For a decade, the Goldin family has been fighting to return the body of their son, Hadar, to the grave of Israel.
The late Hadar Goldin fell in the battle in Rafah in 2014 during Operation Rock Ethan, and his body is still being held by Hamas. Since then the Goldin family has been fighting a hard and unpopular war, for some reason. Their demand is not to release thousands of terrorists in exchange for the release of their son, not even one terrorist. Theirs was, and still is, "humanitarian for humanitarian".
For a decade they have been protesting every week at the "Black Arrow" monument, for the return of Hadar and the return of the other abductees - the late Oron Shaul, Avra Mengistu and Hisham a-Sayed. For a decade they have been interviewed on every possible platform, running from parliament to parliament across Europe, at the United Nations , in the USA. They studied international law, accompanied by legal experts, and presented the government with all the tools that could be used to exert humanitarian pressure to release the abductees.
But we didn't listen.
We surrendered to the muscles of Hamas, who declared that only the release of masses of terrorists would return those abductees to us, and we did not want to exercise our own muscle at all.
We just preferred silence.
The humanitarian aid, the same millions of tons of goods that entered Gaza over the years, bought us a time of mock peace.
We convinced ourselves that through the Qatari money and the workers who came to work in Israel, we would prove to them that economic well-being is better than terrorism.
At the time of the Corona, the Goldin family demanded that the vaccines that would be transferred to the Gaza Strip be only part of a humanitarian deal, in exchange for the soldiers and civilians.
On the left they shouted at them with moral arrogance that they were harming an unmixed population, and on the right - they bought more silence.
But we were wrong - and the Goldin family was right.
The Goldin family didn't ask for much, they asked to make our abductees a burden on Hamas, instead of an asset.
It is a step of strength, not of weakness or submission, unlike a ruler's deal.
We didn't listen and we didn't understand how to put our abductees in the priority order against Gaza, and here we are with 136 abductees and abductees at the hands of Hamas, some of them are no longer alive.
We have no information about them, no visits from the Red Cross, we don't know what their medical condition is, we don't even know if the medicines that Hamas kindly agreed to receive for them really reached their destination.
But the State of Israel continues to make every possible mistake in the "humanitarian" matter.
At the beginning of the war, we were promised that not a liter of fuel would enter the Strip, today tens of thousands of such liters enter the Strip a day.
The photos of Hamas terrorists on the trucks clearly demonstrate where the fuel goes, that supposedly innocent aid.
He goes to Hamas first, buys more time in the terror camps, and the rest - to the residents of Gaza.
The State of Israel should have created a humanitarian buffer zone, limited humanitarian aid to a controlled geographic area, and not released it to any male Dalim from the moment he crosses the Kerem Shalom or Rafah crossings.
But she didn't, and the war goes on and on.
At the time of the Corona, the Goldin family demanded that the vaccines that would be transferred to the Gaza Strip be only part of a humanitarian deal, in exchange for the soldiers and civilians.
On the left they shouted at them with moral arrogance that they were harming an unmixed population, and on the right - they bought more silence
This week there was a small demonstration of displaced Gazans who are now in the center of the Gaza Strip, where the Gazans announced that they want to return to their homes in the north of the Gaza Strip.
The novelty of the demonstration is that it challenged Hamas itself, and some of them waved signs that read "Yes to the return of the prisoners."
The prisoners, in Gaza parlance, are our abductees.
Considering the terror regime of Hamas, this is a demonstration that should not be taken lightly, certainly when it is held in broad daylight and in a public manner.
Pressure on the population has a cumulative effect over time.
The humanitarian aid buys us fighting time because the international pressure on Israel in the civil matter is massive.
But the majority of the public in Israel should not accept the reality of the flow of humanitarian aid into the hands of Hamas.
The demand of the headquarters of the abductees and the public outrage must change: it is not "all for all", but "humanitarian for humanitarian".
The first brought us blood and tears, the second we never tried.
It's time.
were we wrong
We will fix it!
If you found an error in the article, we would appreciate it if you shared it with us