A Nation That Loves Life Doesn’t Sacrifice 100s of Soldiers For 24 Live Hostages
The math simply does not add up. Since the end of the last ceasefire, on November 30, 2023, three-hundred and thirty-five soldiers have been killed in Gaza, with a few thousand more wounded. In return for that ultimate sacrifice, Israel killed a few thousand Hamas members, including a few prominent ones, and according to the new hostage deal, Israel will reportedly receive about two dozen living hostages, and a few murdered hostages. Israel has not come close to weakening Hamas to the point that it no longer poses a threat to Israel. In the last few months alone, roughly a hundred soldiers have been killed in Northern Gaza, an area that the Israeli Army declared “cleaned” of Hamas more than a year ago.
The supporters of this hostage deal claim that Israel can always destroy Hamas at a “later time.” When, and at what cost? Even if the United States gives us the permission and weapons to resume fighting, a million Gazans will have returned to Northern Gaza. Endless trucks of “humanitarian aid” will have entered Gaza, replenishing Hamas stockpiles. How many more soldiers will die when fighting in this dense urban environment, among a million hostile civilians?
Two of the favorites rabbinic teachings trotted out by the hostage lobby are kol yisrael areivim ze l’zeh (All jews are responsible for one another) and kol hamitzil nefesh achat b’yisrael… (One who saves a life, it is as if he saves the world). What is missing from the cliched misuse of these phrases is that the responsibility is mutual. Israeli society has an obligation to the hostages, but the hostage families have an obligation to Israeli society as well. How many soldiers should sacrifice their lives for one hostage to be freed ? One for one? Two for one? In this deal, the ratio is fourteen for one. A nation will not survive based on these kinds of equations.
Unfortunately, there is ample precedent in our history for this kind of tragic arithmetic. Rudolf Kastner traded the fate of 600,000 Hungarian Jews in order to save 1,600. In Cantonist Russia, the wealthy and middle-classes bribed their way out of mandatory military service in the Tsar’s army, and sent the poor and the orphaned in their stead. We need to stop these selections. The life of one Jew is not more valuable than the life of another Jew. The life of a single hostage is not more valuable than the lives of fourteen soldiers who died, and the innumerable future victims that will result from this deal.
It is common in the Israeli discourse to claim that the Bibists are controlled by their emotion, making decisions based on their nationalistic, messianic id. Here, it is the Only-Not-Bibis, who have tossed all semblance of rational decision-making out the window. They have traded the sacrifice of three hundred and thirty-five soldiers, and the lives of countless future soldiers and terror victims for a few moments of emotional relief when the hostages are reunited with their families. That moment will pass, but the entire nation will have to live with the consequences – more funerals of soldiers, more shiva visits to families of terror victims, more orphans, more widows, more death.
In sacrificing hundreds of soldiers for the return of a handful of hostages, Israel comprises its survival as a nation that values life. The disproportionate cost of this decision weakens the country militarily and undermines the mutual responsibility this deal allegedly promotes. The emotional relief of reuniting hostages with their families cannot justify a policy that trades the lives of many for the lives of a few. A nation that truly loves life must make decisions rooted in rationality, fairness, and long-term survival—not fleeting emotional solace.