I didn’t put two and two together. The names and the faces of the Hamas hostages circulated for days in the media with little recognition. But then my wife phoned. She was crying: “They’re our family.”
That’s when we stopped sleeping, and the drama, tortuous anyway, became personal. And my personal and professional lives became one.
The phone calls, emails and messages came from all sides. Israel wants to talk to me, my wife needs reassurance, my sons call: Dad, what do you know?
That’s when we stopped sleeping, and the drama, tortuous anyway, became personal. And my personal and professional lives became one.
Not much, at first. Then came the news: Two women released. Heart-stopping. Americans. Could this be Judith and Natalie? Mother and daughter. It must be.
And tears of anguish turned to tears of joy.
But not for long. Three other members of the family were ultimately killed in the terrorist rampage. More are still held hostage.
They’re not close family. The weddings and funerals kind. But that’s the point. If we talk of six degrees of separation, in tiny Israel it’s more like one or two. And with so many families descending from Holocaust survivors, like mine, relatives are not a dime a dozen. In fact, in my generation, I only ever had three. That’s one reason why the taking of so many hostages is such a shock to the Israeli nation, and to Jews everywhere.
The Jewish slogan after Nazis murdered and burned six million Jews was “Never Again.” I always considered that a vacuous promise. After all, in England, where I grew up, and in the United States, everywhere really, times had changed and we were safe; welcomed; valued.
Well, “Never Again” is now. Who would have thought? Hamas, and others, never call out: Kill the Israelis. It is always Kill the Jews.
Thankfully, over the past 48 hours two more hostages have been released. Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper are home safe now with their families. But that leaves over 200 still in captivity.
I don’t know what it is like to be a hostage. To be chained or tied up in a dank tunnel. Hostages are not prisoners, confined for a crime or a cause. They are pawns, held to be exchanged for something of value to the hostage-holders. They are human shields, and they know it.
They are of value. That is their hope. But the Israeli hostages held by Hamas are not naive. Many of them are young adults, former soldiers, some may even have been trained how to survive as a prisoner. It is hard to think of the elderly who need their medications, or are frail, and the babies and infants who need care and love, and the young man, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose arm was reportedly blown off while he was captured. Without proper medical care, how will he survive? The Israeli army used to have something called the Hannibal Protocol. To avoid exactly this scenario, Israeli soldiers were directed to do everything possible to prevent a fellow soldier from being kidnapped, even if it meant killing him or her in the crossfire. Hostages are Israel’s nightmare, resulting in lop-sided prisoner exchanges. In 1983, Israel swapped over 4,500 prisoners for six soldiers; in 2011, one Israeli soldier was exchanged for 1,027 Palestinians. That protocol has since been amended. But the existential question it posed remains. What is a soldier’s life worth? What about a civilian? While army generals call for an invasion of the Gaza Strip, the government is hesitating. The hostages are a big factor. So is the anticipated death toll of Israeli soldiers. So is the feared international outrage if large numbers of Palestinian civilians are killed. Awaiting their fate are the remaining hostages. At the rate of two being released every four days, it would take a year to get them all home. It’s likely that, instead, their freedom will be decided by the ground invasion. If it happens, many, if not most, could die. If it does not happen, the hostages would probably come home safely, eventually, swapped for thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. The families of the hostages are torn too. Between wanting punishment for the Hamas terrorists who murdered and stole their loved ones, and praying for their safe return.
Martin Fletcher
Martin Fletcher is NBC News' former Tel Aviv bureau chief and correspondent. Fletcher has received numerous awards including five Emmys for his work in the Middle East and around the world. He has authored two non-fiction books: “Breaking News: A Memoir” and “Walking Israel: A Personal Search for the Soul of a Nation.” 
