Israel’s next steps

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Up next on The World and Everything in It: freeing Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

On Sunday, the Israeli military retrieved the bodies of four men and two women Hamas took nearly a year ago on October 7th. The hostages had been shot by Hamas.

AUDIO: [Protests in Tel Aviv]

Protestors have filled the streets of Tel Aviv ever since, demanding the Israeli government do more to secure the release of remaining hostages.

REICHARD: Joining us now to talk about what’s happening is Daniel Gordis. He’s an historian and a Koret Distinguished Fellow at Shalem College in Jerusalem.

Daniel, good morning.

DANIEL GORDIS: Good morning. Good to be with you.

REICHARD: Well, we're about a month shy of a year since October 7. Daniel, how many men women and children kidnapped by Hamas are still unaccounted for?

GORDIS: One hundred and, 100 and a few. I forget if it's 101 or 105 but basically, there are 100 and something. We know that many of them are dead. We know that Hamas is holding many of them as just as bodies. But there is some likelihood that some 30-40, may be even 50 are still alive. There are lists being discussed about the 20 or 30 who would be released. So, we know that there's at least a few dozen alive.

REICHARD: There are many in the West that say if Israel would just make enough concessions that Hamas would agree to a cease-fire deal and release the hostages, but these wanton murders seem to disprove that. Wouldn't you say?

GORDIS: Yeah, look, I think that the negotiations are not being handled well by the government, but that does not mean that I think that if we did handle them well, we would get the hostages back. I have become very pessimistic about getting these hostages back. Then we have to try. I think it's a Jewish value, and I think it's an Israeli value. You know, Bibi Netanyahu, who is now the much beleaguered Prime Minister, he was the one who wanted to trade, or was willing to trade 1,020 something people for one soldier, Gilad Shalit. And included in those people were some very, very bad Hamas guys, including Mohammed Deif and Yahya Sinwar who's now, of course, running Hamas. Why did Netanyahu trade more than 1000 very bad guys to get back one hapless soldier? He did it because, as his biographer Ari Harow wrote and said in a podcast with me a few months ago, he understood that if he's going to ever send Israeli soldiers to Iran to try to take out Iran's nuclear capacity, those soldiers need to know that we are going to get them home. It's just a supreme Israeli value. Personally, though, I don't see what Sinwar has to gain by ever giving up the hostages. He knows that no matter what Israel says, of course, we're going to track him down and kill him, and right now, his only guarantee for life is to be surrounded by some group of hostages, wherever in the dark tunnels he might be. That said, many Israelis, me included, believe that we have to try everything, and we should be more forthcoming in the negotiation deal with him to get a temporary cease-fire and prosecute the war afterwards. This war cannot be over until Hamas is destroyed, but try to get some hostages home, then prosecute the war.

REICHARD: Well, let's talk now about the protests going on in Tel Aviv. Many say that Israel has overreached in this war against Hamas, with many thousands of civilians in Gaza displaced or killed, and yet the war continues, and the hostages have not yet come home. So why is it that Israelis are protesting their own government when it's Hamas that's responsible for the deaths of these men and women?

GORDIS: The protesting in the streets is not about whether or not to destroy Hamas. Hamas needs to be destroyed. I don't know what the exact number in the polls is, but it's got to be over 80% maybe 90% of Israelis who say that. Israelis are protesting: A. The lack of what they believe to be good faith negotiations on Israel's part to get the hostages out because of Benjamin Netanyahu's personal, short-term, political, judicial considerations, and B. There is a larger issue here. We are almost a year into this war, and the people on the political side and the military side who got us into this mess are still running the political and military side of this. I want to remind you, speaking to an American audience here, I don't know how many days it was after the failed assassination attempt on former President Trump, that the head of the Secret Service was just gone. She was out. There were congressional hearings, and she was out. Israelis watched that, and it made the Israeli front page news, and they said, that's how it works, actually – when you completely screw up whether or not it's exactly your particular fault that day or not, it doesn't really matter. And I think a lot of Israelis are saying we have no confidence in the government or the military leadership that's sending our daughters and our sons off to the front. And this is a people's army where everybody, in theory, everybody's kids goes to the army. This is not a volunteer army. It's not a professional army. And so the population needs to feel, yeah, our husbands, our sons, our fathers, our daughters, our neighbors, they're going to war. We hope and pray they'll be okay, but we, at least we know for sure somebody's got their interests in mind. And when you don't have that, you get massive protests on the streets.

REICHARD: You attended the funeral of Hersch Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli American and one of those six hostages whose bodies were recovered earlier this week. In your newsletter, Daniel, you wrote that someone started singing part of the Jewish liturgy, and thousands of people joined in. Now let's listen to a clip from that.

SOUND: Singing in Hebrew…translates to “Our Father, our King: favor us and answer us for we are undeserving; deal with us charitably and kindly and save us.”

What were they singing? And why did that stand out to you?

GORDIS: Music in Israel plays a very formidable role that it does not play in American society. One should understand that Israelis sing. So, my wife and I got there very, very early which we were standing in the hot, blazing sun for an hour and a half with nowhere to go, and we were with hundreds and then thousands of other people doing exactly the same thing. What are you going to do? I mean, an Israeli, Israelis sing, and it was very moving. It was very powerful. One of the songs that was sung, which is the one that I believe you're referring to, is called Avinu Malkeinu, "Our father, our King." It's a line from the Yom Kippur liturgy, the day of Yom Kippur being the holiest day of the Jewish year, when we engage in deep self reflection and we request forgiveness from God for all of our unsatisfactory qualities and so on and so forth. And there's a list of things that begin "Our father, Our King," and the very last line of the 20 or 30 of them is "Our father, our King, look upon us kindly, and because we are we are without merit, we are undeserving. Please look upon us kindly and save us." There was a feeling in Israeli society that we need to be saved. We are not saving ourselves. We're doing okay in the war, but this is not a victory. We're not getting the hostages back. 75,000 people in the North are still unable to go home. It's impossible to describe the heartbreak of this country at this moment. And I think this notion of calling out to the heavens, “Look down kindly on us and save us,” was just very, very heartfelt. We really feel somebody's got to save us here.

REICHARD: Daniel Gordis is an historian and a Koret Distinguished Fellow at Shalem College in Jerusalem. Daniel, thank you so much.

GORDIS: Always an honor, and thank you so much for having me.

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