No one can tell a parent how to manage what feels like a war for their child's life. Or a daughter over her father. Or her brother. This is outside the scope of public debate. In the end, it's the life of their family members; Any advice, every criticism, every intention – can turn out to be fateful, perhaps even fatal.
But one thing must be clear: from the moment this thing becomes a business that talks, behaves and advances like a public struggle, it will eventually be treated as a public struggle, for better or for worse. It may well be that the fate of the abductees requires such a struggle, too petty to judge. But from the moment you take the business to the street, you have to be aware, as a society, of its public significance.
Because a struggle, like a struggle, immediately raises the question: against whom is the struggle? Who are they suing against? Who is the "bad" guy in this story? And what are the "bad guys" accused of? Poor priorities? In improper interests? Indifference and deafness?
Families of the abductees at the rally, photo: Yossi Zeliger
Rally for the abductees in Tel Aviv, photo: Gideon Markowitz
There is silence in the air - but in the end it will erupt. After all, this struggle is being waged mostly against the Kirya, and not with the institutions of the international community, parts of which provide moral and even material sponsorship to Hamas. You hear the criticism, the unease, outside the so-called "headquarters of the families of the abductees" but also inside it.
The language of the protest, the rituals of Saturday night rallies, talk of "escalating the protest" and blocking roads - should we name what raises suspicions of politicization? It's funny, I'm afraid to write what some of the families of abductees say openly. That's their right; I feel it's less of my right.
Go get mad at Harvard now
Here's what I can say: Struggle in wartime has a strategic price, even more so when it comes to a war with existential significance. First of all, because a public struggle reflects a broad social distrust of decision makers, and in the event of a war, a public struggle turns the very act of fighting into an issue at the center of public debate. If the message is "a hostage deal now and victory later," the enemy and the entire world understand that Israeli society is not united around the legitimacy or usefulness of the use of military force. Go get angry at Harvard or the Spanish prime minister now.
Harvard President Claudine Gay at a hearing held for heads of US universities against the backdrop of anti-Semitism on campuses, photo: AP
This obviously affects the price of the return, and it is expected that it will rise vis-à-vis Hamas as much as it resembles its leaders and easy intermediaries that with a little more pressure, a little more psychological terror, a little more pink on the guilt gland – it will be possible to achieve a dream reward in the form of "everyone for everyone" and a cessation of hostilities. And if war is existential, then it will be an existential loss.
But the deep danger has to do with undermining social cohesion and fanning a social rift over the very morality of the use of force and the use of military force at the present time. We create with our own hands a dilemma that will eventually descend to the surface level as well. Our commanders and soldiers will be torn by philosophical debates: whether the next order is liable to sentence a kidnapper, whether it is immoral; By what moral standard can it be attributed the status of a "black flag flying over it"?
Let there be no doubts: this rift will eventually seep into the army as well; Just as the empty threats of "dictatorship" nearly tore apart the people's army. This is not a call to silence anyone, certainly not a lively public discourse. But just before descending with signs and flares to the Ayalon Highway, it is worth thinking about the consequences.
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