What if it was Netanyahu’s kid being held hostage in Gaza?  

 Once again, the candle of hope for a cease fire and a hostage release deal seems to have burnt out.

US Secretary of State Blinken has left the region to return to Washington and it appears clear that our insistence on remaining in control of the Philadelphi Corridor and the Rafah Crossing into Egypt seems to be a major stumbling block to concluding a deal with Hamas. Press reports seem to indicate that even Egypt has now taken the position that Israel needs to leave the area in Rafah at the border with Egypt.

On the Hamas side, they are no less guilty of constantly putting new stumbling blocks in the way of a deal knowing that their only leverage is the remaining living hostages whose lives they couldn’t care less about.

The press further reported that in a meeting with relatives of the hostages along with bereaved families that took place earlier this week Netanyahu told them:  “Israel won’t leave the Philadelphi Corridor and the Netzarim Corridor under any circumstances.”

Well, yesterday six of our hostages were rescued from Hamas captivity by the IDF, but they were all brought back to Israel in body bags. All over the age of 65, they were captured during the massacre on October 7^th and some were seen alive in a video provided by Hamas just a few months ago. But without proper nutrition, needed medical care, with none of their prescriptive medications available, living in humid conditions in tunnels where the outside temperatures were above 90 F every day, survival was not in the cards.

Is this really how we want to see our hostages returned to us? In body bags for burial? Israeli citizens who were reasonably healthy a year ago, guilty of nothing other than being a Jew in the wrong place for them at the wrong time, held in captivity in sub human conditions for over 10 months only to die the death of a slave?

We all understand the strategic challenges that our government faces and the attempt by the Prime Minister to cut the best deal possible. But what if one of those hostages suffering at the hands of Hamas for 320 days was his son? Don’t you think that he would pull out every stop to make a deal to get his son back alive, rather than in a body bag like so much refuse? Do you think he would still take the position that whatever the cost we must hold the Philadelphi Corridor?

And where are the members of the Knesset, inside and outside of the ruling coalition? Why aren’t they forcing the hand of the Prime Minister to make a deal or resign from the Knesset and bring the government down thereby unseating the Prime Minister from his position of power? Are there no members of the Knesset who purportedly represent the interests of all of us living here who have the guts to take a stand so no one else has to say kaddish at the grave of a child? Been there, done that….trust me when I say it is the most painful kaddish bar none and I’ve done them all.

The world owed us every effort to convince Hamas to let the hostages go and they failed us. The United Nations was unable to condemn, even once, the taking of hostages as totally against international law. The International Red Cross refused to provide any serious assistance, as required by international law, to provide needed medications to the hostages. And in spite of our Herculean efforts to minimize the death of civilians in Gaza, the International Court of Justice thinks we might have committed genocide in Gaza and wants to arrest our leadership as a result.

Our only steadfast friend has been the United States, although from time to time they wavered, but we could not have accomplished what we did militarily without their assistance. Now we are on our own and the job of our government is to protect our citizens. The government failed us on October 7^th and every hostage that comes back in a body bag is one more fracture in the covenant between us and our government.

Let’s get them back at whatever cost and if we have to abrogate an agreement later and go back to fighting, so be it. This just might be the only way to survive when the enemy is totally committed to our destruction for no other reason than who we are which is, of course, genocide.