Dudu Saada hosts Simcha Goldin, father of Hadar, who was captured by Hamas during Operation Tzuk Eitan and declared an “Israeli casualty of war” almost a decade ago.
Simcha shares his pain after the disaster down south: "I have a very heavy sense of guilt. For nine years, two months and three weeks, we were unable to bring Hadar for burial in Israel. During this struggle, we felt that this neglect was creating a problematic situation that would end in an abyss. For years we tried to alert the political, military, and religious leaderships, and they all turned their backs on us in one way or another. They all said that it was “only two soldiers”, and that they were martyrs, all the excuses of these people brought this disaster upon us. Our first goal was to return Hadar, and the second was that it won't happen again. And it did."
"I expected the religious leadership to understand the importance of the mitzvah of burying the dead and redeeming captives. I talked about it with several rabbis who denied it. They did not understand the value of the mitzvah, its depth, the impact, and the consequences of denying the mitzvah, so you bring disaster upon yourself, which gives you one serious slap to make you realize where you went wrong.
And the military leadership too. When you ignore your enemy, you define it differently. The enemy is a terrorist organization that they defined as a proxy of Iran, and did not deal with Hamas. As I have said many times, whoever abandons the deceased, will abandon the wounded, and will also abandon the living. This is what happened on Simchat Torah. There are prisoners, murdered, children, adults, and women who were captured because the army did not protect them and because the state did not protect them. Hamas, the terrorist organization, entered and occupied the kibbutzim, moshavim, and IDF outposts. If we don't return them, what will happen to the Israeli society? I suggest not talking about the political leadership. Some of them are the same people from Hadar’s time. We don't have even one we can call a leader. They all failed."
"On Friday, the holiday eve, we were at the Black Arrow Monument. The council head, Ofir OBM brought a group there, we sat and drank coffee with him.
The next morning he was no longer with us. He was one of the first killed – together with his son. Simchat Torah morning we were in Jerusalem. The sirens began and we realized we were under heavy attack. On Saturday night we returned to Kfar Saba and immediately started working. One of our biggest difficulties as a family was that we were alone. We felt alone. We realized that this catastrophe now belongs also to many other people, and they should not feel the same way. We already had at our disposal two thousand psychologists specializing in trauma treatment and we opened a hotline for immediate phone response.
"Nowadays, when we talk about alive or dead soldiers and civilians, we should start with Oron Shaul, because he was the first to be abandoned in Tzuk Eitan, and then Hadar Goldin and the civilians. Then we go from there. IDF spokesman Brigadier General Hagari said this explicitly. Gal Hirsh too said: Hadar and Oron as soldiers are included in the total number that is continuously reassessed, and the civilians too are included in the number that is continuously reassessed. We need to return those who are in the hands of Hamas."