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Israeli political commentator Daniel Mendel certainly thinks that the war in Gaza has ended in a historic defeat for Israel. But the war is not yet over. Hamas is crowing that it is still standing, but will it still be standing when the hostage-for-criminals deal is over, and the Israelis realize, to their horror, just how many of those “98 hostages” were murdered by Hamas? Will the IDF not again gird its collective loins and reenter the Gazan cities it has pulled out of, in order to destroy whatever weapons Hamas may have managed to keep from being seized by the IDF, and to kill what remains of its combatants, including the estimated 15,000 new recruits — young and inexperienced in war — that Hamas now claims to have attracted? Mendel thinks the deal Israel has made is a “tragic and historic mistake.” He is convinced that the release of so many terrorist murderers will cause tremendous numbers of Israeli casualties in the future. He may be right. More on Mendel’s rage and despair at this lopsided exchange can be found here: “Israel’s Hostage Deal Is a Tragic and Historic Mistake,” by Daniel Mendel, Algemeiner, January 29, 2025:
The Gaza hostage-ceasefire deal is a massive and crippling defeat for Israel. There is no other way to frame it.
After 15 months of fighting, the best deal Israel could secure was releasing 57 Palestinian criminals and murderers for every Israeli hostage.
Judging from a partial list of those being released, it seems very likely that far more than 98 Israelis will die as a result of this deal.
It is also clear that Israel has failed in its war aims to eradicate Hamas from Gaza and replace it with a new government. The war didn’t establish a deterrent to future terrorism; in fact, this hostage deal will likely *increase* the risk of terrorism, especially hostage-taking.
As Palestinian Media Watch has pointed out, the seeds of the October 7 massacre were planted in 2011, when Israel exchanged 1,027 Palestinian terrorists and murderers for one living Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.
The terrorists released in 2011 went on to kill or aid in the murder of more than a thousand Israelis, and planned the October 7 massacre itself. (Yahya Sinwar was one of those released in 2011; similarly, many terrorist leaders and masterminds are being released this time).
The Gilad Shalit deal taught the Palestinian people one critical lesson: kidnapping Israelis works.
Now, once again, Palestinians are seeing the fruits of their labors with the absurd release of 1,900 Palestinian terrorists and prisoners for 33 Israelis (who aren’t even all alive).
Of course, we all want to see the 98 Israeli hostages come home — but the definition of insanity is to repeat the same policy and expect a different result; yet, that’s exactly what Israel has done….
It was such a difficult choice. The pressure on Netanyahu from hostage families was enormous, and it seems that President Trump was intent, no matter what the cost to Israel, to seeing that a “deal was done” by the time he took office and could take credit. The Prime Minister caved, although he did reserve the right to renew the war against Hamas should the terror group violate its commitment to return all of the hostages and to halt its barrages against Israel. Now we shall see if, as Daniel Mendel says, this lopsided swap turns out to have been a “tragic and historic mistake,” with many of the freed terrorists returning to terrorism, or whether the requirement that the worst of them be sent neither to Gaza nor to Judea and Samaria, but to other Arab countries, will have been enough to keep them from being able to harm Israelis again. I hope that Daniel Mendel turns out to be wrong. I fear that he will turn out to be right.