The war will only end when Israelis understand this simple truth

Demonstrators call for the release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, outside Hakirya Base in Tel Aviv, January 18, 2025. (Jamal Awad/Flash90)

There was hardly a dry eye left at the emotional reunion of Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher, and Emily Damari with their loved ones after they returned home from more than 15 months of captivity in Gaza. An entire nation seemed to hold its breath until they were seen stepping out of the Red Cross into Israeli custody, at which point the floodgates burst open — one of the few collective moments of joy in well over a year.

Our Palestinian neighbors also experienced a bittersweet moment of joy last Sunday amid widespread death and destruction: they, too, celebrated the return of released prisoners who had survived Israel’s torture camps. One needed only look at the face of Palestinian parliamentarian Khalida Jarrar, released from prolonged administrative detention and so broken that she was almost unrecognizable, to imagine what they endured during their imprisonment. “There is no life in prison,” 23-year old Janin Amro, one of the freed Palestinian prisoners, told +972’s Oren Ziv. “It was essentially a cemetery.”

In Israel, the only force that could match the intensity of public joy over the hostages’ release was the outrage at Palestinians’ joy for their freed prisoners, who are categorically labeled as “terrorists” despite most having never been convicted of a crime. It’s a tautological mindset in which a Palestinian becomes a terrorist simply by virtue of being detained by Israel.

Consequently, their people are forbidden from celebrating their release, to the extent that the profoundly human tweet by the Palestinian Knesset member Ayman Odeh — which expressed joy over the release of both the hostages and prisoners, while adding that “we must free both peoples from the burden of occupation. We were all born free” — provoked an eruption of racist backlash. Now, efforts are already underway to have him expelled from the Knesset.

In a madness-driven and vengeful Israel, Palestinian detainees are not seen as human beings, with parents, sisters, brothers, or friends who are overcome with anxiety over their fate. Only we Israelis are allowed to rejoice.

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