I have been an Israeli citizen for about fifteen years, and have voted in about ten national, and local Israeli elections. I have never voted for Netanyahu, or his Likud Party, in any election, local, or national.
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The hostages, however, are a matter of national consensus, regarding which I give Netanyahu the benefit of the doubt. I am sure he wants them home as much as anyone (who does not personally know any of them).
So what is the government doing about the hostages? From day one they mobilized hundreds of thousands of soldiers and went to war. Soldiers have subsequently died, while hostage protesters have demonstrated, in front of the Knesset, in front of Netanyahu’s office, and house, in front of the Defense Ministry’s Tel Aviv headquarters, and around the country.
Netanyahu, and the Israeli government, though, are not the ones who took hostages. You cannot exactly protest in front of Hamas’s headquarters, but were I to protest it would have to either be in front of the UN compound near Givat Hatachmoshet, or the one in Armon Hanatziv, or any of the other UN facilities around the country, or maybe in front of the embassies of countries that have called for Israeli “restraint.”
When Hamas sees Israelis respond to hostage situations by protesting their own government, Hamas sees that the Israeli government is under pressure to make further concessions. That only emboldens Hamas to harden their stance. It strengthens Hamas’s negotiating position, weakens Israel’s, and makes it harder to secure the release of the very people the protests are intended to save, endangering their lives. The more Hamas receives for the hostages the more it encourages anti-Israel terrorists (including groups other than Hamas) to initiate future hostage taking operations.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres responded to the events of October 7th saying they, “did not happen in a vacuum.” Hamas committed an unspeakable massacre on October 7th, but in an address to the National Press Club of Australia that included a slew of inflammatory remarks, given on November 14th, while Hamas held about 240 hostages, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese said that “Israel cannot claim the right of self-defense against a threat that emanates from a territory it occupies.”
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Protestors in Tel Aviv urge the government to bring back all the hostages
(Photo: Omri Rosenberg)
Israel has not had any presence in Gaza since 2005, but Hamas being a terrorist group in control of the strip, dedicated to Israel’s destruction, refusing to lay down their arms, and accept Israel’s right to exist, necessitated that Israel block the open entry to the strip of weapons and other items that could be used by Hamas to attack Israel.
Hostage protesters have called for the families of those held in Gaza to have more face time with senior government officials, including the prime minister, but in the 24 hours of a day, is it not more important for government officials to spend their time dealing with the actual military, and diplomatic dimensions of administering the war, and the actual negotiations with Hamas, than for them to be briefing the families? We do not need meetings and handshakes for the cameras. We need freed hostages.
Prior to October 7th, protesting Netanyahu was a civic duty. Justice demands he be incarcerated. Even regardless of judicial outcomes, it is inappropriate for a man with a history of manipulating news outlets and receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in jewelry, and other items, on-demand, to serve as prime minister. There are others capable of leading the country without such an aura of corruption.
None of that, though, has anything to do with the matter of the moment. With all respect to the issues that divide Israeli society, this is a moment of crisis that calls for unity, and for working together, not for division, or for protesting one another. Those who protest against the very people trying to secure the hostages’ release undermine their own cause, and may be endangering lives, when they could be in front of UN facilities supporting the Israeli effort.