THIS is why the hostages have not been returned yet
To understand why the hostages have not been returned -- and may never be -- you have to pay attention to this story
Every time I watch Einav Zangauker, I wonder if I would be able to do what she does. Einav, the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker who has been languishing in a tunnel in Gaza for 450 days, is on the streets every day. Recently named one of the BBC’s 100 most influential women of 2024, Einav goes all around the country, taking every opportunity to speak to people and put pressure on the government to get her son back, along with the rest of the 100 hostages still there. She speaks at demonstrations, she sits on the road across from the army headquarters in Tel Aviv, she goes to Knesset demonstrations, she allows anyone and everyone to interview her, she makes daily social media posts asking for help. Whatever it takes to get her son back, she does it.
I don’t think she eats. Or sleeps. I heard her speak in Modi’in nearly a year ago, before she had become famous, before so many other families fell off the public screen either because their loved ones had already been killed or because they are losing steam in the struggle. She was still a Netanyahu supporter back then, the single mother from the Likud stronghold of Ofakim who had raised Matan alone from the moment she gave birth to him at the age of 19. She spoke with fire and intensity, telling us about her 23 — now 24 — year-old son’s beautiful qualities while begging her Prime Minister to pay attention. I hesitatingly went up to her after she finished speaking, not sure if she wanted people to approach her or not. She saw me and smiled and turned to me to engage. I said that I just wanted her to know that I’m with her, fighting the fight behind her. She hugged me and thanked me profusely. She said that these kinds of exchanges mean everything to her. I was like, wow. So much energy. She was giving me some of her power while I was trying to give her some of mine.
She seems both tired and tireless. She keeps going every day. Of course she does… And I often ask myself if I would have that kind of energy if I needed to…. One of many questions that this endless, pointless war has forced us to ask ourselves.
Today, no longer a Likud supporter, angry at the prime minister for abandoning the hostages Einav expresses anguish and fury at the government’s utter failure to take care of the hostages. Even as she received the first signs of life from her son just a few weeks ago in which he said that the hostages face possible death a thousand times a day, the government still ignores the hostage families. Einav was physically removed from the Knesset last week for daring to speak her mind.
Any Knesset member who treats hostage families this way should be removed from office as they are no longer serving their public.
But of course that’s not happening. The government is intent on keeping itself in office no matter what. Hostages be damned.
In order to understand why, you need to follow this story:
The primary demand that Hamas has for a hostage exchange is this: Israel has to end the war. Not a temporary cease fire. No. An end to the war. That is, Israel has to get out of Gaza.
And that is the one thing that this government will never do. The government has already set into motions plans for a permanent stay in Gaza.
They are doing this AGAINST the will of the majority of the public.
Yes, understand this: The government is acting AGAINST its own mandate by working to Judaize Gaza and keep the war on indefinitely instead of bringing home the hostages and letting everyone get back to their lives.
To be clear, by “everyone” I mean hostage families, reservists, and the Palestinians of Gaza. The government is sacrificing all of us for its own radical political agenda.
This we know for certain: The overwhelming majority of Israelis want a hostage deal. Even at all costs.
The overwhelming majority of Israelis has absolutely no interest in re-Judaizing Gaza.
The overwhelming majority of Israelis have no desire to extend this war. The desperation for the war to end can be felt everywhere.
Even the most war-hawking Israelis have had enough of this war. Even the army brass. Even Bibi’s recently fired war manager Yoav Gallant has said that there is no more purpose to this war. He also said, by the way, that the war goals did not prioritize hostage return.
The majority of Israelis agree that the war is bad for Israel.
And an increasing number of Israelis also care that the war is bad for Palestinians. Really bad. Beyond anything that we should be comfortable with. Many of us who are absolutely horrified by what our army is doing over there have been begging for the war to stop for a long time.
So here we are, at a moment when the majority of Israelis are begging for this war to stop and for Israel to get out of Gaza and get the hostages home. But this government is instead planning a long-term military and civilian take-over of Gaza and completely failing to bring the hostages home.
How do we know this? Take a look at the other part of this story:
While the government is ignoring pleas from hostage families and from the majority of Israelis demanding a hostage deal, while the government kicks Einat Zangauker out of the Knesset, this same government is going out of its way to support the demands of the radical messianic religious right and its plans to resettle Gaza. The government gave the army the order to bring Daniella Weiss and her fanatic Nachala supporters for a trip through a closed military area on the border, where they cheered and sang and prophesized a Jewish future in Gaza over the rubble of Palestinian homes and lives.
This is why the hostages are not going to be coming home under the Netanyahu government. Because Bibi has long ago made this decision. He has had to choose between Door A, getting a hostage deal, ending the war, and facing the consequences of his actions, and between Door B, keeping the war indefinitely by installing religious radicals there as well as reserve soldiers who he thinks are willing to do this forever, and also ignoring hostage families’ pleas, in order to stay in power indefinitely and avoid accountability, election loss, and possibly jail.
I realize that I’ve been writing about this for a year now and some of you may be tired of hearing all this. But I have been speaking to a lot of Jews from around the world who say sometimes outrageous things that are so far from the truth. I heard this week the idea that it’s the American government that prevented a hostage deal. (Ridiculous. Biden and Harris have been pressuring Bibi all year to make a deal.) I also heard someone claim that that the reason the soldiers are still in Gaza is because they are looking for hostages. (That has NEVER been true. This war has NEVER been about returning hostages. Hostages themselves have talked about how the IDF actions regularly endangered their lives, and we may never find out just how many hostages were killed by IDF actions. AND, just this week, an outgoing battalion commandeer admitted that the war goals often contradicted the goal of returning the hostages.)
And so I hear these completely misguided lines coming from people with goodwill and a desire to get the hostages back, and who still want to believe that this government actually cares about the hostages. They have no basis in fact or reality.
I understand how hard this can be to digest. To face the current reality in which the government is both violating its public mandate and also completely abandoning the hostages — well, that can be hard to accept. Especially for Jews who are so obsessed with their own safety that they need to believe that Israel is some kind of safe haven. Where the government is taking care of its people. Facing the fact that this isn’t really true anymore, that the government cares more about its survival than anything else — that they are more loyal to the ideas of a radical religious right whose messianic plans put us all in danger and disregard basic humanity than they are to the ideas of democracy and sanctity of life — this is not easy. I get that.
But its true. Bibi is doing exactly what he wants to do. Not what the people of Israel need for him to do. It’s tragic. And infuriating.
I recently had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin on my podcast, Women Ending War. She is a leading public opinion researcher in Israel, political analyst, Haaretz columnist, and author The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled.
The hour of this podcast was chock full of insights and information about the current political situation in Israel. And one of my key take-aways was this: Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is not acting on behalf of the people of Israel. His actions directly violate the will of the people. And we desperately need better mechanisms for fixing this. The episode will be airing this Monday, Dec 30 on Spotify Apple FB Youtube. I highly recommend listening to it.
With wishes for better days ahead, for all of us.
Thanks for this info succinct information about an insane reality in Israel right now. We should have seen it coming as all the settlements weee being built. Tragic beyond words.