A Place of Unknowing

Yahya Sinwar is believed to be hiding in a tunnel deep beneath the ground in Gaza, with no electric devices nearby lest his location be discovered. 

He has not seen the surface in nearly a year. His eyes have not perceived daylight. No breath of fresh air has entered his lungs. 

Such a man has few pleasures available to him, but at least he has good news. 

Murdering six Israeli hostages worked out exactly as he hoped. Hostages are the only currency he has available to him, and there are only so many of them—but this expenditure of life turned out to have been very well spent indeed.

Just weeks ago, Biden and Blinken were saying that the ball is in Hamas’ court, that Israel had fully agreed to the latest proposal, and that if things fell apart this time, the blame would be Sinwar’s alone. Now Biden gruffly says that Netanyahu is to blame. 

He’s not alone. This is the consensus of the legacy media and the international community as well. It is also the belief of a growing number of Israelis, who are out in the street begging their government to make a deal. 

Israel has already been pursuing a deal, so what this really means is “make concessions.” Forget the Philadelphi corridor. Leave Netzarim behind. Drop the requirement for a veto on which Palestinian prisoners are released. Do whatever it takes. Just get the deal done. 

To further inflame an already burning public, Hamas released videos of the hostages’ “final messages” to the world. In these wrenching propaganda pieces, we saw Hersh, Carmel, Ori, Eden, Alex and Almog address the camera and berate the Israeli government for abandoning them to their fate. 

If you’ve ever spent any time in Israel, you’ve probably heard the word “freier.” It’s a Yiddish word which means “sucker.” No one wants to be a freier in Israel. No one wants to get taken advantage of, or ripped off, or made to look like a fool. 

I fear, right now, that we are being freiers. We are following Sinwar’s lead. We are letting him call the shots. We are rewarding him for kidnapping and murdering our people which will only motivate him to kidnap and murder more people in the future. We are letting him groom us, readying for a future in which Hamas survives this war and continues its crusade against the existence of Israel. 

But the fear of being a freier can become pathological when we walk away from something we need because we’re too proud to pay a high price.

The fear of being a freier can become pathological when we walk away from something we need because we’re too proud to pay a high price.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter that Sinwar is grinning right now. Perhaps all that matters is saving the hostages. And if it makes us look like suckers, so be it. 

And perhaps also the fear of letting Hamas win has become irrational. Hamas has already won. If we had a leader that earned the people’s trust, perhaps we could have beat them. If Biden had kept pressure on Hamas instead of constantly undermining Israel, perhaps we could have beat them. If the international community had come together to rally for a surrender instead of a ceasefire, perhaps we could have beat them. 

But none of that happened. And so maybe all that’s left is to cut our losses, admit defeat, and get our people back. 

I don’t know. 

I have no suggestion, not that anyone would listen to it if I did. 

All I can offer is this: if anyone is portraying this issue to you like it’s simple, like there’s one moral choice and one immoral choice, like the hostages can wait, or like making concessions to Hamas is no big deal—they are lying to you and to themselves.

If anyone is portraying this issue to you like it’s simple, like there’s one moral choice and one immoral choice, like the hostages can wait, or like making concessions to Hamas is no big deal—they are lying to you and to themselves.

There may indeed be a right path and a wrong path here, but it is far from clear which is which.

The first step to discernment is to confront this complexity and admit to all we do not know.

Matthew Schultz is a Jewish Journal columnist and rabbinical student at Hebrew College. He is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (Tupelo, 2020) and lives in Boston and Jerusalem.