A quiet yet chilling practice has emerged among Israeli soldiers serving in the Gaza war: They are writing to their families, asking not to be exchanged for prisoners if captured by terrorists. These handwritten letters and private conversations are tragic markers of sacrifice — symbols not only of individual courage but also of a country reckoning with one of the most wrenching moral dilemmas in its history. As Israel weighs its next steps in its ongoing war against Hamas, the debate over its hostages may reveal more about its soul than its strategy.

At the heart of this dilemma is the hostage-prisoner exchange. Since the war’s onset, 140 Israeli hostages — men, women, and children, soldiers and peace activists — have been released by Hamas, in addition to eight others have been rescued by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the bodies of 57 who were recovered after dying in captivity or during rescue attempts. In return for the 140 released hostages, Israel has freed over 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, among them convicted terrorists, murderers, and suspected extremists. The trade-offs are stark and unsettling.

The releases have, on one hand, lifted national morale and reminded Israelis that their government will go to extraordinary lengths to protect its own after the terrible failures on Oct. 7, 2023. Hostage deals have reunited families and given hope to a grieving nation. On the other hand, the exchanges have raised fears that Israel is incentivizing hostage-taking and reintroducing hardened, often more radicalized terrorists back into an already volatile region. Critics of the deals worry that every released terrorist is a future bomb.

Avishai, an Israeli-American reservist in the IDF’s Shiryon (Tank) Brigade, knows these tensions intimately. On his third deployment since the Hamas invasion of Oct. 7, Avishai suffered a life-altering injury when a tank missile malfunctioned, sending shrapnel into his eye. Despite qualifying for medical leave, he chose to redeploy.

“I would switch places with any of the hostages right now. I am willing to die for them,” Avishai said. “But I don’t think the war should ever have become just about the hostages.”

Toppling Hamas, Avishai believes, should take precedence.

“I buried friends who died fighting on Oct. 7,” Avishai shared. “Where is their say in all of this?”

Avishai is not alone in this view. While polling suggests about 70 percent of Israelis support hostage releases at any cost, a sizable minority has expressed reservations.

The current war has seen exchanges carried out in tightly choreographed, haunting sequences — Israeli hostages walked by masked gunmen, some barefoot and gaunt, others silent and stunned. Some were children, others old men; some, heartbreakingly, were dead. This past month Hamas released a propaganda video of an emaciated Israeli hostage, Evyatar David, staring into a camera lens, crying uncontrollably, while being forced to dig his own grave. The intentional, theatrical psychological cruelty involved in these exchanges has only compounded the national trauma and with it the impossibility of straightforward calculation.

Only Power Frees

The Tikvah Forum — an advocacy group founded by parents, siblings, and friends of Israelis abducted on Oct. 7 — believes total victory over Hamas is the only way to ensure a return of the remaining hostages. “As long as Hamas believes it can survive in Gaza, they will never release all the hostages,” said Zvika Mor, co-founder of the Tikvah Forum and father of Eitan, who was captured during the Oct. 7 attack while working security at the Nova music festival. Eitan is believed to be one of the remaining living hostages in Gaza. “The endless negotiations give Hamas the illusion of legitimacy,” Zvika added in an interview with Israeli media, “and prolong the suffering of our families.”

“I want a deal where Hamas says, ‘OK, take all the hostages because we are defeated,’” said another Tikvah Forum member, Riki Baruch, whose brother-in-law, Uriel, was killed in Hamas captivity.

In January, Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir threatened to leave the coalition government if a deal to release Palestinian prisoners was struck, calling on Israel’s Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, to join him. “I am preventing such a disastrous deal to ensure the deaths of hundreds of soldiers were not in vain,” Ben Gvir declared. “Maximum military pressure on Hamas is how we release every hostage and ensure Israel’s long-term security.”

No One Left Behind

Supporters of the swaps, however, argue that Israel’s most powerful message is its humanity and its dedication to maintaining a social contract written in blood. In a region defined by brutality, they say, that is its greatest strength. “A deal is completely unfair,” said Estrella Vicuna, a Colombian immigrant to Israel whose friend lost her daughter, Ivonne, and Ivonne’s husband, at the Nova festival. “Politically, the deal is terrible. But we have no choice. We need those people here to close the circle and grieve.”

The hostage dilemma sits at the intersection of the strategic and the sacred. It has fractured dinner tables and unified street protests. Some, like journalist Amir Tibon, argue that refusing to swap prisoners could unravel Israeli democracy from within — that internal division, not external threats, is the greater danger.

“Divisions within Israel are seen by our enemies as opportunities,” Tibon said in an interview with podcaster Dan Senor, referencing the political temperature within Israel in the previous year that led up to Oct. 7. “There is not going to be an issue that divides Israeli society more now than if the hostages all come back in caskets, or not at all. That is my biggest nightmare. It will tear apart our society.”

According to national polling surveys, the share of Israelis who favor bringing home the hostages as the most important goal has risen steadily over the last 22 months, while the share who prioritize dismantling Hamas has fallen. The data reveals that among those who consider toppling Hamas to be the most important goal, a large majority (74 percent) think that both goals can be achieved simultaneously; while among those who rank bringing home the hostages as the most important goal, a majority (59 percent ) think that the two goals cannot be achieved together. Whether the different Israeli goals of this war are helplessly intertwined, distinctive, or somewhere in between remains uncertain.

Memory as Compass — or Caution

Past swaps only deepen the complexity. Many, like Avishai, remember Israel’s 2011 prisoner exchange with Hamas in which over 1,000 prisoners — including Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the Oct. 7 massacre — were released in return for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Israeli analyst Dan Schueftan famously called the deal “the greatest significant victory for terrorism that Israel has made possible since its establishment.” In addition to Shalit, Israel has exchanged live prisoners for corpses, as with Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in 2008. Each time, a tortured debate took place in Israeli society.

“I told my parents I wouldn’t want to be exchanged if I were taken,” Avishai said. “I told them that back in 2012, after Shalit came home, and I believe it even more now.” IDF protocol, grim as it is, Avishai explained, often calls for striking the site of a hostage-taking attempt to prevent capture. “If God forbid that were to happen to me,” he added, “I’d want them to do exactly that.”

It’s not bravado, he said. It’s a calculation — one that Avishai’s father, Joseph, struggles with every day. Joseph, who has five sons in combat units, sees his family woven deeply into the fabric of Israel’s fight for survival.

“As a father, I’m proud that my son would make such a request of me,” he said. “But I don’t know what I would do if it actually came to be. The war is going on too long. And it’s not just the soldiers suffering. The families are too. We need to end the war now by defeating Hamas. So that what happened on Oct. 7 never happens again.”

A Debate That Cannot Be Settled — Only Endured

Around the world, governments have traded spies, soldiers, and civilians in exchange deals, with varying degrees of transparency. The US — a country of over 350 million people — exchanged WNBA star Brittney Griner for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. Germany and other European nations have quietly participated in exchanges involving ISIS. Some hostages are journalists or aid workers; others are pawns of war. The moral math rarely adds up cleanly.

What makes Israel’s situation unique is scale, history, and the emotional centrality of the hostage issue to its national identity. Israel is not just a country; it is a nation — a nation of people forged through collective perseverance. These hostages, being traded, treated as points of leverage and weakness, in a way almost commodified, are not strangers or distant, abstract members of a society; they are the life force and engine that enable the nation’s existence.

This is a country born out of impossible choices, where every conflict feels existential, and every decision echoes in the memories of Holocaust survivors and immigrants who rebuilt their lives from rubble. In this regard, the principle of never leaving a soldier behind is not just a military doctrine — it is part of the social contract.

The people of Israel debate, march, fight, and mourn. At hostage rallies in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, parents clutch posters and demand their loved ones back. At military funerals, flags are draped over fresh earth. At home, families like Joseph’s wonder who might be next to go, or not come home. There is fatigue, anguish, and doubt.

The mission, as David Ben-Gurion declared in 1948, was to establish a Jewish state. But the project of sustaining one — ethically, strategically, and together — is perhaps the harder task.

“There are no easy answers,” Avishai said. “But we have to be brave enough to ask the questions. Even the ones that hurt.”

The Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice (DOJ) said on Tuesday that it has amassed sufficient evidence to prove that George Washington University violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, alleging that the institution responded to campus antisemitism “by acting deliberately indifferent” to the harm it posed to Jewish students and faculty.

“The division finds that GWU took no meaningful action and was instead deliberately indifferent to the complaints it received, the misconduct that occurred, and the harms that were suffered by its Jewish and Israeli students and faculty,” the agency said while sharing a document containing its findings. “The Justice Department will seek immediate remediation with GWU for its civil rights violations.”

George Washington University, speaking through spokesperson Shannon McClendon, responded to the Justice Department in a statement which summarized the institution’s actions and policies while stopping short of offering a contentious refutation of the government’s case.

“We have taken appropriate action under university policy and the law to hold individuals or organizations accountable, including during the encampment, and we do not tolerate behavior that threatens our community or undermines meaningful dialogue,” McClendon said. “We have worked diligently with members of GW’s Jewish community, as well as Jewish community organizations, city, and federal authorities to protect the GW community from antisemitism and we remain committed to working with them to ensure every student has the right to equal educational opportunities without fear of harassment and abuse.”

As previously reported, George Washington University in Washington, DC has been a hub of extreme anti-Zionist activity that school officials have struggled to quell. A major source of such conduct has been the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which, among other things, has threatened a Jewish professor and intimidated Jews on campus.

Recently, a student used her commencement speech to lodge accusations of apartheid and genocide against Israel, a notion trafficked by neo-Nazi groups and jihadist terror organizations.

The student, Cecilia Culver, accused Israel of targeting Palestinians “simply for [their] remaining in the country of their ancestors” and said that GW students are passive contributors to the “imperialist system.” An economics and statistics major, Culver deceived administrators who selected her to address the Columbian College of the Arts and Sciences ceremony, the university said in a statement, claiming she strayed from her prepared remarks.

GW faculty have also allegedly contributed to the promotion of antisemitism on campus. In 2023, former psychology professor Lara Sheehi was accused of verbally abusing and discriminating against her Jewish graduate students.

As recounted in a 2023 civil rights complaint filed by StandWithUs, Sheehi was accused of expressing contempt for Jews when, on the first day of term in August 2022, she asked every student to share information about their backgrounds and cultures. Replying to a student who revealed that she was Israeli, Sheehi allegedly said, “It’s not your fault you were born in Israel.” Jewish students said they made several attempts to persuade the university to correct Sheehi’s behavior or arrange an alternative option for fulfilling the requirements of her course. Each time, StandWithUs alleged, administrators said nothing could be done.

Later, the complaint added, Sheehi spread rumors that her Jewish students were “combative” racists and filed misconduct charges against them. One student told The Algemeiner at the time that she never learned what university policies Sheehi accused her and her classmates of violating.

In May, a civil lawsuit recounted dozens of antisemitic incidents which occurred at the university following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. It alleged that school officials failed to respond to adequately to them because of anti-Jewish, as well as anti-Zionist, bias. Among the incidents detailed, the campus Hillel Center was vandalized; someone threw a rock through the window of a truck owned by a Jewish advocacy group; and a Jewish student was told to “kill yourself” and “watch your back” in a hate message which also called her a “filthy k—ke.”

That and more transpired, court documents charge.

“Protesters at GWU raised repulsive, antisemitic signs and shouted slogans like ‘final solution,’ ‘the irony of being what you once hatred,’ a message that equated the swastika to the Star of David; and ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ an express call for violence against Jews,” the complaint adds. “Protesters vandalized university property in what amounted to rioting and blocked Jewish students from traversing campus freely, attending class, and otherwise engaging in educational opportunities.”

The plaintiffs, Sabrina Soffer and Ari Shapiro, said in court documents that the university’s anemic response to campus antisemitism constituted a violation of Title VI. They are seeking damages and injunctive relief.

On Tuesday, assistant attorney general Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s civil rights division said the Trump administration will continue identifying universities which allegedly miscarried justice, saying, “Every student has the right to educational opportunities without fear of harassment or abuse. No one is above the law, and universities that promulgate antisemitic discrimination will face legal consequences.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

Iran and South Africa held high-level military talks this week as both nations seek to deepen cooperation and strengthen their partnership against what they called “global arrogance and aggressive colonial approaches.”

On Tuesday, Iranian Maj. Gen. Amir Hatami, chief of staff of Iran’s army, met with Gen. Rudzani Maphwanya, the visiting chief of the South African National Defense Force, in Tehran.

During a joint press conference, Hatami said that both countries share a strong commitment to opposing “colonialism and global arrogance,” with South Africa playing a significant role in Iran’s foreign policy priorities.

“The Islamic Republic and South Africa have always supported each other and oppressed nations,” the Iranian commander said, according to Iran’s state-run media, emphasizing that their shared mission must continue “until restoration of an international order based on justice and human dignity.”

Hatami also emphasized the strong political alignment between Tehran and Pretoria, saying it has granted South Africa “a special position” in Iran’s broader strategy toward Africa.

He expressed hope that this partnership, particularly their shared military capabilities, would soon lead to tangible joint projects.

For his part, Maphwanya called for deeper ties between the two nations, especially in defense cooperation, affirming that “the Republic of South Africa and the Islamic Republic of Iran have common goals.”

“We always stand alongside the oppressed and defenseless people of the world,” the South African general said.

The meeting came after the Middle East Africa Research Institute (MEARI) released a recent report detailing how South Africa’s deepening ties with Tehran have led the country to compromise its democratic foundations and constitutional principles by aligning itself with a regime internationally condemned for terrorism, repression, and human rights abuses.

For example, the report noted that while Iran supports South Africa’s coalition government partly because of their shared revolutionary and liberation ideologies, Pretoria has often defended Tehran at the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by voting against sanctions or abstaining.

In doing so, the study claimed that the South African government has both undermined its democratic values and bolstered Iran’s regional ambitions by defending its nuclear program and downplaying its human rights abuses.

During the press conference in Tehran, Hatami praised South Africa’s “firm stance” in condemning what he called “the joint atrocities committed by the Israeli regime and the United States against Palestinians,” describing it as both “courageous and commendable.”

He also commended Pretoria’s decision to “challenge the Zionist regime at the International Court of Justice [ICJ] over its ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip,” calling the move one that “would go down in history.”

Since December 2023, South Africa has been pursuing its case at the ICJ, the UN’s top court,  accusing Israel of committing “state-led genocide” in its defensive war against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.

Israeli leaders have lambasted the case as an “obscene exploitation” of the Genocide Convention, noting that the Jewish state is targeting terrorists who use civilians as human shields in its military campaign.

MEARI’s report questioned whether South Africa’s case against Israel was genuinely rooted in constitutional principles — or driven by outside political pressure.

According to the study, South Africa’s open hostility toward Israel and its biased approach in filing the case — failing to acknowledge Hamas’s role in launching the war with its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel — undermines the government’s credibility.

The study also explained that, shortly after filing the ICJ case, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC), struggling with financial difficulties, unexpectedly paid off a multi-million-rand debt, fueling speculation about possible covert support from Iran.

During Tuesday’s press conference, Hatami also emphasized that Gaza’s population requires immediate and concrete support from governments and international organizations, rather than mere symbolic gestures.

“Unfortunately, due to the influence of the United States and some Western powers, such support is more verbal than practical. As a result, the crimes of this regime continue with intensity,” he said.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, the South African government has been one of the fiercest critics of Israel’s military campaign, which seeks to free the hostages kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and dismantle the terrorist group’s military and administrative control in the enclave.

Beyond its open hostility toward Israel, South Africa has actively supported Iran’s terrorist proxy by hosting two Hamas officials at a state-backed conference expressing solidarity with the Palestinians in December 2023.

Iranian leaders routinely declare their intention to destroy the state of Israel.