Bringing the Hostages Home

The basic obligation of a government is to provide for the safety of its citizens.  In Israel, an additional obligation owed to all of us here is to make sure we never leave people on the battlefield or in enemy hands. Therefore, for most of us, the primary duty of our government right now is to do all that can be done to bring the remaining 59 hostages, dead or alive, back to Israel.

To be sure when the Hamas war began Israel elucidated two clear objectives for the war effort.  One was to defeat Hamas and make sure they could never again mount an attack on Israel.  The second was to bring the hostages home.  Both of those objectives must remain in place but no one ever said that they had to be achieved simultaneously.

After 579 days of war, I believe it is time to play by the rules of the region in which we live, and use the best methods available to accomplish both our goals.

How do we do that?

First and foremost, we should make any deal necessary to bring the 59 remaining hostages home.  If that means pulling all our troops out of Gaza, we should do it.  If that means agreeing to a permanent cease fire, we should do it.  If that means releasing thousands of Palestinian prisoners from our jails, we should do it.  Whatever it takes to bring them all back, we should do it.  This is our sacred obligation and we must not shrink from it.

By doing so we will have achieved goal number one and cured one of society’s ills, the fear that our government will not rescue us in such a situation.

As for the second goal, to make it impossible for Hamas to ever again mount an attack against Israel, the very first time that we see anything untoward happening in Gaza that has the potential to threaten us, all bets are off and we re-enter the strip with the full force of shock and awe as the saying goes.

This is exactly what the enemy would do if the shoe were on the other foot.  So, there is no reason why we need to be holier than the Pope as it were.  At that point we simply do whatever needs to be done to rout the enemy, world opinion be damned.

If we are honest with ourselves and admit that our two goals cannot be achieved in parallel, we can then move to achieving them in series.

Pablo Picasso is quoted as saying….“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.”  Well said for sure.