To: Les H who wrote (45578 ) 4/18/2025 10:05:26 AM From: Les H Read Replies (1) | Respond to Israelis Want to the War to Stop, but Only Until the Hostages Are ReleasedAir force pilots, commandos, police officers, military medical personnel: thousands of Israelis have signed public calls to end the Gaza war. They all share a troubling element – blindness to the suffering of Gazans, or any aspect of the war besides the hostages It's heartening to think that the Israeli people are driving a movement against the war. But there's a troubling element to this call to end it. If the hostages' fate is the only argument for ending the military assault on Gaza, what happens if the government finally does reach a deal to release most or all of those remaining in captivity? Very little in the latest petitions suggests that the Israeli public wants to stop the war for its own sake; Israelis might seize on the call to "flatten Gaza" once "bring them home" is out of the way. There is strong evidence that hostage release is near-exclusive justification for ending the war, in Israeli public discourse. Marking one year of the war, a survey by the Israel Democracy Institute last fall found that 53 percent of Israelis thought it was time to end the war (45 percent of Jews and 93 percent of Arab respondents). But when those respondents were asked why they thought the war should end, 53 percent – the top reason by a wide margin – said the fighting endangered the hostages. Just 6 percent cited "the great cost in human life and the desire for quiet, peace, and security." The government clearly hopes the war never ends at all. During the fleeting speculation in late February over the next phase of the hostage release/cease-fire deal, it sought to stretch out "stage 1." That would have entailed Hamas continuing to release hostages, without Israel committing to a permanent cease-fire. A telling report on the government's thinking in Israel Hayom , the government-friendly free daily paper, carried a blunt headline: "The goal: First the hostages, then the war." What would happen to public attitudes if the hostages were taken out of the equation? In a survey question from March that did not mention hostages, the Institute for National Security Studies found that 57 percent of Israelis supported fresh campaigns in Gaza, either by air or ground operations (over two-thirds of Jewish respondents). Hostage family members themselves have made the argument that hostage release can be followed by resurgent war. Haaretz
