It rends one's soul to think about those who have been abducted and taken to Gaza. The heart goes out to their families. Who among us wouldn't give a great deal to help these unfortunates – our very flesh and blood? No effort should be spared to release those held forcibly by Hamas, but without repeating the fatal errors of the past. For decades we have been turning those who had been taken captive and gone missing into instruments that allow us to be extorted. By surrendering to the enemy, we have caused many more among us to be murdered and abducted. Worst of all, as proved now – we have put our very existence in danger. Foremost, we must not allow the enemy to use the abductees to weaken our morale, our resilience, our cohesion, and our judgment.
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When the behavior that led us to the current disaster will be analyzed in depth, the comportment of the State of Israel, its leaders, commanders, and elites will be recorded as a pillar of the catastrophe. Succumbing to an enemy who took abductees or prisoners, they lost their senses and encouraged the foe to attack us. The phenomenon isn't new; it crested back in 1985 in the so-called "Jibril deal," in which we felt compelled to release 1,151 terrorists. That was the main precipitant of the First Intifada some two years later. The Israeli leadership, then led by Shimon Peres, yielded to the pressure of the families and to the lobby that backed them. The outcome was strategic: many paid in blood and suffering and all of us paid in dear coin.
The trend gathered strength surrounding the campaign in favor of fleeing from the security zone in Lebanon in May 2000, led by the Four Mothers organization and urged on by radio broadcasters. It was an especially effective campaign, and the elite that brought it on inserted fear and panic into the calculus, wretched in itself, of Ehud Barak, the prime minister at the time. For the timing and the nature of the escape from Lebanon, we paid over and over. Several months after we fled, Yasser Arafat, encouraged by our weakness in the north, launched the Second Intifada. By running away, we also cemented the reputation of Hezbollah and enabled it to draw dramatic conclusions for the future.
For twelve years we've been paying for the results of Benjamin Netanyahu's surrender to the campaign for the release of Gilad Schalit. Scores of Israelis have been murdered as a result of the doings of those freed in the transaction, even before the accursed Sabbath of Shemini Atzeret. And now, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and his pack of monsters, released for one soldier only – 1,027 of them – are the forces behind the most murderous and effective onslaught that the State of Israel has ever sustained.
Thus, the damage occasioned by our serial surrendering to enemy extortion has led directly to the murder and wounding of countless Israelis. Worse still, however, it has undermined the foundations of our presence in the Land of Israel. It flows from the spinelessness of the leadership and also from the foolishness and weakness of the elites who mobilized to bend the leaders to their will.
The conclusions should be drawn right now, even though the blood boils and the heart quakes for those in the clutches of the murderous sect that controls Gaza. Every effort should be made to extricate the abductees without repeating the mistake. Pursue military operations without limit but do not let the enemy twist our arms. Let us not hesitate to wipe out Hamas in every way – because beyond the heavy price that we will pay if we submit to extortion, the projection of weakness will weaken us so badly as to place the Zionist enterprise in existential danger.
We need to embrace the abductees' families and treat anything they may do with understanding. No one can hold in judgment those whose dearest ones' lives are hanging in the balance. However, the public and the leadership must display level-headedness, restraint, and sagacity – including the way the families' anguish is covered and given public expression.
There's a thin line between demonstrating empathy and promoting national weakness. This line must not be crossed. Such is the case for our approach and it certainly matters in terms of leadership. It is especially critical, however, where media coverage is concerned. For the first time in decades, the time has come to understand where we went wrong and to do the opposite.
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