and kidnapping some 250, it is Israel that is expected to pay the price in an exchange.
As I write these lines, the terms and timeline of a hostage deal are not clear, but there definitely has been a shift, with the hostages’ release more likely than ever.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that a deal also involves the release of Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails.
And we’ve been here before, most notably with the Gilad Schalit exchange in 2011 that resulted in the release of some 1,000 terrorists in return for the kidnapped IDF soldier.
Many of the released prisoners returned to their terrorist activities – including Yahya Sinwar, the October 7, 2023 mastermind whose brother Mohammed Sinwar now heads the terrorist movement.
Nobody with a heart wants the hostages to stay in captivity. Over the last 15 months, the names and faces have become familiar to all Israelis, the greater Jewish community, and beyond.
We don’t know exactly who or how many of the 98 hostages still being held are alive and that just adds to the pain, part of Hamas’s psychological warfare.
The reported outline of the latest deal doesn’t seem so different from previously discussed plans. So what has changed? One obvious element is Donald Trump’s election and imminent inauguration.
Trump has more than once threatened-promised Hamas that there will be “hell to pay” if the hostages aren’t released before he begins his term in office. Hamas doesn’t want to risk provoking the US president, whose trademark unpredictability is part of his operating method.
The mark of a major difference
This marks a big difference. Although outgoing President Joe Biden warned Israel’s enemies “don’t,” they ignored him.
And they benefited. The insistence on letting ever-increasing amounts of “humanitarian aid” enter Gaza – including the short-lived US attempt at constructing a floating delivery dock – defeated the purpose rather than defeating Hamas. It has ensured Hamas has not only supplies but also funds and control as it sells the aid for a profit.
The incoming Trump administration appears to be applying pressure on Qatar, a major Hamas sponsor, in a way that the Biden administration did not. (Biden even granted Qatar “major non-NATO ally” status.) The Israeli government also wants to avoid upsetting Trump at the outset of his term.
TRAGICALLY, MORE than 400 IDF soldiers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, including 15 killed in the last two weeks. The heart breaks every time we hear the words: “Hutar le’pirsum” (“It has been cleared for publication”), followed by the names of fallen soldiers and photos of smiling, ever-young faces.
This week when news of fallen soldiers was released, the left-leaning echo chamber on social media began to reverberate with the mantra: “They are being led like lambs to slaughter.”
What an injustice to the soldiers who just sacrificed their lives! They were not led like lambs to their deaths. Many have been fighting like lions for months. Lions of Judah. And the reason they were in Beit Hanoun was not a political caprice; they were there to fight the terrorists.
Hamas terrorists returned to the northern Gazan neighborhood as soon as the IDF pulled out in previous operations.
And you can be sure that following any ceasefire deal, the terrorists will again exploit the absence of an Israeli military presence and try to reestablish a base in areas like Beit Hanoun, close to Israel’s border.
This, too, is part of the unfair price of a deal.
No release yet
AT TIME of this writing, Hamas hasn’t released the hostages. But it has released videos of some of them – gut-wrenching images accompanied by messages designed to pull the country apart.
The hostages are forced to read a text that inevitably calls on Israelis to demonstrate en masse against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and apply pressure in every way to gain the hostages’ (and Palestinian prisoners’) release.
Recently, I have noticed posters for an organization called Soldiers for the Hostages plastered on Jerusalem bus stops.
The movement has learned nothing from the politicization of the IDF during the judicial reform turmoil leading up to the October 7 mass attack.
It is calling for soldiers to refuse to serve until the hostages have been brought home. It places the onus entirely on the Israeli government instead of demanding pressure on Hamas to “Let our people go.”
The organization’s name is itself an injustice: There is not an IDF soldier fighting in Gaza or elsewhere who doesn’t want to free the hostages. That’s what they’re fighting for.
The posters carry the slogan – in English – “One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws,” attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. Clearly, its target audience is foreign, since Israel’s defense forces speak Hebrew, not English; every Israeli, from high school on, is aware of the Hebrew term “pekuda bilti hokit be’alil,” a clearly illegal order, which a soldier is obliged to refuse.
The organization, which held a small demonstration in Tel Aviv this week, is willing to blacken Israel’s name on the pretense that its members alone have a moral voice. Stopping the war at all costs is the same as demanding the release of the hostages at any price.
If the world were fair, there wouldn’t be war, hostages, rocket attacks, terror – or antisemitism, and other forms of racism. The organization’s slogan, of course, does nothing to help Israel’s case in international fora, many of which already suffer from an inherent anti-Israel bias.
THIS WEEK, after two years of political stalemate, Lebanon finally managed to elect a president, Joseph Aoun, while Nawaf Salam was designated its new prime minister.
Salam is the International Court of Justice president who has been heading the panel of judges in the trial against Israel on charges of genocide.
If you can believe that Salam was completely objective when judging Israel, while thousands of Hezbollah rockets were still being launched from Lebanon on the Jewish state, then I have a deal for you – not a hostage deal: I have a bridge I want to sell you.
The absurdities are stunning – but dangerous. In a disturbing new development, “lawfare” – turning international law into a weapon – has risen a notch, as seen in the incident last week involving a 21-year-old IDF soldier visiting Brazil.
Yuval Vagdani, a survivor of the October 7 Supernova music festival massacre, had to flee the South American country after a lawyer, acting on behalf of the Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), convinced the court that Vagdani could be tried for war crimes based on his having served in Gaza.
HRF specializes in monitoring the social media posts of Israeli soldiers and then requesting that they be brought to trial in the country they are visiting.
These are often low-ranking soldiers whose crime – apart from posting too much information on TikTok or Instagram – is that they have participated in fighting truly genocidal jihadist terrorists.
In the “irony is not dead” category, consider that Netanyahu faces possible arrest if he attends the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz at the end of the month.
After the International Criminal Court under Karim Khan issued arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, the Polish deputy foreign minister said his country had no choice but to comply.
Both Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk have since clarified that Netanyahu would not end up in handcuffs were he to participate in the main International Holocaust Remembrance Day events on January 27, but the threat continues elsewhere.
Right now, there are many unknowns concerning both the hostage deal and how the rest of the conflict will play out.
Will the Houthis also abide by a ceasefire deal in Gaza or continue to launch rockets on Israel and threaten international shipping? What will happen in Lebanon when the 60-day ceasefire comes to an end at the end of the month? How will terrorists be prevented from revamping in Gaza?
The release of the hostages will not bring about the end of the war as long as those who profess a commitment to justice permit the terrorist organizations to get away with murder.