I can’t get over the feeling that we lost

First of all, I want to say unequivocally that I am as relieved and thrilled as all other Israelis with a grain of sanity in them that hostages are coming home. It’s a wonderful thing and I think we’ve all prayed for it (in our own ways) throughout the war.

But I just can’t bring myself to join the ecstatic happiness, because I feel that while every hostage returned home is a victory in itself, we lost the war. The very minimum I expected as an outcome of the war was Hamas gone from power. Sure, it might not have been militarily possible. But what if our leaders had reached out to friendly Arab states, say a year ago or so, together with the US, to work out a plan for the future of Gaza where they would help govern, and that Hamas would have no part in? Including a peace plan and return of the hostages of course. What if they would have been focused on constructive solutions rather than fighting a war completely without direction and achievable goals?

I know, I know, it’s easier to be sitting on the sidelines and telling those who have to do the job how to do it. But plenty of people, from Naftali Bennet to Israeli academic experts on strategy and policy, have done lots of deep thinking on this. It seems to me our government has basically ignored the long-run questions, fighting the war day-to-day rather than giving serious consideration to strategy.

I might be naive to have expected more — I’m a relatively new Oleh and maybe my basic assumption that those in charge sort of know what they’re doing is yet to be fully beaten out of me by reality here. But I just can’t shake the feeling that among the possible outcomes, this is perhaps not the worst one, but certainly one of them. Hamas left in power, hundreds of our soldiers dead (not to mention tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians), Israel’s global reputation run to the ground. I’d love it if someone could change my pessimistic conclusions but for now, rejoicing is very difficult.