MK Amit Halevi (Likud) sharply criticized Israel’s handling of negotiations with the Hamas terror organization over the return of the body of Lt. Hadar Goldin, who fell in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge and whose body has been held captive illegally for the last 11 years.
“What is really happening regarding the return of Hadar Goldin’s body? What’s happening is an exact reflection of the situation the demonic Hamas intended for us to reach,” Halevi wrote.
“It stands there shielded by a multilayered protective vest - Egyptian, Qatari, Turkish, and behind them European and American - and conducts a pseudo-legitimate negotiation over blatant public violations of the agreement, knowing that it is protected and that Israel won’t blow up the overall deal, because they won’t let it collapse. Everyone knows they're lying, manipulating, and mocking the cooperation of the West and of us with them, yet no one is willing to ‘spoil the party,’ which includes returning the bodies and returning to so-called normalcy.”
Halevi continued, describing this “normalcy” as a dangerous illusion: “It’s the routine of October 6th - the routine in which we celebrate Simchat Torah in our synagogues or at the Nova festival; the routine of border patrols outside the fence; the Gazan routine of educating children to annihilate Israel in schools, the routine of rearming weapons factories and smuggling arms. It’s also the routine where the defense minister announces to the media that he’s instructed the IDF to destroy all tunnels in Gaza, while every intelligence soldier knows Hamas is now rebuilding its tunnels at a frenzied pace across its sectors and beyond.”
Halevi warned that this situation represents a tragic moral collapse: “This return to ‘routine’ is a tragic moral failure - a reflection of our inability to face the truth: the truth about ourselves, the truth about our enemies, and the truth about those who claim to be our friends. It’s also a dangerous illusion that we will pay for in terrible bloodshed in the near and distant future.”
He concluded: “Hadar Goldin must be brought back to be buried in Israel. This is our sacred duty to him and to his family. But as his parents have said many times before - not ‘in exchange’ for a return to the routine of Hamas’s rearmament, but the opposite.”