2 Very Different Hostage Homecomings Show Israel’s Dedication to Its People

It’s been quite a week for Israeli homecomings.

On Monday, American-Israeli Edan Alexander was returned to Israel after 584 harrowing days of captivity in Hamas’ dungeons under Gaza. Alexander, now 21, was just 19 years old on Oct. 7, 2023, when the Hamas terror army invaded Israel and took him hostage alongside about 250 other Israelis and foreign nationals.

He subsisted in unbearable conditions, often shackled, nearly starved, and locked underground without any natural light for over 19 months.

Hamas, in addition to taking civilian hostages like Alexander, also slaughtered 1,200 people on Oct. 7—mostly civilians, including days-old babies and elderly Holocaust survivors—and started the war that has roiled the Middle East for the past year and a half.

Though the Gaza-based terror organization continues to hold 58 hostages in violation of international law and the most basic norms of human decency, Alexander’s release is a welcome step toward justice and peace for a country and a region that need it desperately.

It is a very good sign that America, Israel, and their partners across the globe were able to extract this release from Hamas without offering anything in return. Clearly, the terrorists have been bearing the brunt of the Israeli army’s unrelenting military pressure.

Almost all the Hamas leaders who spearheaded the Oct. 7 assault are dead or living in exile, mostly harbored in Qatar. And Hamas has barely been able to muster rocket attacks on Israeli cities, which used to be a fixture of life in Israel’s south, even before the current war.

But actually, Alexander is not the only captive Israeli who came home over the past few days. The other is Zvi Feldman. And in many ways, his story is even more vital for understanding both the exceptional challenges and the exceptional commitment of the Israeli state and the Israeli people.

You see, Feldman was an Israeli tank commander who disappeared in 1982 during the Battle of Sultan Yacoub, a sub-theater of the First Lebanon War. He was presumed kidnapped and likely killed by enemy forces, but for years, Israel knew little about his whereabouts. However, the country’s intelligence apparatus never stopped hunting and recently came upon information that pointed toward a gravesite “in the heart of Syria.”

Undeterred, the Israel Defense Forces and the Mossad, Israel’s military and intelligence organizations, undertook a five-month covert operation to return his remains. And this Sunday, the Israeli government announced that they had been recovered and finally laid to rest within Israel.

To outsiders, this story is confusing and a little strange. Why risk the lives of dozens of elite commandos to repatriate the body of a soldier who died over four decades ago?

Nevertheless, to those who understand, this is a textbook manifestation of Israel’s raison d’être—its reason for being and its rallying cry.

In a world where antisemitism never quite seems to go away, the sole Jewish country recognizes that it is tasked with a divine mission: not only to be a refuge and homeland for Jewish people, but to be their defender even outside its borders. To go to unbelievable lengths to protect them and bring them home. Never, ever to give up on anyone.

Feldman’s return, said a senior Israeli official, “proves that even 43 years after a soldier falls, Israel does not abandon the mission.” I can think of few other countries that would do the same.

The twin homecomings of Edan Alexander and Zvi Feldman are reasons for celebration each by themselves. But together, they provide a special window into the outlook of the Jewish State. For Israel, defending its people is an obsession and a sacred duty. It will never sleep. And just when you think it may have forgotten, it will go to the ends of the earth to bring its children home.

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