A Moment of Gratitude
Terry H. Schwadron
Nov. 25, 2023
Even from thousands of miles away, the wrenching emotions of watching the fragility of a negotiated release of the first Israeli — and Thai and Filipino, as it turned out — hostages from among 240 kidnapped in the brutal Oct. 7 Hamas raid were difficult. It will repeat again today.
Regardless of political position about the Middle East, it was impossible not to feel relief for Hamas and Israel set the combat aside in a pause to allow sanity and caring to replace using weapons to do the talking. The feelings among families in Israel and Gaza to have the chance to bring mothers and children home was palpable for the entire globe.
At the same time, there was a mix of anger that this situation should never have been, anxiety over moving beyond this first, mere drop among the kidnapped, and absolute incredulity about how two sides so far apart effectively can form a future together that can recognize nationalistic dignities, the need for security, and the need to make common humanity a basis for moving ahead.
How is a political goal advanced by holding babies and grandmothers as hostages for seven weeks? The released included children aged 2, 4, 5 and 9, and five women over age 70, including one who is 85.
Even bringing about this actual exchange was touch and go through the televised morning, with a ton of contradictory and speculative reports vying to offer a straightaway picture of what was happening. Of course, the release of official information on all sides was just as partisan-tinged as the indignities and brutality that has brought us to this point.
Using the Hostages
Throughout, we continue to be aware that the hostages themselves are political pawns in this never-ending conflict. For the moment, we hoped the spotlight would remain on these people and not on the warring, but it seemed almost impossible to do so.
Despite its best attempts to present itself as humane, Hamas could not hide the fact that it had grabbed and has held babies and seniors from Israeli homes, streets, and a music festival to use as human shields and as trade bait against retribution from the slaughter of 1,200 or more.
Even as the hostage release was unfolding, Hamas apparently was urging its own fleeing Gazan civilians to return to the continuing war zone in the north — a blatant appeal for civilian protectors from Israeli armor.
Forget long-term grievances and statehood goals, that this display of hostage releases had to occur is a smear against all the rules of international conflict. We still lack basic information about who is being held and their condition — although this agreement is supposed to include
international Red Cross visits. It seems that non-Hamas militants also are holding some of the hostages under separate circumstances.
For Israeli officials, the achievement of these hostage release negotiations raises a slew of issues over the resumption of intense, urban war in Gaza as early as the beginning of the week. Without guarantees for the release of the remaining 200 hostages, there will be no possibility of ceasing war; without confirmed destruction of Hamas’ ability to attack Israel civilians wantonly, there will be no hesitation about simply destroying Gazan life to shut down underground tunnels and missile-launching capabilities.
In the name of security and survival, the Israelis too are abusing the rules of war that call for better efforts to avoid civilian targets. Instead, we witness daily propaganda wars over whether there is sufficient proof of using hospitals and schools as areas to shield terrorist militarism.
Releasing jailed Palestinians in exchange for Israeli hostages (as well as those from other nations, some with dual citizenship) is creating political firestorms of their own in Israel and globally. As an Israeli cousin posted, there seems something wholly unbalanced about having negotiated the release of an Israeli baby for a young Palestinian woman facing murder charges for having stabbed an adult.
The Pause is Big
What cannot be overstated is the enormity of the perceived abuses here.
Adding to the roller-coaster emotions of the day, it was apparent from daybreak yesterday that if this first hostage exchange could not play out effectively as planned, we could very easily sink into a global war.
The breadth of the Oct. 7 attacks remains breathtaking, including open murders, beheadings, and kidnaps, all planned and coordinated to kill Jews and to bring an Israeli war into Gaza. The severity of the Israeli military response has been to flatten northern Gaza, with the nearly impossible job of flushing booby-trapped tunnels to free remaining hostages still ahead.
The world is responding in ways that focus on immediate effects of war and the interruption of food, fuel, water, and civilian housing — renewed temporarily as part of this hostage deal — rather than on a future that would eliminate the problem. We’re seeing neighboring states including Arab nations and Iran, as well as militia groups, on edge and provoking attacks on Israel, and we’re watching real-time as Israeli’s own aggressive Jewish settlement policies are poking Palestinian anger in the West Bank.
Worse, we are witnessing worldwide effects of attacks, including physical violence, on individual Jews or Muslims. We are seeing the breakdown of cross-group communications as if every Jew is supportive of and a spokesman for the actions of an increasingly unpopular, radical religious coalition government in Israel — or as if every Muslim is a proponent of unrestrained Hamas violence in the name of wiping out Israeli occupation.
We even are seeing our democracies unravel over generational differences and concerns about “free speech” that do not comport with majority views.
What remained true at the end of day was apparent at the beginning: The release of 13 women and children from Hamas tunnels will not end this war. But failure to do so could have made things so much worse.
However bumpy the process, it still gave us all a moment of global gratitude.
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