Israel Celebrates the Hostages' Return, Despite Netanyahu's Sabotage

Oct. 13—The following is the lead editorial in the Israeli paper Haaretz, written in the hours before the 20 living hostages were returned alive and the prisoner exchange started, well before President Donald Trump's address to the Knesset.

Monday morning, 20 living hostages are expected to return to Israel after two years in captivity. It's impossible to overstate the joy of their return. It's hard to give words to the relief and excitement their retrieval has generated among their families, Israeli society as a whole and all those who have helped them from near and far, hoped for their arrival and fought for their return since October 7, 2023.

The hostages are returning home. This is a historic moment of joy, but it's mixed with a bitter truth – they returned despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, not because of him.

The person responsible for the return of the living hostages is the President of the United States, Donald Trump, not the prime minister of Israel.

This is a difficult, painful truth. The one that imposed the 20-point plan – which was essential to prevent manipulations or attempts to torpedo the deal – was the U.S. administration, whose representatives, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, mounted the stage in Tel Aviv's Hostage Square Saturday night and were received with love and gratitude. Israel's government and its leader received neither.

The question of why the U.S. officials were met with words of affection while the mention of Netanyahu's name drew boos is one that the prime minister and his partners ought to be asking themselves. But it's a rhetorical question; they know the answer quite well.

Netanyahu reaped what he sowed. The boos were the purest, most authentic response to what he deserves – the heartfelt groan of a public that was abandoned, betrayed and neglected, the contempt of families who understood that their loved ones' fate had been sacrificed on a cynical political altar. The booing and contempt came from their very soul.

The audience's reaction to Netanyahu's name in Hostage Square came at the end of two long, exhausting years of fighting for the hostages' return. And throughout that time, Netanyahu did everything in his power to torpedo a deal. It's hard to believe, but the battle for the hostages' return was waged by their families against the prime minister, who never once visited the square that became the headquarters of the struggle and a place of pain and solidarity.

The booing was a natural response to someone who repeatedly sabotaged efforts to free the hostages, depicted the battle for their return as one being waged by his political opposition and incited his followers against the protesters' families. Instead of embracing the mothers and fathers fighting for their children's lives, he depicted them and the protesters as collaborators with the enemy.

The echo of those boos ought to haunt Netanyahu at night and keep him awake until he removes himself from the public's sight and allows society and the country to recover. Those boos were all he deserved.

And as we celebrate the hostages' return, all that's left to do other than that booing is to tell the prime minister explicitly, "You came, you destroyed – now go."