Israeli hostage families have demanded meetings with government officials and deals with Hamas, due to concerns that expanding the Gaza war to eliminate Hamas threats could mean more living kidnap victims will be murdered, and those already deceased will disappear forever in Gaza’s terror tunnels.
Supporters staged a “Day of Disruption,” blocking highways, demanding an immediate ceasefire to secure the release of hostages, and saying they won’t stop until everyone returns.
Their understandable anger, fear, and frustration underscore divisions among Israelis and within the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and government over how to battle an enemy that has vowed to eradicate Israel “from the river to the sea.” An enemy that views a “two-state solution” as merely a rest stop on its road to making the entire region free of Jews, Christians, Bahais, Druze, and other “infidels.” An enemy that rejects any two-state solution, because it wants a One-Muslim-State solution.
Even hostage families are split. The Tikva Forum believes increasing military pressure on Hamas is the best way to free their loved ones. The Hostages and Missing Families Forum says Israel should simply accept Hamas’s demands.
I follow Israel issues closely and have been to Israel three times since the October 7 massacres. I still can’t imagine being in their shoes or having to make life-or-death wartime decisions. However, those who make return of the hostages their preeminent goal should first address other important considerations.
*How can Israel critics and hostage-release-now advocates justify leaving Hamas in power, heavily armed, in control of Tunnel Fortress Gaza – or far worse, governing a UN-recognized nation that could acquire tanks, missiles, fighter jets and other advanced weapons from Israel’s enemies and frenemies?
That prospect cannot be downplayed or ignored when: The Hamas charter says, “There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy” of the “racist, anti-human and colonial” “Zionist entity.”
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Hamas leaders proclaim, “Israel has no place on our land.... Nobody should blame us for the things we do on October 7th, October 10th, October 1,000,000.” And another Palestinian activist said, “We are fighting Jews, not Zionism” and “I will drink the blood” of Israeli civilians.
*Is it remotely possible that Hamas will be more willing to release the remaining hostages, amid ongoing rancor and divisions within Israel … calls for recognition of a (still nonexistent) “Palestinian state” by France (Emmanuel Macron), Britain (Keir Starmer), Australia and other countries … and growing anti-Israel sentiment (even over football matches) across Europe and beyond?
As US Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted, the unilateral statehood recognition promises quickly led to more antisemitism – and to Hamas’s rejection of the latest ceasefire and hostage release proposals. Is there any basis for thinking louder demands for hostage releases will change Hamas’s attitudes?
*Do hostage advocates view the lives of IDF men and women as less important than living or dead hostages? That’s unimaginable. They simply want their loved ones brought home.
But more than 900 Israeli soldiers have died since October 7. Thousands have been shot, paralyzed, burned or made amputees. Still more will be injured or killed if the IDF expands its efforts to “finish the job” (as President Trump has urged it to do), dismantle Hamas and prevent future October 7 massacres.
Yet these brave warriors and their grieving families receive a fraction of the attention given to hostages and their families. Downplaying the importance of IDF casualties is certainly not deliberate or even conscious. But it’s an undeniable result of current hostage politics.
All these lives are precious. None should receive attention or precedence over others.
*Can those who love Israel justify making the Gaza war even more complicated than it already is?
Hamas deliberately set the stage for making this urban conflict so brutal and difficult. It built hundreds of miles of interconnected terror tunnels, living quarters, and rocket factories throughout Gaza – with entry shafts into thousands of homes, apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, shops, and mosques. It stores guns, explosives, rockets, missiles and IEDs in almost every one of them, and uses them for sniper posts and ambushes. Hamas thus turned all of them into military targets.
The terrorist ideology and propaganda machine deliberately uses women and children as human shields, wants Gaza “martyrs” to die, inflates casualty numbers, and intentionally mixes terrorists and civilians together in death tolls. Gullible or Israel-hating “journalists” endlessly repeat the phony numbers.
And yet Israel is told it must minimize civilian casualties, and “end the fighting” according to artificial deadlines set by an “international community” that has been virtually silent about decades of Hamas murders of Israeli civilians and even the horrors of October 7.
Israel is also told it must provide food, medical and other humanitarian aid. Israel has provided over 150,000,000 meals through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which the UN refuses to work with while letting thousands of tons of UN food rot. Hamas tries to steal the aid, while starving hostages and shooting Gazans who try to circumvent Hamas control by going directly to the GHF.
(What other army in history has fed its enemies amid a war? Russia certainly isn’t feeding Ukraine.)
And yet the UN and media claim there’s a famine and feature emaciated children – who turn out to be kids afflicted by cerebral palsy, Fanconi syndrome or other genetic disorders, not by starvation.
Trying to make hostage deals the paramount consideration roils this maddening situation even further.
*How can the world condone the hypocritical double standards – especially when Israelis are battling a vicious, amoral enemy that seeks their eradication from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea?
There is one Jewish state on Earth, versus 25 majority-Muslim states in Africa and the Middle East alone. Since 1948, their Jewish populations have been obliterated in nearly all of them. Yet Israel alone is accused of genocide, despite having the most racially and religiously diverse population of any of them.
China is barely criticized for trying to destroy Uyghur and Tibetan language, culture and people. Islamists brazenly slaughter Christians in a dozen African countries. Similar atrocities continue elsewhere.
48 hostages are still held by Hamas, perhaps 20 still alive. Hamas photos defiantly and proudly show Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski starving, emaciated, and forced to dig their own graves in a tunnel. Israelis were shocked; the UN and world yawned – and then accused Israel once again of causing famine and genocide in Gaza.
The list of outrageous double standards goes on and on.
One could justifiably conclude that only Israel and Jews are forbidden to fight for their very existence.
It’s time to finish the war and Hamas, expand the Abraham Accords, rebuild Gaza along the Trump plan – and prod the United Nations and international community to do something truly novel and productive for a change: create a better, more prosperous, more tolerant future for a Middle East that has been rocked by division, hatred and war for much too long.
Paul Driessen has been to Israel multiple times and seen its archeological treasures, modern innovations, amazing multi-ethnic people, and recent tragedies firsthand. He is the author of articles on energy, environmental, human rights, and Israel issues.
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