originally published in Israel National News

One of the negotiators of the catastrophic Gilad Shalit deal (one kidnapped soldier exchanged for 1027 Arab terrorists, including Yahye Sinwar) said something mindboggling on the radio recently. He opined that the Shalit deal “was a terrible mistake, and I would do it again.”

It is hard to wrap the mind around that level of dysfunction, and yet, that mindset is quite prevalent in Israel today, and I am wondering why. Many people state unabashedly that the current hostage deal demonstrates how much Israelis “sanctify life.” That is true, except when we consider the price we paid in murdered Jews for the Shalit deal and the price we will pay in murdered Jews for the newly released murderers among us.

We sanctify life in the present and sacrifice life in the future.

We cherish the individual while putting society at risk.

It is arguable if such constitutes the sanctification of life or the desecration of life. When we choose to disregard the obvious and inevitable effects of our actions, time and again, we should stop comforting ourselves on the extent to which we cherish life and instead question our wisdom, sanity, and desire to survive as a nation.

Arab terrorists recognize that there is no chance we will execute them, little chance they will serve their full sentences, and full knowledge that they will be financially rewarded, and handsomely, by their leaders for their crimes. So why wouldn’t they try to murder more Jews?

The irony is that Hamas made a huge tactical error in murdering so many Jews on October 7. It cost them world popularity, at least in the short term. For a brief moment, Israel was graciously granted the right of self-defense, if only for a brief moment. In due course, Jew haters and their Western enablers recovered their evil equilibrium, and almost instantly, branded Israel as the aggressor, perpetrators of genocide, and other canards. Undoubtedly, our enemies’ future raids will focus less on murdering Jews than on kidnapping Jews because they realize that our society cannot handle it and will literally pay any price, even in ever-escalating torrents of our own blood. Surely Hezbollah has received that bloodcurdling message loud and clear.

It is interesting that, to my knowledge, Donald Trump has not mentioned the release of thousands of Arab terrorists and the attendant consequences of that folly, past, present, and future. In his mind, the deal is ceasefire for innocent hostages, including Israeli withdrawals from territory we repeatedly won at the cost of our soldiers’ lives. The exchange of innocents for terrorists is the humiliating part of the deal, effectively equates the two groups – in itself, a moral obscenity – and, as we have seen, is the face of victory for the Arabs.

It may be painful for us to accept this truth, but presently the Arabs are happy with the outcome of their invasion and massacre. They murdered Jews, the Jewish army is being forced to withdraw from Gaza, they do not care about their own loss of life or destruction of property, and they have won freedom for their imprisoned murderers, now free to murder again.

Those Israelis who associate the release of our hostages with “victory” are deluding themselves, and many intentionally because of their hatred of our government. The release of our hostages is not the face of victory. It is the face of “status quo,” merely restoring the situation that existed on October 6 when they weren’t hostages. If the world perceives – as it does – an exchange of “our prisoners” for “their prisoners,” we only have ourselves to blame. Instead of the raucous celebrations trumpeted in the media, we should feel much like the recipient of a heart transplant. The patient lives, and the family rejoices, but someone had to die for that patient to live.

It is indeed heartwarming to witness their freedom – they all have been given a new lease on life – but many did not survive, many died trying to free them and secure our future, and many will die in the future, G-d forbid, as a result of this ill-fated deal.

So why do we never learn from the past? Why do keep making the same mistakes repeatedly?

We rely on certain shibboleths in this society, among them how much we cherish life. There are others. We will pay price to bring a Jew to a Jewish burial, except when we don’t, as with Elie Cohen or Ron Arad. We will never leave anyone on the battlefield, except when we do, as with the aforementioned or Jonathan Pollard. Israel will not negotiate with terrorists, true decades ago but demonstrably false since the days of Oslo. Israel leads the world in negotiating, and negotiating poorly, with terrorists. Yet, I believe that our irrational response to these trying times is rooted in something far deeper than the catchwords that soothe our pain.

The State of Israel arose out of the ashes of the Holocaust. To be sure, the movement for Jewish statehood began long before the Holocaust, but it is undeniable that the Holocaust was a prime catalyst for Israel coming into being when it did. In essence, Israel was created not just in response to the Holocaust, but in the self-definition of the founders, Israel was the anti-Holocaust. The new Israeli Jew was the diametric opposite of the exile Jews, who were slaughtered in the millions without much resistance, passively, helpless.

Israel was supposed to be the antidote to the Holocaust, the promise that “never again” would Jews be gunned down en masse, forced to hide in closed rooms, attics, sheds, trees, bushes, and ditches. “Never again” would Jews be vulnerable and defenseless, tortured and incinerated, carted off by gleeful and malevolent foes to their deaths or at least an uncertain future. Never again! A functioning Jewish government with a powerful Jewish army would protect Jews from the helplessness that typified the exile Jew.

That Israeli self-image was shattered by the Hamas invasion of October 7. That day was the Holocaust reborn, if only, mercifully, for one day. Sure, there were no death camps – but before the Nazis constructed the death camps, the Einsatzgruppen – the SS paramilitary squads – rained their terror on Jews, going from village to village and house to house searching for Jews, ultimately murdering more than one million of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

The Einsatzgruppen in the guise of Hamas terrorists were reincarnated for one day – October 7 – even as we know from their own words that they would love to do it again and plan an encore. On that day, Jews hid by the thousands in barns and sheds and any place that would conceal them from the ravenous wolves who pursued them. Thousands of Jews ran for their lives from the bullets and bombs of our enemies, and hundreds were gunned down in cold blood. Many were tortured, humiliated, violated, and kidnapped. We even had our partisans spring into action – Jews by the thousands who raced down to Gaza on that holy and sad day to save their fellow Jews, repel the enemy, and defend the nation of Israel.

The Arab-Nazis demonstrated the same frenzied hatred of Jews as did their German-Nazi antecedents, their efforts lacking only scale and the capacity to murder even more Jews. The evil desire was exactly the same.

What was missing on October 7 was a functioning government and a functioning army – the very tools that we created in order to preclude another Holocaust. Every institution of society collapsed and left us vulnerable to the predations of the enemy, precisely as happened during the Holocaust. The government and the army began to function again in the days after October 7, with purpose, resolve, and direction, if not always with a precise definition of victory and a clear plan to achieve it, notwithstanding the slogans.

Hence, the army leadership ruled out the traditional demarcation of victory – conquest and retention of enemy territory and expulsion of a hostile population. Having dismissed that outcome, it left the government incapable of withstanding American pressure – whether from Biden or Trump – and left us susceptible to this recent craven surrender to terror.

The blow to our self-image – Israel as the antithesis to the Holocaust – was so intense that it led us to surrender to terror and, at least for now, undo the successes of the war, all to remove the stain of October 7 through the release of our hostages, notwithstanding the devastating price in blood we are bound to pay. It is as if the specter of the Holocaust weighs so heavily on our minds that victory and a strategic change in our relations with our enemies is superfluous. It was sufficient that we redeem Jewish honor by inflicting massive and deadly force on the enemy and devastating their territory. For many Israelis, not including the families of the hostages, this outcome revives their faith in Israel as the refuge and haven for Jews, the only place on earth where, in their thinking, Jews are safe, as risible as that sounds.

This thinking is short-sighted.

The “Israel as haven” trope has been a staple of Zionism since its founding and always a major incentive for Aliyah. Is it time to retire it? Certainly, Israel is a haven for Jews, and unlike during the Holocaust, Israel enabled us to take the war to our enemies and show them our righteous ferocity in defense of our lives and homeland. Yet, the Torah never promises us that we will be safe in Israel, only that “if you obey My statutes and observe My commandments… you will dwell safely in your land” (Vayikra 26:3,5). G-d gave us the land of Israel not so we should be safe but so that here we will create a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Safety is not the purpose. A holy state in a holy land is the purpose.

October 7 was such a shock to the Israeli self-image and awakened in all of us the latent insecurities of exile Jews that it has rightly caused many Israelis to turn inward, to seek a deeper connection to G-d, Torah, and the Jewish people, to find meaning amid the chaos, corruption, and cruelty. Our self-image has to change. The world offers us no sympathy for being victims. Indeed, more people than we can imagine delight in victimizing Jews.

We do not yearn to survive only so that we might survive; we yearn to survive because G-d has given us a life of purpose, a message for mankind, and mandated that we prepare the world for His kingdom. We are an eternal people not because we say we are but because the Eternal G-d has willed it, and because His Torah to which we are faithful is also eternal.

When we realize the nature of our destiny, we will no longer consider the Holocaust as a burden or the State of Israel as the Holocaust inverted. A people of destiny will make better decisions, spiritually and politically, and we will merit to hasten our redemption and the redemption of all mankind.