The next phase of stage one of the hostage deal this Thursday is expected to be difficult and emotionally charged. For the first time, Israel will receive dead rather than living hostages, and the temptation to blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for the hostages' deaths will be strong.
This should be avoided. It's too easy and cheap, plays into Hamas' hands, and most importantly, as is repeatedly becoming clear – is highly inaccurate. Just ask senior Democratic administration officials who closely followed the complex negotiations with Hamas. They are no fans of the current government but, unlike some hot-headed commentators in Israel, can still separate facts from opinions.
The deaths of the hostages have only one address – the Nazi terrorist organization Hamas. Hamas murdered hostages. Hamas starved them to death. Hamas let them die from diseases and infections. Hamas denied them medical treatment and medicine. Hamas imprisoned them in conditions worse than those in concentration camps.
In a just world, which ours is not, Hamas would have to pay for its crimes in the spirit of Bialik's famous line from "On the Slaughter" (slightly modified): "The Devil has not yet created revenge for the blood of a murdered hostage..." But when Israel is being extorted by Nazi terrorism and submits to it to bring home living and dead hostages, revenge must wait. It must not, however, be canceled.
Hamas murderers and leaders who may be deported from Gaza in the future are now asking the mediators for an Israeli promise granting them immunity and ensuring Israel won't pursue or assassinate them even when they are far from here.
This must not be granted. Quite the opposite – it must be clear and transparent to the mediators, to Hamas, and especially to the Israeli public that Israel will not cease pursuing them and will try to eliminate them, just as it did with the murderers of the Israeli athletes in Munich, when over the years it eliminated one by one the members of Black September who were involved in the athletes' massacre, led by the organization's commander, Ali Hassan Salameh.
A promise or even an understanding regarding immunity for the butchers, kidnappers, and murderers of hostages not only betrays the murdered, the dead hostages, the living hostages, and the IDF soldiers who sacrificed their lives to restore security to the state and bring hostages home. Such a promise or understanding could also allow the murderers to rehabilitate themselves far from Israel's borders and reorganize to murder us again and take more hostages. This is their intention. They declare it openly. This is their purpose.
Therefore, and despite Hamas having already brought us to our knees, such a concession is one too many, both morally and practically. Even after Israel expelled the PLO and Yasser Arafat from Lebanon in 1982, it refrained from granting them such immunity, and three years later, in Operation Wooden Leg, it bombed PLO headquarters in Tunisia, 2,300 kilometers from Israel's borders, after it became clear the PLO continued initiating terrorism against Israelis in Israel and worldwide.
After they are deported and exiled, Hamas leaders and members, the murderers of hostages, must become pariahs, outcasts, and hunted men all their lives, finding no rest for their feet. There is importance both to revenge and of course to prevention and thwarting of anyone who continues to direct and plan terrorism against Jews and Israelis.
