Just a week ago, on Saturday, the images of Or Levy, Eli Sharabi, and Ohad Ben Ami flashed across our screens – emaciated, hollow-eyed, their faces carved with suffering – it was impossible to look away. The three, who had endured 491 days in Hamas captivity, were barely recognizable, their bodies wasted to shadows of the people they once were. Starved, robbed of 30% of their body weight, they looked like survivors of another nightmare, another time. It was this image – this brutal echo of our history – that cracked something open in the heart of the nation.
But if there is one thing Israelis understand, it’s that pain never comes in neat shapes. The same images that made many cry out, “Bring them home now – at any cost,” made others say, “No more deals. Hamas will only stop when we stop them – permanently.”
The Lazar Research poll we published in The Jerusalem Post tells the story clearly: 68% of Israelis said the images of the returned hostages made them want to expedite efforts to free the rest. But here’s the twist – 13% felt the opposite, saying the suffering they saw only hardened their resolve to stop negotiations and resume the war.
And then there’s the third group – 19% whose views didn’t change at all. I’ve spoken to some of them. Their reasoning is cold but clear: “This is what Hamas wants – to break us with our own humanity. We can’t let them.”
This is the paradox we are trapped in: Two Jewish values, both sacred, both in conflict.
For most Israelis, the instinct to save the hostages – every hostage, at any cost – is as fundamental as breath. It’s why, even today, years after his release, the name Gilad Schalit is spoken like a prayer. It’s why the families of hostages like Eli Sharabi carry on with an almost impossible strength, even after their worlds have been shattered.
Sharabi, after 491 days of hell, emerged to find his life obliterated. His daughters, Noya, 16, and Yahel, 13, and his wife, Leanne, were all murdered on October 7 in Be’eri. His brother, Yossi, was murdered in captivity, his body still held in Gaza. Yet, when his kibbutz issued a statement, it was about love: “We will embrace Eli and support him with everything we have.”
How can we look at Eli and say, “Sorry, your nightmare continues because deals make us weak””?
But here’s the other side, and it cannot be dismissed. The same images of Or, Eli, and Ohad – starved, humiliated, paraded like trophies by Hamas fighters – are burned into the national consciousness for another reason. They looked like Muselmänner – the skeletal, broken figures of the Holocaust death camps. Even US President Donald Trump, watching the footage, said bluntly: “They look like Holocaust survivors.”
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar spoke around the same lines: “Hamas has committed crimes against humanity. The Hamas-Nazi evil must be eradicated.”
This is why, when we asked Israelis if the comparison between Hamas and the Nazis was justified, more than half – 51% – said yes. Among coalition voters, the number shot to 60%.
But – and this is crucial – 30% of Israelis disagreed, saying that while Hamas is evil, the comparison to the Holocaust is wrong. And 11% rejected it outright, calling it exaggerated. You can feel the heat in the debate: Are we preserving history or are we distorting it?
I’ve been covering this country long enough to know: This is not a new fight. It is an old, raw one.
In 2015, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu controversially suggested that the mufti of Jerusalem, not Hitler, inspired the Holocaust, the backlash wasn’t just about facts. It was about the sacredness of the Holocaust’s memory.
And now, the images of Or Levy and Eli Sharabi have reopened the wound. For some, the comparison is not a rhetorical tool – it is a cry from the gut. “If you can’t see October 7 as a continuation of our 20th-century trauma, you are blind.”
But for others, it is equally clear: “Comparisons to the Holocaust are not weapons for war. They are sacred boundaries.”
The Lazar poll also showed that this moral chasm splits straight down political lines. Among coalition voters, 60% embrace the Hamas-Nazi comparison – for them, October 7 was not just terror; it was a pogrom. It is why 31% of them also support retaking Gaza completely, rebuilding settlements, and placing it under military rule.
But among opposition voters, only 47% see Hamas and the Nazis as the same, and a full 45% prefer a two-state solution. And when it comes to the hostages? They are almost unanimous: 89% say, ‘Bring them all back. Deal or no deal.’
The difference is clear: For the Right, this is a war to prevent another Shoah. For the Left, it is a war to save what makes us human.
I keep returning to the image of Eli Sharabi – not when he crossed the border into Israel, extraordinarily skinny and broken, but when he learned the truth.
Eli came back dreaming of reunion. At Sheba Medical Center, he told IDF soldiers he couldn’t wait to see his daughters, Noya and Yahel, and his wife. He didn’t know. He didn’t know they were gone – murdered in their home on October 7. He didn’t know his brother Yossi was murdered in captivity and is still held in Gaza.
When they told him, a reporter at Channel 12 said you could feel the air leave the room. “Eli is returning from an impossible reality into an even harder one,” his kibbutz said.
And yet, somehow, Eli is not asking for vengeance. He is asking for the other hostages to come home.
The Impossible Question
So here is where we are:
If we save the hostages through deals and ceasefires, we strengthen Hamas – who will, without question, kidnap again. Because it worked. Because we made it work.
But if we choose war above all else, we sacrifice the hostages still there – people like Eli’s brother Yossi, people we may never see again.
There is no path that does not cost us a piece of our soul.
And that’s why Israelis are so deeply, painfully divided. Because every choice is a betrayal of something we hold sacred.
For all our arguments, for all our agony, there is something that binds every side of this impossible debate together.
We fight for the hostages – because every life is a world. We fight Hamas – because Jewish history tells us what happens when you don’t stop genocidal hate.
These are not contradictions. They are the twin pillars of who we are.
Hamas wants to break us on this contradiction. They want us to believe we can’t be both compassionate and strong. But they are wrong. Because this is what it means to be Jewish: to hold heartbreak and defiance in the same hand and call it hope.
So what will Israel do? I’ll tell you: We will fight for our people and our principles at the same time.
We will press the war – because October 7 taught us that evil unchecked becomes genocide.
And we will bring the hostages home – because a Jewish state that abandons its children is no state at all.
Hamas will not break us. Neither will this impossible choice.
Because Israelis know something the world always forgets:
You can win a war with strength. But you only win peace with heart.
Jesus Christ is King
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