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Sarah Tuttle-Singer
A Mermaid in Jerusalem

The cost of choosing life

It’s hard to put into words the gut punch of these 471 days—the horrors of October 7, the grief, the rage, the unrelenting ache. And now, this. The impossible arithmetic of swapping convicted murderers—men and women with blood on their hands, who robbed families of futures—for the chance, the chance, to bring a baby home. To bring someone’s mother home. To bring a husband, a daughter, a grandfather home.

Alive.

I look at the photos: the hostages, wide-eyed and terrified, their humanity stripped away in a moment of chaos and cruelty. Babies who don’t know yet how broken this world can be. Grandmothers who have already seen too much. Civilians, yanked from their lives, thrown into a nightmare that no one should endure.

And now, I see the faces of the terrorists who are walking free. The ones who did the unimaginable. Murderers. The kind of people whose names are curses. And my heart lurches because how—how—is this the equation we’re forced to solve?

Anywhere else in the world, if someone kidnapped a random person from their home, the demand for dozens—hundreds—of killers in exchange would be laughed out of the room. But here, this is the cost of being who we are. It’s the cost of choosing life, even when it doesn’t feel fair. Even when it rips us apart.

It’s okay to feel everything all at once right now. You can feel the rage—white-hot, searing, justified—because the release of these terrorists isn’t justice. It’s not even close. You can feel the heartbreak for the families of their victims, who will now watch their loved ones’ killers walk free. And you can feel relief, even joy, because someone’s child will come home. Because someone’s mother will hug her kids again. Because life is still worth everything, even when it comes at such an unthinkable price.

I want to scream for the victims. For their families. For the stolen futures, the empty chairs at the Shabbat table, the holes that will never close. I want to scream for the hostages who are still out there, waiting in the dark, and for the ones who won’t come home. And yes, I want to scream for the families who will embrace their loved ones again—because those reunions should have never been necessary.

This is the paradox of living here. Of being here. The weight of the impossible choices we make, the jagged edges of moral clarity. The knowledge that this tiny, stubborn place will always pay the price for valuing life in a way that the rest of the world doesn’t understand.

But through the rage and the heartbreak, through the impossible choices and the heavy cost, I hold onto one thing: we are still human. We still feel, even when it hurts. We still hope, even when the odds are impossible. And we still choose life, again and again and again.

Because that’s who we are.

About the Author
Sarah Tuttle-Singer is the author of Jerusalem Drawn and Quartered and the New Media Editor at Times of Israel. She was raised in Venice Beach, California on Yiddish lullabies and Civil Rights anthems, and she now lives in Jerusalem with her 3 kids where she climbs roofs, explores cisterns, opens secret doors, talks to strangers, and writes stories about people — especially taxi drivers. Sarah also speaks before audiences left, right, and center through the Jewish Speakers Bureau, asking them to wrestle with important questions while celebrating their willingness to do so. She loves whisky and tacos and chocolate chip cookies and old maps and foreign coins and discovering new ideas from different perspectives. Sarah is a work in progress.