How the Israeli Hostages Became an Afterthought

Surely the Israeli abductees would still be incessantly top-of-mind — had we not been talking about the Jews.

Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.

---

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.

Share this essay using the link: https://www.futureofjewish.com/p/how-the-israeli-hostages-became-an-afterthought

---

In the mere days after Palestinian terrorists infiltrated Israel on October 7th, massacring more than 1,000 people and abducting some 240 more, we saw “pro-Palestinian” demonstrations around the world, calling for more Palestinian terrorism against Israel, the annihilation of Israel, and even the gassing of Jews.

Mind you, these demonstrations occurred a good two-to-three weeks before Israeli ground forces entered the Gaza Strip. And, mind you, during these two-to-three weeks, Israel patiently held off on its real military response to give diplomatic negotiations a chance at returning all the abductees.

In Israel, and among those who cherish it around the world, we knew it was only a matter of days after October 7th that this unconscionable Palestinian attack, and the “thoughts and prayers” for Israel that came with it, would quickly turn into heavily biased and overwhelmingly one-sided empathy for the “poor Palestinians.”

Make no mistake: You can (and ought to) have simultaneous, equal compassion for both Israelis and Palestinians, but that’s not what happened. In many cases, relatively mild concern for Israel was replaced with profuse support for the Palestinians.

Back in Israel, our message stayed (and is still) unmistakably clear: Return all the abductees, immediately and unconditionally, if you want a ceasefire. Until this happens, we reserve the right to both diplomatically and politically (i.e. militarily) vie for their return.

Yet, as we have entered the seventh month of this Israel-Hamas escapade, one of the worst hostage situations in modern history has become just another subplot, an afterthought, and even forgotten.

Here are three rampant reasons why:

1) Israel’s International Messaging

Israel has always had an issue with international messaging, going back to the 1960s, and perhaps even before. With a professional background in journalism and mass media, I picked up on Israel’s terrible “PR” immediately after I moved to the country in 2013.

Those who represent Israel both formally and informally in the news media and on social media, often try to explain Israel’s legitimacy. This approach actually plays into the hands of those who try to delegitimize the Jewish state, since no other country in the world is focused on legitimizing itself. Additionally, explanations about Israel’s legitimacy go in one ear and out the other for people who never thought Israel was a legitimate country to begin with.

Other “pro-Israel” folks argue that, if you judge any state by the mistakes it makes, the whole world would be rotten. Again, this logic falls on deaf ears because so many people believe that Israel, in and of itself, is one big mistake.

2) Misinformation

It is literally impossible to touch on every piece of misinformation that is infecting the hearts and minds of people across our world, so I will stick to one pertinent example: the accusations that Israel is breaking “international law,” that the country is committing “war crimes,” and that the Israeli response is not “proportionate.”

Under International Humanitarian Law, proportionality requires that any degree of damage (up to and including death) to civilians not be “excessive” in relation to the military advantage anticipated from a strike against a military target.

Simply, and unfortunately, international rules of law recognize that civilians are often killed during war; and, most of the time, these deaths are actually not indicative of a war crime. Instead, the legal test for “proportionality” requires that each individual strike be looked at with a particular balancing analysis: The strike must be intended to achieve a military objective.

Therefore, it is a war crime to strike with the intent of targeting civilians, and without any military objective whatsoever. Under this definition, Palestinians in Gaza (and those who have not publicly condemned their behavior, such as the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank) are guilty of a double-war crime: the intent to target Israeli civilians without reasonable military objectives, and the use of other Palestinians as involuntary human shields.

Under the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1977, in both Article 51(5)(b) and Article 52(2), we know that when Palestinians use their own population (and/or the 240 hostages) as human shields — either by using them to shield themselves or to shield their military infrastructure and equipment — Palestinians have, under international law, turned civilians targets into military targets.

This means that when Palestinians, for example, place weapons caches in and under schools, hospitals, and mosques, Palestinians have made each of these places legitimate military targets.

These decisions are so vital, though, that the Israeli military does not permit a single soldier on the ground or in an aircraft to have their hands on the proverbial (or actual) “trigger” to make such a determination. In fact, the decision of whether a strike is proportionate is not relegated to military officers or even generals.

Instead, before any Israeli strike can take place, Israeli military guidelines provide that proportionality balancing tests must be presented to and analyzed by Israeli military lawyers who then determine whether a strike is legally permissible as “proportionate” under international law and the rules of war. These military lawyers are not easily manipulated to simply “rubber stamp” Israeli military requests.

As a matter of fact, Israeli military lawyers work in complete independence of the Israeli military. They are outside the chain of command and do not answer to anyone in the military, including generals. Plus, every military lawyer is personally accountable if they make wrong decisions based on evidence available at the time.

Furthermore, the decisions to be made while balancing the likely military advantage against the likely civilian casualties can sometimes be so difficult, that the legality of the strike is first brought to the Israeli Supreme Court for instant review.

3) Pure and Utter Antisemitism

Oh boy, where do we start? Back in the “good old days” antisemitism was so blatant, so obvious, you immediately knew it when you saw it. Nowadays, so much of antisemitism is so subliminal, intellectualized, and dressed up in academia, that so many Jews — let alone others — do not even recognize it.

What stands out to me are the ongoing blood libels being lofted at Israel, such as when Palestinians falsely claimed that Israel bombed a hospital and killed 500 people, or more recently when Hamas spread fake news about “mass graves” being dug in Gaza.

Is it not antisemitic to wish Israel could find some other way of destroying Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza. But it is antisemitic to rush to false judgments about Israel’s actions and intentions, to blame Israelis for what they do not do, and to refuse to understand the existential fears that drive their actions.

This is why I contend that we are in the process of reliving Nazi Germany. The only problem, at least for us Jews, is that this antisemitic tumor is not confined to one country; it is alive and kicking across North America, South America, Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.

With the exception of North America, Jews have been expelled from all these regions, from one country after another, spanning thousands of years. Inquisitions. Pogroms. Excessive taxation. Barred from owning land and working in many jobs, guilds, and workplaces. The Holocaust. October 7th. Was all this not enough?

Yet still, today, all over the world, all over social media and, more alarmingly, in the middle of major “liberal” cities, you hear thousands of people explicitly calling for more death to more Jews. Will only complete Jewish extinction be enough?

“Of course not,” many people will tell you. “I just don’t like when Israeli Jews do what they do!” In other words, a classic gaslighting ploy to make it about “anti-Zionism” — a lame attempt to differentiate Israeli Jews from other Jews — which every educated Jew knows is the newer, more socially acceptable rendition of antisemitism.

And when we Jews try to defend our beloved, absolutely necessary, and also quite ordinary country, they continue to gaslight us with words like, “Oh, so you support the occupation.”

You do not have to support Israel’s complex realities — and the “occupation” is indeed a complex reality — to understand the Jewish state’s imperative necessity and admire the miraculousness of its founding. Again, if you judge any state by the mistakes it makes, the whole world would be rotten.

Yes, Israel has greatly changed since its founding in 1948, and the Palestinians’ complete refusal since the 1930s to peacefully share the land has naturally played a part in hardening what some call Israeli “hardline” positions. In recent years, Israel’s policy to effectively enable Hamas as the governing power in Gaza, and miscalculate its intentions, must also be cause for tremendous concern.

However, you will not find in much of the news media, across social media, and in university campuses and other places these vital nuances, the historical missteps by both Israelis and Palestinians, and the grotesque institutionalized antisemitism still predominantly percolating across the Palestinian Territories and greater Middle East (antisemitism that far predates the State of Israel).

Surely this is unwelcome bigotry, and surely the hostages would still be incessantly top-of-mind — had we not been talking about the Jews.

---