The Painful Price That Israel Must Pay

What joy and relief the families of the hostages, the people of Israel, and the worldwide Jewish community felt last Sunday as the first of Israel’s hostages were released from their brutal, illegal, and immoral captivity.  Romi Gonen was abducted from the Nova music festival after being shot by invading terrorists while she was on the phone with her mother. Emily Damari was kidnapped from her apartment in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, as was Doron Steinbrecher, also of Kfar Aza.   I personally witnessed the terrible destruction of that community when I traveled to Israel with a group of Rabbis last January. Last Sunday, the Israel Defense Force (IDF)  also announced that it had successfully carried out a covert operation in Gaza to recover the body of a fallen soldier, Staff Sergeant Oron Shaul, who died in combat in 2014 during Operation Protective Edge. His body was held hostage by Hamas for over a decade. It’s been 15 months of bloody war, negotiations, and emotional ups and downs.  Now these three young women are home, and we anticipate four more will be released this Shabbat.

Yet the joy we are experiencing is not absolute. We are also feeling sadness and anger, as the release of the hostages demanded painful concessions, including the release (over the course of the next several months) of hundreds, potentially thousands of Palestinian terrorists, many with blood on their hands. That is to say, they committed terrible terrorist atrocities, which murdered and injured many. That’s why we are filled with mixed emotions. Israel had to do everything it could save its citizens and soldiers, who were subjected to abysmal conditions, torture, and emotional abuse. We will learn more about the conditions and the suffering of the hostages in days to come. At the same time, there have been legal challenges to the release of Palestinian prisoners, as well as large rallies protesting the hostage deal and cease-fire. Such voices might be muffled outside the state of Israel, but we need to know about them, and respect the opinions and sensitivities of those families who also have suffered.   We must recognize and understand the terrible and difficult choices that the government of Israel had to make, in all their complexity. Like in the previous lopsided prisoner exchanges going back to the 1980s, the Israeli military and government agreed to these deals. The majority of Israelis support this deal.  Despite our own feelings and even misgivings, so must we.

Most of us do not know the victims of Palestinian terrorism in Israel. We hear their names, we feel the anger and sadness over the murder of Jews and Israelis, and understand how terrorism can undermine society. We marvel at Israel’s ability to absorb loss, and quickly get on with the business of living. But an article in yesterday‘s Record reminds us of the bitter price that Israel must now pay for the repatriation of their citizens.

On February 25, 1996, the day I flew to Paramus for my original interview before the search committee of our congregation, there was a terrible suicide bombing on a bus in Jerusalem. This was one of a series of such suicide bombings in the spring of 1996. 

This particular suicide bomb received a tremendous amount of attention in the United States, and especially Bergen County because among those who were murdered that day was a young woman from Teaneck named Sarah Duker, and her boyfriend, Matthew Eisenfeld of Connecticut, a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.  Sarah was 23 years old, conducting scientific research in Israel while Matthew was studying in Israel for the year, just as I had done 10 years earlier when I was in Rabbinical school.  Their murder was a terrible loss to Sarah and Matthew’s family, our Jewish community in northern New Jersey, the entire tri-state area, and beyond.

This incident was orchestrated by a Hamas terrorist named Mohammed Abu Warda, who was captured in 2002 and sentenced for that attack as well as a second bus attack that left another 19 people dead. He was sentenced to multiple life sentences.(Israel does not have the death penalty.). Sadly, Abu Warda’s name appeared on a list of about 730 convicted terrorists who are eligible for release as part of the cease-fire and hostage release deal. Just as previous lopsided deals have freed convicted murderers, so too this one as well. This one just hits a little closer to home.

Israel has a moral obligation to bring back all its citizens. In the words of Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, “I harbor no illusions – the deal will bring with it great challenges and painful, agonizing moments that we will need to overcome and face together. There is no greater moral, human, Jewish or Israeli obligation than to bring our sons and daughters back to us.”

Israel has reason to celebrate as well as dread this imperfect yet necessary deal. If we look at an objectively, it's a terrible deal.   But when dealing with human lives, perhaps objectively is the wrong way to look at it. The people of Israel are not stupid, and they are certainly not soft.  They know what is a stake. And what we as American Jews need to remember is that both the government and the IDF, as well as a majority of Israelis favored previous deals, and this one as well. 

Perhaps the best summation of the range of emotions that all of us are feeling at this dangerous moment is from the Israel advocate Hillel Fuld, who lost a brother in a terror stabbing. That murderer too, might potentially be released. He wrote, “his release is definitely an open wound.” But at the same time, he acknowledges the positives,  writing, “Watching our girls come home and all I can think is how proud I am of our unbelievable nation. You can debate if the deal is good or bad, but what you can’t debate is that we glorify life and we’ll pay a steep price to save the lives of our people.”

I’m sure that we can all agree with that.