The heartbreaking funeral procession of Oded Lifshitz, which took place Tuesday in Kibbutz Nir Oz, and the missed opportunity it represents, sharpens the central question that must be asked in the hostage deal chapter of the inevitable commission of inquiry: Was the decision to forgo the elderly hostage phase at the end of November 2023, at the conclusion of the first deal, the right one?
In that deal, which freed women and children, the ratio of released terrorists per hostage was several times more modest than the wholesale release of murderers now taking place in each phase. If in November 2023 we would have released three terrorists of Oded Lifshitz's age (80 plus) in exchange for him alive – last week Israel released 30 terrorists from prison in exchange for his body, many with Israeli blood on their hands. It was a junction at the beginning of the campaign, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stood with a war cabinet that at the time included Benjamin Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot. Only in hindsight was it clarified how decisive and fateful this junction was and how tragic the turn was – both in terms of the lives of hostages who are no longer with us today, and in terms of the enormous price of the second, current deal.
Did the Israeli consensus in November 2023 to continue forcefully destroying Hamas justify impatience for another phase that could have saved elderly Israelis? This is a question Israeli society must receive answers to, certainly in light of the strengthening of that same consensus in February 2025. Erasing Hamas from the face of the earth – governmentally and militarily – is a timeless mission that depends on nothing else, as we have all now sworn. Meanwhile, the hostages – especially the elderly ones – were definitely temporary.
The public needs to receive clear answers to identify those who failed among the responsible parties, but primarily to redefine the value of Jewish lives in the State of Israel. We need to understand and know, to be convinced that the cheapening and indifference will not destroy every good part of our national body. Moreover, Israeli society as a whole, as well as the media, must engage in soul-searching regarding the moral conduct towards elderly hostages. There is no dispute that the many young lives that ended in the Simchat Torah massacre, led by the horror at the Nova music festival, are a catastrophe of an incomprehensible magnitude. But there's no escaping the feeling – especially in light of the November 2023 decision – that the elderly were not at the top of the national priority list.
Between summer 2020 and summer 2021, thousands of elderly Israelis passed away from the COVID pandemic, but under the cover of national repression, the immediate excuse was "underlying conditions." These allowed us to digest the disappearance of healthy, good people from among us, as if it were part of routine. During the past year, this denial found different expression regarding our elderly hostages in Gaza – whose limited time ran out and they returned here in coffins.
Last August, an IDF force retrieved from Khan Yunis the bodies of Avraham Munder, Haim Perry, Yoram Metzger and Alex Dancyg, pioneers of Nir Oz and among its builders – people of settlement, education and culture. Last week, the body of Oded Lifshitz was returned – buried today in the soil of the kibbutz. Amiram Cooper was murdered in captivity and his body is still held by Hamas. Shlomo Mantzur, 86, from Kibbutz Kisufim, was also murdered on Oct. 7 and his body has not yet been returned. Of the generation of giants who were kidnapped, only Gadi Moses, 80, survived captivity. "I will do everything in my power to rehabilitate Nir Oz," he said upon his release. Did we do everything in our power?
