Hamas has taken the Israeli spirit hostage too

Through our tears and with hearts shattered six times over, here’s a sobering truth that cuts through the emotion: Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar doesn’t want a deal right now. He needs the hostages to ensure his survival and to keep extorting us. His strategy is to wear us down, to prolong our internal conflicts indefinitely, stretching them out for months and years to come. As long as possible. And we’re playing right into his hands.

The public, guided by the “Kaplan protesters” – meaning the masses protesting in Kaplan St. in Tel Aviv, and the understandably distraught families of hostages, unwittingly dances to the tune of Sinwar, the chief executioner. While no one can stand in those families’ shoes or criticize them, they’re unknowingly actors in a play Sinwar has written and continues to direct. Although Hamas is the murderer, the blame and protests are directed at Netanyahu and his ministers, as if they were the killers. This only gives Sinwar more reasons to dig in his heels. In this case, it’s not God hardening Pharaoh’s heart, but the public – awash in a flood of uniform media messages – failing to see that they’re hurting the hostages more than helping them.

Instead of tens or hundreds of thousands gathering at the Egyptian and Gaza borders, or thousands protesting outside Qatari embassies worldwide, crowds are massing at the wrong address. The hostages aren’t being held in the city of Caesarea or Tel Aviv’s Ayalon road. Believe it or not, despite his many critics and undeniable missteps, even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to bring the hostages home.

Israel agreed to President Joe Biden’s proposal and even its revisions. It might agree to further updates, but Sinwar isn’t interested. So Netanyahu and his government, whose negotiating positions can be debated, aren’t really relevant right now. That is unless someone’s willing to agree to Israel’s complete surrender and total withdrawal from Gaza “lock, stock, and barrel.” Even then, the international community won’t give Israel the green light to return to the Philadelphi Corridor. Even if the world turned upside down, and the weapons caches, Hamas terrorists, and rockets waiting in Sinai for Israel’s withdrawal made their way back into Gaza – which has become a modern-day Sodom.

The most clear-headed response to the execution of the six hostages by these new Nazis came from Washington. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris declared Hamas guilty and vowed they would pay. The question of how they’ll pay should be answered in Israel. We should set the price. The first step, which I proposed here two days after the Oct. 7 massacre, is to pass a law to bring Hamas and its collaborators to justice. We should conduct an expanded “Eichmann trial” against them – a trial that will expose, over time, the full scope of the atrocities Hamas has committed here in the last ten months and stretching back decades.

The second step is to make it crystal clear that Israel will permanently maintain a security buffer zone inside the Gaza Strip, along the border. The loss of this “holy ground” is the surest way to make the Hamas scums understand there’s a price for their murderous actions. Additional steps include further dividing the Strip into smaller, controlled areas and continuing to hunt down Hamas leaders in Gaza and worldwide. We should pursue them just as we did the murderers of the Munich Olympics athletes during Operation “Wrath of God” in former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir’s time – terrorists who also killed their hostages.