They kidnap and kill, we return and save

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Posted on 02/01/2025 10:27:10 PM PST by Words Matter

They kidnap and kill, we return and save Opinion column - Walla News.

Liri Elbag's line after 477 days in hell - says it all. Tzachi Koma. 2.1.2025

These deals are a moral test that proves our essence as a people. The dilemma is always difficult - but we always choose life. The price of returning the kidnapped is the human test of us all.

In recent days, after long months of anxiety, despair, and deceptive hope, our hearts have experienced an incomparable shock. More and more abductees are returning, broken but alive, from a reality whose horror there are no words to contain. We have seen tender children accustomed to life in tunnels, fathers and mothers who have returned to a reality that does not look like the one they left, and teenagers trying to understand how the world went on without them.

And in the face of excitement, there is also pain. Because the price is heavy and almost unimaginable, because our blood is still hot. Because we know that the scum we are releasing will return to murder, burn, and slaughter. The feeling of bereaved families watching the murderers of their loved ones get out of prison - all of these are part of the painful reality that accompanies every such transaction. Because with a choked throat, we look into the eyes of families and see there also the lack of understanding - how could we do this again.

When I watched the coverage of Keith Segal, Ofer Calderon and Yarden Bibs returning home this morning, I felt the joy, but again, also the confusion. How is it possible that there are people who look into the eyes of those families, who saw their loved ones broken and returned, and say - "This is not the time, let them stay there until we win"? I understand the desire to fight for deterrence, but when leaders question the right of the kidnapped to return home, I can't help but ask: What are we actually doing here? A war until the end? Until when? As long as people's lives are measured by a cold military balance, we are losing the most important thing - our humanity. "The unity and hope that we have scares all our enemies, amazes all our lovers and comforts the people among us," said Liri Elbag, who returned home after 477 days in the hell of Hamas - and in doing so, she said it all.

When I hear the voices that oppose the release, it feels like an attempt to mask personal pain behind political clichés. They will remain captive, and the war will continue - is that the solution? Even if we win the war, will we also win ourselves? Prices like these don't buy any more time.

Not when it comes to people's lives, and certainly not when it's us who are clearing the way for liberation - and not them. I don't want to be part of a country that weighs every life based on political expediency. I'm tired of receiving the explanations about how "the deal is wrong." What's annoying is not just these opinions, but the feeling that someone up there thinks that the lives of our citizens are not worth enough. We don't need explanations. We need decisions, now.

I fully understand the hesitation, the divided opinions, the difficulty of those who feel that these concessions harm deterrence. This is not a simple dilemma, and there is no perfect answer. But in all of this, I return to the starting point: the State of Israel is a country that sanctifies life, that is willing to pay painful prices to bring its children home. Even if it's not always convenient, even if it hurts - that's who we are.

This is the essence of being Israeli. The State of Israel is a country that sanctifies life - and this is not a cliché. It is our moral, unquestionable duty to bring our children home. Our duty to the missing, our duty to the families, our duty to ourselves.

We cannot continue to look into the eyes of mothers and fathers, of families, of friends of kidnapped men and women, and tell them with a cold heart - they will continue to suffer there and probably die, the continuation of the war is more important? How can we sit on the sidelines and tell them that the price of deterrence is more important than the lives of their loved ones? And if we are afraid of another October 7, what does that say about us? Does that mean that lessons have not been learned? Does that mean that we do not know how to protect citizens next time? And if we release terrorists, then what? The state will not be able to guarantee us the simplest security? So what do we actually have left if not life itself?

Yes, we will continue to fight terrorism. Yes, we will continue to fight for the righteousness of our path. But on the battlefield of morality - we are winning. Because in this deal, as in its predecessors, we prove time and time again that we are a country that is willing to pay a price, however heavy, to bring its sons home. Because in the end, there is a heavier price. The price of a society that becomes indifferent, the price of a country that abandons the obligation to return its citizens, the price of a people that forgets that above all else - we are here together and we do not have the privilege to forget that.

We do not leave soldiers behind. We do not forget for a moment civilians in captivity. We are not a people who hold hands. We can argue about the path, we can agonize over the price, but we cannot forget the foundation that has kept us here for more than 75 years: mutual guarantee.

We are not like them, and we will never be like them. They kidnap, rape, murder babies, abuse, destroy families without a trace of remorse. They hold small children in dark tunnels, leave mothers without answers, plant fear and despair in whole hearts. They see life as a bargaining chip, a weapon, a political card. And us? We act differently. We return our kidnapped ones, because every soldier and citizen is as precious to us as a family member. We are willing to pay heavy prices, because for us - every life is worth the world.

And as always, our light will prevail over their darkness. They tried to break us apart, but they only strengthened us. They tried to make us cynical, merciless - and we choose love. They tried to extinguish hope, and we prove, again and again, that there is no power in the world that can truly break us.

It is precisely from the pain, from the darkness, that we carry the torch that lights our path. We are a people who build, who grow hope from ashes, who know how to grieve, but also to get up and walk forward. The abductees who are returning now are going through a private hell, but behind them stands a whole people who will support, heal, and embrace unconditionally. We leave no one behind, because that is who we are.

Whoever thought that the horror of October 7 would tear us apart was wrong. Yes, we have been through an unparalleled rupture. Yes, we bear a wound that will not heal. But precisely in the moments when it seems that darkness is winning, we need to remember what truly makes us one people: the promise that we will not leave them there alone. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever. We will not rest until the last of the kidnapped returns home.

Today, when three more kidnapped people have returned to us from hell, we both cry and smile. We are in pain, but also proud. Because in the real test - the test of humanity - we win.

The writer: Tzachi Koma, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Walla.

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1 posted on 02/01/2025 10:27:10 PM PST by Words Matter

2 posted on 02/01/2025 10:39:04 PM PST by Words Matter

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