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Gil Lewinsky

Prisoner Exchanges and Strategic Losses: Rethinking Israel’s War Efforts

According to former statesman Shimon Peres z”l, when the partition plan authorizing the division of the land into a Jewish and Arab state was decided upon by the UN in 1947, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding Prime Minister, wasn’t happy. Jews were celebrating in the streets as the international community authorized the first Jewish state in millennia. However, Israel’s first Prime Minister knew that war was coming. “Today, everyone’s happy; tomorrow, blood will be spilled,” he said.

In an extraordinary turn of events, Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to a deal to release over 1,500 Palestinian terrorists, including 250 convicted of murder, in exchange for the release of just 23 living hostages as per reports. The Israeli army, which has lost 400 soldiers fighting in Gaza, must generally withdraw, except for parts of the Philadelphi Corridor and the 1-km buffer zone from Israel’s border. While the agreement is set for 42 days, with Israel able to resume fighting if Hamas does not uphold its part of the agreement, President Biden was adamant that the purpose of the deal was, in fact, the “permanent end to the war.”

A copy of the deal can be found here:

Don’t get me wrong. I support the return of the hostages. Like every Israeli, my heart bleeds for them and their families. However, I wanted all the hostages home at once—and not at the expense of Jewish blood spilled in terrorism.

What is new in this historical deal is that hundreds of terrorists convicted of murdering Jews in cold blood will be released for hostages who never harmed a Palestinian, and in a lopsided ratio. This moral imbalance couldn’t be more destructive. The very framework of prisoner exchanges is meant for the release of people on equal standing, such as soldiers for soldiers. Civilians should never have been taken hostage to begin with. Now, this is being celebrated as a great victory by the Americans, who have forced Netanyahu into a position akin to that of a Judenrat head, emptying our prisons in lopsided deals for hostages who never should have been taken. Nevertheless, only so much blame can be placed on Trump. It was Netanyahu’s government that put this deal in place. The blame lies, first and foremost, with our leadership.

The worst part is that not all the hostages will be coming home. Another 65 will remain for an even more lopsided arrangement in stages 2 and 3. According to some sources, over a thousand terrorists who have killed Jews may be released by the end of stage 3.

Why would Netanyahu agree to such a lopsided arrangement? As some commentators have mentioned, and Arab officials were quick to point out, his posturing changed ever since his fateful meeting with US President elect Donald Trump envoy Steve Witkoff last weekend. What was guaranteed to him in that meeting that made him go “all in” on a deal that is certain to be political suicide?

The devil is in the details, and the details are relatively broad after the first phase of 42 days. As the incoming American National Security Advisor Tom Waltz said according to a Times of Israel report, “We’ve made it very clear to the Israelis, and I want the people of Israel to hear me on this: If they need to go back in, we’re with them,” he said. “If Hamas doesn’t live up to the terms of this agreement, we are with them. If Israel needs to go back in, we are with them“. What does this mean? In another interview Waltz calls for the “obliteration of Hamas” and that “Hamas cannot have a role” in post war Gaza. So as we lie in emotional anguish over releasing unpleasant murderers, it is very possible that Israel will return to fighting after stage one as the terms of stage two: the cessation of Hamas as a ruling force in Gaza is extremely unlikely. At the same time, some of the most well-known hostages, including the five female soldiers and the Bibas family would be retrieved from captivity, achieving a morale boost for Israeli society. The renewed fighting will have better support from the USA, and as such, may have what it takes to finally finish what can count as a victory.

At present however is speculation. What is clear is that Trump is riding the PR stunt of an instant capitulatory deal to demonstrate his effectiveness on the global stage. During this round, on the back of Israeli terror victims. There is still a nuclear Iran to address, and to fulfill his promise that Gaza will never become a safe haven for terror. While at the moment he celebrates this lopsided agreement, how he plans to counteract and help finish Hamas remains unclear. I will be watching.

While we celebrate the return of the hostages, with newspapers full of stories and pictures of their return, and many commentators praising the rescue of our brethren as the ultimate war goal, we must be mindful of the broader picture. Hamas planned the hostage taking for this precise, deliberate effect. Evil masterminds, able to crush the will of Israeli society to the point that some would literally empty our prisons to retrieve a few of our own from the depths of hell.

To the countless Israelis that are prepared to give it all for the hostages, I want to present the following scenario: If, in five years, Hamas or another group takes Jewish hostages and demands the withdrawal to the 67 lines and or even the end of Israel as a state, replaced with a Palestine, will we give up statehood? What is the ceiling of our willingness to free our brethren?

We Must Learn from the War’s Mistakes

Not everything in this war went badly.

The war showed that Israel has perhaps the world’s best missile defense system. What other country could endure over 200 ballistic missiles? The Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and the Arrow systems surely saved countless lives and ensured that the civilian toll of the war, despite unpleasant night rushes to bomb shelters, was kept largely to a minimum.

The main losers on the battlefield appear to be the Iranian axis surrounding Israel: primarily Hezbollah in the north and the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. Here, the Israeli ingenuity we have come to expect and admire was on full display—exploding radio pagers and walkie-talkies, precision airstrikes targeting leadership, and the assassination of Iranian generals en masse on Syrian soil. As many as 4,000 Hezbollah fighters were killed over the course of a few months, making the 2006 war seem like child’s play. The thousands of strikes on Syria weakened the Iranian axis and Hezbollah to the point that, when the rebels advanced, there was little left to defend Assad’s regime.

However, in the case of Gaza, the war exposed Israel’s limitations. The IDF, in terms of strategic objectives, was bested by Hamas’s terrorist militia. It didn’t matter that Israel leveled most of the enclave’s buildings or that much of Gaza’s civilian population was forced into tent cities in humanitarian zones. Nor did it matter that most of Hamas’s upper echelon was assassinated, and it lost 20,000 fighters. Hamas does not care about buildings or lost fighters, nor about a loyal populace suffering in tent cities. It was able to replace its losses and adapt to fighting the IDF from ruins with the most limited resources.

Hamas managed to stick to its main demands, and despite all its losses, achieved a deal consistent with its original goals. In late October 2023, Yahya Sinwar demanded the emptying of Israel’s prisons for hostages, stating, “We are ready to conduct an immediate prisoner exchange deal that includes the release of all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails in exchange for all prisoners held by the Palestinian resistance.”

As such, especially if Israel does not resume fighting, one must wonder what the IDF achieved in its 15-month-long war beyond destroyed buildings and a far higher Palestinian casualty count.

Additionally, the war was an unprecedented PR disaster for Israel. According to an ADL study released this week, almost half of adults worldwide hold antisemitic beliefs.

If one were to make a case for how International Law has failed to adapt to modern warfare, Hamas’s cynical use of the Gaza War would be the prime example. Hamas never followed its obligations, savagely took 250 hostages in violation of international law, and masterfully manipulated international law to restrict the IDF. It turned hospitals into military bases and made it appear, through its Gaza Health Ministry, that most casualties were civilians. Hamas fought the IDF from civilian areas, blending into the population or using tunnels beneath civilian zones. Meanwhile, the IDF did an extremely poor job countering this narrative, as images of ruined Gazan cities circulated worldwide.

As antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment grows globally, Israeli strategies and even the legitimacy of the state are increasingly questioned. Little has been done to counteract this trend, which has been left to individual Zionist activists with minimal official support.

The Need to Learn from This War

We must not wait for this war to end to reflect on its lessons. Even if Israel were able to level Gaza and kill 20,000 terrorists, this war appears a strategic loss for Israel. Fortunately, Gaza is small, and Israel can afford to see the day after.

Benjamin Netanyahu is an elderly statesman. Even if he manages to recover his popularity, as he did after the Gilad Shalit deal in 2011, sheer human mortality ensures there will be a new leadership in this country one day. This new leadership must bring fresh thinking to confront the merciless enemy that is Hamas—and the Iran-backed forces behind it—who seek our utter destruction.

Destroying buildings and killing terrorists alone does not lead to victory. Today’s wars are waged on social media and in the court of public opinion. From this perspective, Israel failed to wage a proper PR war, allowing global antisemitism to surge. We must return to the drawing board and develop a strategy that emphasizes the Jewish people’s legitimacy and effectively utilizes soft power.

US ambassador to Israel Jack Lew, described the problem in an interview with David Horovitz. “So that’s really an observation about modern communications in modern warfare: Hamas has done superbly, fighting that way, and that’s giving them credit for doing something very bad”… “What I’ve told people here that they have to worry about when this war is over is that the generational memory doesn’t go back to the founding of the state or the Six Day War, or the Yom Kippur War, or to the intifada even. It starts with this war, and you can’t ignore the impact of this war on future policymakers — not the people making the decisions today, but the people who are 25, 35, 45 today and who will be the leaders for the next 30 years, 40 years.”

Jewish lives matter. Israel matters. Our future depends on it. We must recover our legitimacy from the ashes. As the people of the book, with a history that inspires billions, we have always been survivors. We must learn from this war’s mistakes and turn them into strong points because when the next round comes, the appearance of losing, even if only a mirage, will not be an acceptable strategy.

About the Author
Born in Israel but raised in Canada, Gil Lewinsky worked as a journalist in Jewish newspapers including the Jerusalem Post after completing a Masters degree at the Munk School of Global Affairs from the University of Toronto. He also has a LLM in International Law from Lancaster University in the UK. His past topics include a book written about the Status of Gaza under International Law soon after its conquest by Hamas in 2007. He is perhaps best known as one of two people that brought a flock of Jacob Sheep from Canada to Israel in 2016, making history. He currently works as a teacher and English public relations professional in Israel.
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