Q&A: About the Hostages
About the Hostages
Question
I know you’ve spoken about this issue a lot on the site, but I want to touch on the main points I heard from supporters of hostage deals that I spoke with.
1) There’s no longer any point in continuing to fight in Gaza. They argue that it’s impossible to really bring down Hamas. New replacements will always come.
2) The very knowledge among citizens that the state will not do almost everything to save them will further undermine national morale and the motivation of soldiers and new recruits to the IDF, and will create a fracture we won’t be able to recover from.
I’d be happy to know how you respond to these arguments.
Answer
But as you wrote, I’ve already dealt with this. Briefly: of course there is value in continuing the fighting. In my assessment, it is definitely possible to eliminate Hamas both as a governing body and as a military force. It requires staying power. There will always be this or that group that tries to carry out attacks, but that is not the same as the threat posed by Hamas, and of course one must make sure that no new infrastructure arises in place of the one that is destroyed.
The damage to morale exists, and those responsible for it are the protesters no less than the government. But there are two arguments against that claim: 1. We have here damage to morale versus a security threat. Why assume that the morale consideration is the decisive one? In my view, the opposite is true. 2. What damage to morale will there be when we lose the war and surrender to Hamas? And what kind of morale victory will they get? And what conclusions will they draw regarding the effectiveness of attacks and terrorism?
And two more comments.
The blow to morale was already created on October 7.
Only fighting brings hostages back to us. So far we have managed to bring back about 200, almost all of them alive. There are 20 left. Isn’t that an impressive achievement? Is that lack of concern? Nearly a thousand soldiers have been sacrificed here. The talk about damage to morale is a delusion that some people are busy cultivating. Instead of appreciating the effort and sacrifice we made, which brought achievements (not only military ones—freeing hostages), they choose to focus on propaganda saying that we don’t care. Delusional.
And what about the blow to the morale of bereaved families of terror victims who see the murderers going free flashing victory signs while they tear their hair out? And what about the morale of bereaved families of soldiers who fell in vain and see us surrendering?
Let there be no misunderstanding. Not all the hostages will be released unless we surrender and Hamas remains in place. That too is part of the protesters’ propaganda. Only if we continue the war and Hamas is forced to surrender or be destroyed might you get the hostages without surrendering (and maybe not).
As cruel as it sounds, a state does not formulate a security strategy based on the fate of 20 people. It’s simply emotional stupidity.