Israel’s hostage deal – Good or bad?

In a world where things are often defined as black or white, it’s not easy to respond to the many friends who have written, asking if the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, which promises to release the remaining hostages, is good or bad. As someone put it best, it’s a time for mourning and a time for dancing.  

There is no easy way to perform a post-mortem on the last 15 months, because the events and resultant effects are so multi-faceted that the findings can be viewed through so many different lenses. 

While some Monday morning quarterback commentators have lamented over the lost opportunities of not having ended the war sooner, in order to bring back the hostages before most of them died, it’s hard to look back and remember any reasonable deal which didn’t significantly jeopardize the safety of Israel or one which offered to immediately return all of the hostages, without condition.  Coincidentally, this one doesn’t either.

In the midst of a very problematic deal, there is a sense of euphoria that some hostages will be returned to us as early as Sunday. To think that their immense suffering will finally come to an end, is cause for great celebration. But in this first phase of the deal, only three hostages will have that blessed relief of knowing that their time in hell has concluded. The rest will have to wait for the following week, the week after that, and so on, extending over the course of a 42-day period.

How many will be able to hang on till then? How many will actually see the light of day? Because when dealing with bloodthirsty terrorists, are there any guarantees? What’s to stop them from reneging on their agreement to finally bring this tragedy to a halt?

To quote the Jerusalem Post weekend editorial, “the agreement is fraught with potentially dangerous pitfalls that have far-reaching implications for the future security of Israel.” This is the accurate downside when considering the very heavy price, which is being paid to fulfill our moral obligation of saving the precious lives of those who still remain in the depths of the earth.

In this existential war, which has already taken the lives of 1,200 on October 7th, over 900 Israeli soldiers and countless others, who died as a result of war-related fallout, there was never going to be a happy ending with a decisive victory, due to a hermetically-defeated enemy. Because part of the cost of releasing the hostages was at the expense of allowing whomever is left of Hamas, the privilege of surviving another day to regroup, reinvigorate and return to the business of eliminating the Jewish homeland. That is the exorbitant price we are willing to pay to extend the lives of our hostages.

Does it constitute a defeat? There are certainly those who would argue that it does, but how does one measure the worth and value of a human being, whose existence was divinely determined even before birth? With what metric can their abandonment be justified?  

These are the heart wrenching questions, with which every Israeli is grappling – in an attempt to employ the wisdom of Solomon. But when you’re faced with the impossible situation that has been placed upon our nation, having to choose between saving individuals, whose lives have been stolen from them, forced to suffer the worst indignities and cruelty known to man, or the choice of allowing them to languish until their deaths while ensuring that every last Hamas terrorist is decimated – what do you do?

Who would like to take the responsibility for having to decide the fate of a nation vs. its people, who also internalize the agonizing thought of “what if it was them in those dark, dank tunnels, slowly starving and being abused day after day?”  

This is a decision which no one should be forced to make, but it is the one which has been taken, for better or for worse. Now, we must wait to see if it materializes and how much we will have enabled our next attack, because everyone knows that it’s just a matter of time before that comes.

It’s important to also remember that those in captivity were not the only ones tormented and held hostage. Their agony extended to many family members, friends and also to each one of us who had to live with the guilt that each time we ate a nice meal, we were aware that they were being systematically starved.  Each time, we slept in our comfy beds, we shook, knowing that they were sleeping on the cold earth. Each time we bathed ourselves in our warm showers, we could feel the caked-on dirt and soot on the bodies of those who have not been able to clean themselves for over a year.  

It is with this collective horror that every Israeli citizen has had to live, feeling the pain and hopelessness, day after day of the agony which was being endured by our brothers and sisters. Anyone with the slightest bit of conscience would have to realize that putting our own safety in peril is the price we are called to pay, when faced with the reality of what it means to be our brother’s keeper.

So, when we saw the euphoric celebrations on the streets of London and elsewhere around the world, we knew that their reveling was at our expense, because accepting the deal was interpreted, in some sadistic way, as our willingness to facilitate a more expeditious demise of the people of Israel.  

Celebration in London after ceasefire in Gaza pic.twitter.com/vWTeJqqANL

— Viral wallah (@ViralWalah) January 16, 2025

But while our enemies, throughout the world, are celebrating what they believe to be a triumphant conquest, emboldening them to wave their red, green, black and white flags over European territories to which they now feel an ownership, they may yet have a rude awakening as native populations begin to also sense that they, too, have been taken captive by foreigners, whose goal was to slowly infiltrate democratic and free societies with the aspiration of turning them into a caliphate stronghold.

If they wake up, in time, it’s possible that a global fight may be the result, as slumbering individuals begin to rise up and take back the freedoms, rights and privileges which they so easily abandoned, all in a futile attempt to accommodate others who took advantage of their naïveté.  

Of course, there is that pesky price to pay, for the retaining of one’s precious liberties. But if the alternative is living in subservience to a cruel taskmaster, then it might be the world’s turn to make the same agonizing choice of a deal which has the elements of both mourning and dancing!