Israelis Won’t Stand for Anything Short of Victory in Gaza

Leveraging the fate of the hostages to compel an Israeli surrender to Hamas is a sick, manipulative strategy that is doomed to political failure

By Gadi Taub, TABLET                                                      4 February 2024

An IDF reservist walks past ‘Bring Them Home Now’ street art in the Florentin neighborhood of Tel Aviv on Nov. 16, 2023/ALEXI J. ROSENFELD/GETTY IMAGES

Something fundamental changed in Israel on Oct. 7. We were reminded of the mortal danger our complacency and fantasies about our neighboring enemies pose to our survival. This in turn awakened in us a fierce determination to prevail and a spirit of self-sacrifice we thought we no longer had. At the same time, our political concepts, habits, alliances, and enmities remain those of Oct. 6. In our public square, or what modern states have for a public square—newspapers, TV shows and social media—we still revert to fighting old battles. These fissures are being exacerbated, if not driven, by the preferences and demands of our biggest ally, the United States.

The Biden administration recently tasked CIA Director William Burns with brokering an ambitious deal that, as The Washington Post reported, would include the release of all the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for a six-week ceasefire, the release of Palestinian prisoners at a 3-to-1 ratio, the repositioning of Israeli troops in Gaza, and an increase in humanitarian aid to the Strip. All this spells an end to the war short of an Israeli victory—which is to say, it would be a victory for Hamas.

Against the backdrop of this American initiative, internal scuffling has resumed in Israel. The U.S. posture reinvigorated the belief among die-hard Israeli supporters of the “two-state solution” that what they cannot sell to voters will now be more easily imposed on an Israel chastened by a deal which would in effect spell an Israeli defeat. This hope has seduced some of them into making a gross political miscalculation: a chillingly cynical attempt to leverage the suffering of the hostages and their families in order to promote the deal that would stop the war.

The suspicion that the hostages may be used in this way was there from day one. Less than 24 hours after Oct. 7, media strategist and well-known veteran of the anti-Bibi protests, Ronen Tzur, organized a forum for the families of the abducted. The forum and its supporters, along with left-leaning politicians and, importantly, the press, then launched a very public and very loud campaign that demanded prioritizing the return of the hostages to their families: “Bring Them Home, Now!”

Had the campaign stuck to the slogan “Bring Them Home,” the whole country would easily have been on board. Add “Now!” and you begin to lose some of the traction. Attach the demand to end the war with the hostage deal of “all for all”—all the terrorists in Israeli jails, numbering over 6,000, for all 136 hostages—and the support narrows down mostly to the suffering families and to those who still want Netanyahu’s removal above all else, such as the two-staters who believe that toppling the prime minister will open the door to a resolution of the conflict with the Palestinians. That does not add up to a large percentage of Israelis. But this social segment includes strategically positioned elites: the press, the bureaucracy, academia, leftist politicians, and the upper echelons of the IDF and the security services. Call them all the Oct. 6 progressive elites.

Because the divisive call for a hostage deal that would effectively end the war is nested inside the widely shared empathy for the abducted and their families, the Never-Bibi crowd and their promoters in the press believe they have made a clever play, and consequently have deafened themselves to the public mood. As a result, they are now on a collision course with something greater than a vibe. They are going up against Israel’s instinct for self-preservation, the ferocity of which is manifest now like it has never been in our lifetime.

Keep in mind that the current generation serving in the military is the one that sociologists and pundits bemoaned as the Israeli version of Gen Z—self-absorbed, semi-illiterate and addicted to screens, faking superficial glamour on social media by taking pictures of their food, and also eventually bound to adopt the infantile pseudo-morality, increasingly prevalent in the U.S., of victim-worship and “safe spaces.” Or so we assumed. But look at these soldiers now, with their newly adopted slogan, lo noflim midor tachach! (Not Falling Short of the ’48 Generation!). The declaration, staccato sounding and as grammatically incomplete in Hebrew as it is in the English translation, refers to the pioneers, the warriors, and the heroes of the founding generation, which lost more lives in battle than any other generation, in proportion to the pre-Independence Jewish community in the land of Israel. That is a high bar to set for oneself. But so many have already proven their mettle.

The “Bring Them Home, Now!” campaign not only assumes Israeli weakness. It also assumes that emotions have triumphed over rational thought, that as soft, first-world netizens we’ll be willing to relieve our present pain at the cost of mortgaging our future security, and that we have lost the nerve required to make wise strategic choices. It assumes that the Israeli public’s sympathy, and its devotion to the ideal of pidyon shvuyim—the Jewish moral imperative to free the abducted—will blind it to the obvious fact that clamoring for the hostages’ return Now! only weakens our bargaining position—as evidenced by a document, possibly written by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, that the IDF discovered in Gaza. The first line reads: “Distribute pictures and videos of the hostages, due to the psychological pressure they create.” The document adds the following instructions: “Keep spreading the message that Netanyahu is responsible for what has happened” and “Damage the Israeli narrative that claims that the ground offensive helps secure the return of hostages.”

But worst of all, the campaign to bring back the hostages at any cost is trying to marginalize the imperative of victory in this war, and, in fact, is demanding we resign ourselves to defeat. Any politician who embraces this position will face the full wrath of the voters.