It's Time to Surrender and Achieve "Victory"

Hillel Biton Rosen: "We have 20 live hostages and 39 dead since the end of the last ceasefire - this doesn't make sense. They also have fathers and mothers who are hurting - we can't exchange blood for blood. Anyone who says 'release the hostages at any cost' - the price should be to strangle the Gaza Strip, have them beg on their knees for a glass of water and then we'll see how everyone says 'at any cost'. What about the 3 families whose lives were ruined?"

Slowly, the truth is being said. Still it is but a whisper, but it has to be said. The Gazans are saying that 4 of the 20 assumed living hostages have died. Since truth is not a well known concept there, it's hard to believe them.

But in just the last few weeks, 28 Israelis soldiers have died while hoping to bring home the 20. The concept of "at any cost" is not a Jewish concept. We do not believe in sacrifice. We do not trade the life of one innocent for the life of another.

I cannot imagine the agony of the 20 families who know their loved ones are living an unimaginable life of agony, of hunger. It is beyond agonizing for a non-family member...how much more so would it be for someone who knows him, loves him? I know. I don't know how I know other than the sick feeling in my heart. But don't you see...do we bet the lives of our sons on the hope that after almost 650 days (650 days, 9 hours and 14 minutes)....we can somehow manage the impossible? Because that's what your dream of "bringing them home" is. Impossible.

We might have brought them home if you had thrown your strength WITH the government and army instead of against them but you knew it was futile for you to try to fight Hamas. They don't give a damn about us, about you, about our pain. So you fought our government and all you really succeeded in doing was crippling the ONE entity who cared enough to try.

Now, it's time. With pain, with agony, with tears, with regrets...to admit it's over. They'll never come home. Please stop. Please stop causing our sons to get killed.

Unfair? If you can blame us for your hostage not to be home, we can blame you for the sons we've lost trying to reach the impossible star you demanded we catch.

Stop. Let us end this war now. The right way - the way it should have been conducted. With as much mercy as they showed us on October 7.

The hostages won't come home alive - at least most of them won't, but at least we will bury no more.