Peace Is a Blessing, Not a Given

Every IDF soldier is given a small booklet called a “Prisoner’s Notebook” that they have to keep in their pockets at all times. It contains their personal information, vaccination records, and other health requirements. The objective of that notebook is that if the nightmare of getting kidnapped were ever to happen to us, like it did to my brigade mate Gilad Shalit, then the soldier would have to hand it over to his captors.

Gilad Shalit was 19 years old when Hamas militants crossed the border, killed two of his crew members, dragged him from his tank and took him into Gaza for 1,941 days. He was taken hostage slightly before Hamas managed to take water pipes to build rockets and steal aid money, which is estimated at $1 billion, and build some 500 kilometers of tunnels right under the United Nations’ nose. Or, arguably, hand in hand with the UN. Hence, Shalit was held mostly in civilian apartments and was eventually released after five grueling years in exchange for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Among the released convicts was Yahya Sinwar, who had once been treated and saved from brain cancer in an Israeli hospital by an Israeli doctor, only to return to Gaza, climb the terrorist ladder and mastermind October 7th. After the massacre, he disappeared into those tunnels before trying to flee to Egypt in his pajamas, where he was eventually shot by none other than an IDF soldier with a small notebook in his pocket.

The real purpose of that notebook is that if a militant were ever to fulfill his lifelong dream of kidnapping Israelis, including infants, grandmothers, workers from Thailand, students from Nepal (Bipin Joshi), and soldiers alike, as they did on October 7th, then this booklet would have at least given a soldier a sliver of a chance, as it is widely known that kidnapped soldiers are the hardest to bring back and therefore also serve as the most valuable bargaining chip for terrorist organizations, such as Hamas. Unfortunately, though, it is also broadly recognized from footage of October 7th that Israelis have only the slightest chance of even making it to the tunnels before civilians lynch the incoming hostages and beat them to death. And let’s be brutally honest here: the chances are that the man holding a Kalashnikov in a hostage’s face would probably opt to claim his seventy-two virgins in heaven and go out as a shahid rather than hand him an aspirin. “Maybe the Red Cross would check up on us” are words no Israeli has ever said.

Back to the military: Military service is mandatory in Israel, and since everyone – including the Druze, Muslim, Bedouin, Christian and Jewish soldiers in the IDF has had their hands on that personal booklet – we’re all mentally or at least effectively prepared for the possibility of being kidnapped. This is one of the main distinctions we have with our fellow Western societies with which we share similar values: We feel the threat, and we get ready for it. It is also part of the reason why the hostage crisis isn’t far from our sense of reality or our imagination. It isn’t new, and I’m certain it isn’t new for the Palestinians as well, although we have rarely, if ever, heard a single public voice criticizing the October 7th kidnappings, or for that matter – any public condemnation of cases such as the lynch in Ramallah in the early 2000s that highlighted the Second Intifada, or the three kidnapped teenagers in 2014 that sparked a war thereafter. However, the fact that a liberal voice against the Palestinian government is nonexistent and yet to be seen or heard is somewhat semi-understandable. First, any headline countering the mainstream narrative of Israel as the oppressor and Palestinians as the oppressed wouldn’t sell for a dime. Second, unfortunately we haven’t yet heard that voice because I’m certain that the brave and liberal have either fled the Islam-dominated Middle East or Hamas already executed them critics in the same manner the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Ayatollah in Iran and many more Islamist theocracies (or anarchies) punish women for showing their hair and men for their sexual orientation or religion.

The ferocious cycle here continues and as mentioned, the contemporary hostage crisis isn’t a new phenomenon, but this time it felt drastically different. Hopelessness and despair were prominent in Israel at first, but a year later something in the air started to change. Something felt different. Now we had the most powerful man on the planet standing with us and simultaneously advocating for a brighter future for all sides. For once, a leader’s actions spoke louder than his words. For once, a leader chose a set of pragmatic steps over political correctness. For once, we learnt how hope changes everything.

He wanted things to end fast. He wanted prosperity, and had substantial diplomatic leverage, enough to veto major international organizations that had played a central role in getting us into this mess in the first place. He wanted to get them all out at once and have all parties agree to a ceasefire. This time, Trump got them out, and secured us a peace deal.

It was far from anticipated. It wasn’t like the classic and noble peace efforts of iconic figures such as Yitzhak Rabin or Nelson Mandela, and it lacked the Hollywood picture we were accustomed to, but it was a peace deal, and who cares what a peace deal looks like if it saves lives and keeps your family safe?

What do you do when someone you grew up despising delivers peace? Do you hold on to your pride and stand firm in your old stance? Or is it finally time to question the influences around you, open your mind, and develop a base of critical thinking?

Above all, war teaches you to value results over rhetoric, and sometimes even the most unlikely leader earns your gratitude.

A day before Donald Trump’s inauguration, on January 19th, 2025, not a single person in Israeli society knew whether Romi Gonen, who lives right next to Gilad Shalit’s town and to mine, was dead or alive. On that day, every Israeli was glued to the news and desperately praying that the girl who was taken from the Nova Festival by Hamas militants on October 7th was still breathing. Everyone hoped to see a sign of life amidst the disgraceful and satiric ceremonial hostage release. Everyone hoped to see the girl with the curly hair and the contagious smile standing.

This was when I began asking myself the following questions: why was my 22-year-old neighbor stolen from a festival in the first place? What did she do wrong? How can I help? Who intervened and fought for her release? Who understood, or at least took the time and effort to put their ego and prejudice aside and tried to understand that releasing her and the rest of the innocent civilians would  put an end to the war? These are the questions more people should begin asking themselves and others because I found that the answers reveal everything one needs to know about such a complex conflict.

Who took her, and who supported the people who took her?

When she was held underground against her will by middle-aged men with guns because she danced in a music festival or simply because she was Jewish, we began receiving rockets and drones from countries most Israelis had never given much thought to before, such as Yemen and Iraq. In addition to ballistic missiles from Iran and the “usual” rockets we kept receiving from Lebanon – the multi-front war worsened. On top of that, the terrorist attacks inside our territory, combined with the ongoing hostage crisis, greatly deepened our awareness of the dozens of terrorist militias surrounding us from nearly every corner. This also led to profound distrust and became an integral factor in Israeli society’s shift to the right on national security issues.

Parallel to the missiles flying over our heads, there was a heavy, constant and gloomy fog in the air that smelled of fear. Whether I was standing on a picturesque bridge in Prague or in Hostages Square in downtown Tel Aviv, it didn’t matter, because I just couldn’t escape the thought of them. Knowing that 250 of our brothers and sisters were struggling to breathe in Hamas’s complex underground tunnels in Gaza is beyond comprehension, yet not too far from our imagination. The faces of the hostages were always there in your mind. “Every day feels like Yom Kippur,” a friend once told me. Yet this melancholic anchor that pulled us down also made me realize that we’re a tribe, and tribes share pain just as much as they share warmth and joy. And that’s our biggest strength.

The chaos became the norm, and the norm became chaotic. Perhaps too chaotic. It skyrocketed and reached a point where, if you were sitting in a café in Tel Aviv during the war and received that noisy text message from the Home Front Command app notifying you that rockets were incoming, you could half-jokingly wager with your friends on which country the rocket originated from: one says Lebanon, I say Yemen, she says Gaza.

While Israelis make dark jokes and rush to shelters, hoping the indiscriminate rockets from one of seven countries won’t hit them, Gazans receive evacuation notices and alerts from the IDF specifying exactly when and where airstrikes will target Hamas’s military infrastructure. I believe these are the only two armies in the world operating in such a starkly contrasting manner: one warning civilians to escape the danger beneath their feet and the other, Hamas, deliberately building military infrastructure and hiding under them. The result? Viral TikToks, as Gazans have just enough time to step back, grab their cellphones, and film the scene.

All of this together changes one’s perspective. Wars can reshape your perception of truth, human behavior, and certainly your political stance. October 7th taught Israelis many difficult lessons, among them that a lasting peace is unlikely to be achieved with the current powers involved, neither with Hamas nor with figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir in the coalition. Yet it also taught us that conflict resolution can emerge through foreign policy and power. Peace can come from decision-making Republicans in the White House in Washington. Peace is a blessing, not a given, and we should strive for a future where a prisoner’s notebook will never be needed.