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.”