The return of Ran Gvili seals a painful and almost inconceivable mission: every one of the October 7 hostages, the living and the dead, has been brought home. The road ahead remains long, but this is a moment of moral clarity. If there is “total victory,” this is what it looks like.
From the Exodus from Egypt to modern Israel, the command remains the same: We do not leave our brothers behind.
Israel’s insistence on bringing every hostage back home, including the dead, has earned it global recognition. Although everyone hoped for this ending, only a few believed it was possible.
The Iranian regime has completed the most violent crackdown in its history and now finds itself facing an unprecedented American threat. Unlike Bashar Assad, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has nowhere to run, which could push him toward a “Samson option,” such as attempting to block the Strait of Hormuz.
Israel is acting wisely by walking hand in hand with the Americans. The pills it is forced to swallow along the way are bitter, but the alternative is even worse. One can only hope that if matters reach negotiations, the Americans will limit the talks in time to avoid Iran’s familiar foot-dragging, and press Tehran toward a “dream deal” that includes a complete abandonment of its nuclear and missile programs.
In the president’s world, frameworks are for the weak, and the strong set the rules themselves. For now, he is showing restraint around Iran, but other developments should be setting off red warning lights in Israel as well.
Terror group seeks political legitimacy, immunity from targeted killings, integration in PA security forces, and its own armed presence in Gaza to protect its senior officials.
The challenge Trump missed the point on was Iran. He did redraw the nuclear red lines for the ayatollah, but he forgot, deliberately or otherwise, the protesters there and the mass slaughter carried out against them by the regime of atrocities.
Women are casting off the veil, young people are celebrating Halloween, mosques are empty of youth, and surveys show a clear majority supports separating religion from the state. Forty-seven years after the Islamic Revolution, Iran is facing a generation that is turning to its Persian heritage and looking westward.
As the empire of evil in Tehran slaughters its own citizens who are seeking freedom, the eternal call for liberty once again rises: “Let My people go”. In the face of despair and the tightening yoke of enslavement, Moses learns about the deep undercurrent that carves a path beneath hardship to redeem a people.
