The Blogs: Thankful, Not Celebrating

On October 13, 2025, 738 days into the war and exactly two years on the Jewish calendar, Israel (likely) received the last of its living hostages from Gaza. My aunt and dozens of others prepared a thank you banner until 5 a.m. There was what people called a “celebration” at Hostage Square, at the Nova massacre site, and maybe elsewhere. Online, well-meaning commentators wrote that Israelis were celebrating the ceasefire.

I want to make an uncomfortable correction.

Israel did not celebrate. We were/are thankful, hopeful. Celebration is the wrong word.

I went out that night, which also fell on Simchat Torah, the happiest Jewish holiday. I didn’t see joy. I saw uncertainty. The streets were quiet, and those who were out kept saying, “I expected more people to be celebrating.”

We are grateful to be alive, and grateful to have our living come back from hell. But we did not celebrate. The following Thursday would be an unofficial day for meditation and higher consciousness, not drinking and revelry. The malls and gyms didn’t play music. We did not pass around candy like our enemies do whenever they murder a low-income Jewish child or senior citizen at a bus stop. We did not toast.

Two years on, Israelis have learned that peace with those who seek our destruction is not peace at all. Many grew up overnight on October 7, 2023, and have since learned not to confuse a pause in fire with safety. After, what, sixteen? wars and skirmishes started by Hamas amid ceasefire, we no longer mistake quiet for peace or optimism for security.

The left, rarely satisfied even in the best of times, worries more about how we are perceived than what we’ve survived. They fear Bibi staying in power. The right, branded as evil for so long, has grown cold and focused on ensuring Hamas does not remain armed or empowered. Both are weary, and both are drained of celebration.

Can we celebrate when nothing has changed? When Hamas still murders its opposition? When the media keeps gaslighting the world that Palestinians never did anything wrong, even as Hamas releases videos of torture and executions inside foreign-funded hospitals? When social media bans accounts of pacifists who never once made a violent comment, while promoting channels that glorify terror? When few speak of Palestinian suffering except when it can be blamed on Israel? When grifters, especially musicians, treat “Free Palestine” as “Free Publicity,” using it to promote themselves?

Will the idea of rewarding barbarism go away?
No. The people who encouraged this war haven’t faced consequences yet.

There is hope: Arab states expanded cooperation with Israel’s military during the Gaza war, despite the fact that the war was launched, in part, to derail peace between Saudi Arabia and Israel (and meant to distract from Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine). The anti-Israel candidate lost the U.S. presidency. Europe is waking up to the radical threats it faces, too. The shekel is strong. There are many reasons to hold hope.

Despite the cliché that “killing one terrorist creates three more,” I believe in science. That includes Darwinism. There is hope that the most violent Palestinians have been neutralized, even if they have amassed an online fan base in the West. There is greater hope that the living learn from the deceased. I pray that more will be deradicalized. Like postwar Germany or Japan, a new generation can rebuild toward cooperation and peace.

So long as “Free Palestine” faces no consequences for their incitement, the odds of true peace remain dim—overshadowed by their vision of endless intifada, martyrdom, and holy war. Too many don’t understand freedom, only hate. Too many are rewarded for their hate.

One day we will celebrate. Not this year though.