The Blogs: Heroes and Zeroes, Life, Death, and the Image of God

There is a horrible, unspeakably awful battle going on by families of the hostages who remain in Hamas hands to bring prominence to their hostage. Families try desperately to bring attention to their loved one– as well as all of them, they hasten, sincerely, to say– because maybe that will move their loved one up on the ladder of who gets released. And quite possibly, save his life.

This is just intolerable, this having to beg for your loved one, not that you don’t want all back but– this one is your son, your grandson, your brother, your husband, your father, the father of your children.

Pleading the gravity of their injuries. The illnesses they have, without medicine and treatment. Without natural light, fresh air, trickle showers with bits of water more than once a month. Their age. That they have young children begging to see them again.

One analyst here said last night that he does not accept comparisons of the current horror to the Shoah, which judgment I share, though some parallels, like pleading for your loved one to be let out of the selektsia, in this case, Gaza, are horrifyingly familiar. As are tales of mothers hiding their children in closets. Of fathers and mothers enveloping their children before Hamas gunfire.

But, this analyst said:

Could anyone imagine, during the Shoah, bargaining for getting Jews out of Auschwitz– in stages?

There is so much depravity it is very hard to bear.

Depravity on their side, and on ours, from this government.

Amid, against, the best of the best that humans are capable of. Such kindness, such empathy, such caring, giving. Making this personal. Not blinding the eye or shutting the ear but turning out in the tens of thousands to be there, where the pain was, is. Lining the roads at the funerals of the Bibas family last week, of Shlomo Mansour yesterday, of Itzik Elgarat today. People lined up for hours at the shiva tent of Yarden Bibas, set up to allow the public some shiva time, saying, if I don’t get in, that is ok, as long as they know I was here.

Hero and Zero, as one sign put it:

Hero, with a photo of Eli Sharabi, may God give him strength and healing, who lost his entire marital family, his wife, their two children, as well as a brother, and was starved and beaten nearly to death for 16 months in Hamas hell– and, barely out of the hospital, heading to Washington after Trump saw the interview by Ilana Dayan with him and invited him there. Going there with Omer Shemtov, released from the hospital YESTERDAY– they are already en route– to plead for continuation of the deal and getting all the hostages out. Because it is urgent, they have no time.

Because, horror, there is more realistic hope for help from Washington to this end than from their own government. The government of all the hostages, past and present.

And then, there is Likud MK, Nir Barakat, Netanyahu’s wannabe successor, under, “Zero.” Did you watch the interview by Ilana Dayan with Eli Sharabi, he was asked. “I have better things to do,” he answers.

I have better things to do.

Minister Smotrich, a few months ago, asked, did he view the video of what went on in the kibbutzim on Gaza’s border on Oct. 7? No, he said. I want to sleep at night.

I want to sleep at night.

MK Ben Gvir, warned in real time that his boasting about making conditions terrible for security prisoners here was causing Hamas to starve and beat the hostages more than usual, keeps up the boasts. Told now by returned hostages that Hamas made the hostages pay for what he said, says he is proud of what he said.

Never has the choice between life in any meaningful sense, and death, being in God’s image and not, been more stark.