I'm going to be brutally painfully and uncomfortably honest. But first, I want you to know that I get it. I really do. If my family member was being held by Hamas, I'd probably be out there shrieking and blocking roads too. I hope I would. The pain these hostage families are going through is unimaginable.
G-d knows if any of us were hostages, we would likely want our families to be kicking and screaming and turning over every single stone to get us back,
But we need to face facts: these protests are becoming a massive liability for Israel's security. And nobody wants to say it out loud because it feels like betraying the hostages, or even worse: causing more pain to their families whose minute by minute existence is sheer torture.
The painful irony is that these protests might actually be making it harder to get the hostages back. When Hamas sees us fighting each other in the streets and basically doing their destabilization work for them - why would they rush to make a deal? They're probably sitting back and watching us tear ourselves apart.
We're playing right into Hamas's hands, and we're doing it because we're desperate and heartbroken. But there's a difference between fighting for the hostages and accidentally sabotaging our own ability to rescue them.
I can already hear the angry responses: "You don't understand!" "What if it was your family?" But that's exactly the point - we need to be smarter than our emotions right now. Not colder, not less determined to bring everyone home - but smarter about how we do it.
This isn't about silencing the families. It's about channeling their pain into actions that actually help rather than hurt our cause. Because right now, we're shooting ourselves in the foot. And Hamas is loving every minute of it.
