Closing the circle means ending the cycle
For me, this isn’t just national closure; it’s personal. It took more than a decade, but today, a circle closes. The body of Israel National Police Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, who fell in battle on the morning of October 7, 2023, and whose body was abducted and buried in the Gaza Strip, has finally been brought home to Israel by the Israel Defense Forces.
This moment has been decades in the making. In 2001, I was volunteering on Kibbutz Sa’ad when Hamas’s first Qassam 2 rocket landed meters from where I stood. Over the years, Israeli governments failed to prevent Hamas from arming to the point where rockets went from kibbutz fields to threatening Tel Aviv and beyond.
By August 1, 2014, the threat had metastasized into something far worse. I was there—the day Lt. Hadar Goldin was killed and kidnapped in Rafah. That day, I drove my tank further and further into that city, trying to recover him. I never wanted to go back to Rafah. But now finally, more than a decade later, there are no more Israeli hostages in Gaza.
We were wrong to think we could buy stability without confronting radicalization.
Now it’s time to ask what we want for our future alongside our neighbors.
Golda Meir once suggested that we would have peace with the Arabs when they cherish their children more than they hate ours. That brutal honesty is not easy for most Westerners to accept. Raised largely in peace-supporting homes, surrounded by largely accepting societies where differences were tolerated if not championed, it’s understandably very hard to imagine life as otherwise.
The question, “Don’t you want peace?” is directed at Israel, as though we ever sought anything other. Even after withdrawing every soldier and civilian from Gaza, Hamas forced Israel into successive wars. So an intellectually honest person must ask—what’s feeding the violence?
Many will call for Israel to get out of Gaza immediately. But if Israel leaves while Hamas is intact, it guarantees future O
Disarmament isn’t just policy—it’s a moral imperative. Only when Hamas loses that capability can we imagine a peaceful future. As long as Gaza remains armed and radical, Hamas guaranteesmore violence. As deradicalization will take a generation, to ensure its safety, Israel needs to disarm Gaza and get out.
The only hopeful path forward disarms hatred—literally and metaphorically—and arms hope.
I have served several tours during this war on several fronts, including two in Gaza. My youngest son was born during the war and bears the name of two soldiers who fell in defense of our State, one of whom fell in combat with me. For nearly everyone in the region, pain of this conflict is very real.
Tragically, the truth is that leaving Gaza armed today promises that in the future, my kids will fight there. I want a better future for my children—and for theirs. I will raise my children to cherish peace. When today’s Palestinian children grow up, what will they choose?
Israel must honor the fallen by ensuring we never return to complacency that enabled October 7. We remain strong not just militarily, but morally—choosing to break cycles, disarm hatred, and build a future of hope for those we lost and those yet to come.
Shall we cease these senseless cycles of bleeding?
It’s been 33 years. Will our neighbors summon the moral clarity to answer Yitzhak Rabin’s words:
We say to you today in a loud and clear voice: Enough of blood and tears. Enough. We have no desire for revenge. We harbor no hatred towards you. We, like you, are people. People who want to build a home, to plant a tree, to love, to live side by side with you in dignity, in empathy, as human beings, as free men. We are today giving peace a chance and saying again to you—Enough. Let us pray that a day will come when we all will say: Farewell to the arms.
Heartbreakingly, to date, Palestinian society has not said farewell to arms.
I never imagined it would take until 2025 for Hadar Goldin to return home, or 843 days to bring Ran Gvili home. But they are home.
Today is more than “just” the return of a fallen brother, a special forces police officer who went to war with a broken arm or a fellow Israeli; it’s a chapter closing for all of us who’ve carried the weight of these years.