The late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin once confessed that as defense minister, he executed the Jibril deal, releasing 1,151 terrorists for three Israeli soldiers, though he knew "the deal should never have been made." "I couldn't withstand the mothers' pleas," Rabin admitted, later confronting an intifada and casualties that this deal brought upon Israel.
Benjamin Netanyahu, if he were to be candid with himself and the public, would likewise admit that the Shalit deal should never have happened, made because he couldn't resist the appeals of Aviva and Noam, Gilad's parents. The 1,027 terrorists released in exchange for Shalit fostered the modern Sodom, the world's largest terror city, and ultimately led to the Oct. 7 massacre. If possible, Netanyahu would likely strike from his biographical record the image of Gilad Shalit saluting him at the helicopter's door that carried him from the Rafah crossing into Israel.
These two deals, which brought waves of terror and rivers of blood upon us, just like the 2025 hostage deal, suffered from dangerous tunnel vision. An enormous and orchestrated effort in the public and media sphere, designed to extract tears and emotion, attempts to place blinders on our eyes, like those worn by horses, ensuring we see nothing but the hostages. Anyone expressing opposition or reservation about the deal is branded heartless and cruel. Those who dare to consider the deal's full implications are portrayed as callous to the families' anguish and their loved ones' suffering.
Perhaps surprisingly: The deal's opponents also have hearts that ache, throats that constrict with emotion, and eyes that well with tears at the sight of hostages reuniting with their families. Yet they refuse to embrace the newly established doctrine here – the religion of "at any cost." They reject the notion of accepting or agreeing in advance that under any circumstances and at any price, the deal's second phase must proceed. They see it as a predetermined path to disaster, like cattle being led to slaughter.
No blank-check contract
The State of Israel undeniably breached its contract with the Gaza border communities' residents, but it cannot rebuild this trust through an agreement that endangers hundreds or potentially thousands of other citizens by placing their lives at concrete risk. While a deal is necessary, it must be tempered with sound judgment and responsibility.
The contract between the state and its citizens is never absolute, never an "at any cost" proposition. The state routinely makes difficult decisions about excluding certain life-saving medications from the health basket, knowing some patients who need them will not survive, while prioritizing other medications that will save more lives. The state cannot lay off workers or close schools to fund life-saving medications for everyone.
The state must consider the complete picture and exercise careful judgment. Though sometimes wrong and sometimes right, it cannot adopt an "at any cost" approach. It refrains from allocating unlimited resources to combat road accidents, even though doubling or quadrupling this budget at the expense of defense spending would undoubtedly save more lives and significantly reduce traffic fatalities. However, such a decision would likely compromise other life-saving components within the defense budget.
Similarly, the state doesn't station soldiers at every meter of West Bank roads to prevent attacks, doesn't armor hundreds of thousands of vehicles, and refrains from imposing capital punishment on terrorists because it must balance multiple vital state interests.
The state and its citizens aren't separate entities standing in opposition. They function more like a family unit. Even a family facing a child's medical emergency will mobilize resources at the expense of many other needs, but not at the cost of endangering the lives of other children in that same family.
"Thou shalt not despise"
Rabbi Oury Sherki, father of Shalom who was murdered in a terror attack, this week challenged "the assumption that we must pit the suffering of hostage families against that of bereaved families," declining interviews on this basis. The bereaved families, he explained, are being portrayed as if the hostage families' suffering doesn't touch them, but "this is an immoral position, stemming from the belief that every opinion is driven by subjective feelings rather than values," he said.
Another bereaved father, Hagay Luber, responded this week to the declaration made by Eli Albag, father of released hostage Liri Albag, who was released last Saturday from captivity. The elder Albag had vowed to hold deal opponents accountable, declaring: "I despise you."
"Even a father caught in the emotional turbulence of tremendous fear that has (thankfully) turned to tremendous joy," Luber wrote, "has no right to despise those who represent my son Yehonatan and his fallen comrades, and their those who represent them in the Knesset, those who oppose the deal on grounds no less ethical and moral than those supporting it."
Luber urged the hostage families "not to despise those opposing the deal... who went house to house in the Gaza Strip, risking their lives enormously to rescue the hostages, including your sons and daughters." He suggested they "fully acknowledge both the deal's supporters and opponents, soldiers and civilians who agreed to face terrible risks to see your captured daughters freed. This isn't to be taken for granted. Sadly, based on past experience, there's a chance that some supporters and opponents of the deal will pay with their lives and their children's lives for its execution."
Rabbi Binyamin Kalmanzon, a bereaved father, brother-in-law, and uncle, who lost dozens of students and friends and four family members due to previous deals, stated that "legitimizing contempt for those who think differently is ideological dictatorship." He noted that such discourse of contempt is horrific and should have ended definitively on Oct. 7, after witnessing its terrible consequences.
Sherki, Luber, and by implication Kalmanzon all point to something that deal supporters' tunnel vision prevents them from seeing: the position of deal opponents represents an ethical and moral decision no less valid than that of deal supporters, even when it comes from politicians, and even when opponents believe that instead of proceeding to phase two of the deal, Israel should return to fighting Hamas. The hostage families, consumed with worry for their loved ones, should have been the first to understand this, having been thrust into a 15-month hell as a direct result of a similarly reckless deal, perhaps even worse than the one they now advocate.
Israel isn't just freeing murderers who, based on past experience, will return to kill many times over. It's also newly endangering the Gaza border communities that were overrun by the new Nazis on Oct. 7, by allowing northern Gaza residents, effectively Hamas operatives, to return to that area and lay groundwork for the next massacre, or by relinquishing control of the Philadelphi Corridor, Hamas' smuggling and lifeline route, through which it built its forces of evil, fire, and tunnels. Philadelphi will return to this state if Israel abandons it.
Hamas, you might be surprised to learn, has no dreams of change. The Hamas Prisoners' Bureau has already announced that the "Flood of the freedom deal" proves this is the way forward, and that Israel only understands the language of kidnapping. Israel, regrettably, is proving them right.
