This is not a deal. It's a disaster in the making

 

I want the hostages home. You want the hostages home.

We all do.

We’ve carried their names in our mouths for over 600 days. Hung their faces on our walls, chanted their return in our streets, and prayed for their survival in synagogues and schools around the world.

They are our brothers, our sisters, our parents, our children. The pain of their families is indescribable. And it’s so real. But pain, however raw, cannot be the compass for national security. Because if it is, we don’t just risk repeating history. We risk burying the future of the Jewish state.

This week, the Israeli government reportedly agreed to the latest iteration of the so-called Witkoff deal:

A 60-day ceasefire. A phased release of 10 living hostages. The return of 18 bodies.

In exchange for over 1,100 terrorists—many of them convicted murderers—and a halt to critical operations in Gaza, including a withdrawal from hard-won territory.

Let me be clear: this is not a diplomatic breakthrough.

It’s a moral and strategic collapse. And we’ve seen this movie before. Oslo gave us the Second Intifada. The Shalit deal gave us Sinwar. October 7 gave us a wake-up call and then bludgeoned us back into reality.

And now we’re considering the same delusion. Again.

We tell ourselves it’s just one more deal. Just a little more time. Just one more compromise for the sake of life. But history has shown again and again that these are not deals. They are countdowns. To the next attack. The next funeral. The next October 7.

Yes, we want them home. But at what cost? This deal hands Hamas exactly what it needs: time. Time to regroup. Time to reload. Time to rewrite the narrative.

While we grieve, they strategize. While we hold vigils, they rebuild tunnels.

While we plead with the world, they sharpen their knives for round two.

A 60-day ceasefire will not bring peace.It will bring preparation.

And for what? Ten hostages now. Eighteen bodies. Hundreds of terrorists released. A war paused, not ended. A terror regime bruised, not broken.

We are not trading for peace—we are negotiating with murderers.

Again. And every time we do, we tell our enemies: Take more hostages. It works.

What we should be saying is the exact opposite: Take hostages, and we will hunt you.Attack our families, and we will end you.Touch a single Jew—and you lose everything. This war can’t just be about bringing the hostages back. It has to be about making sure there are never hostages again.Not in Sderot. Not in Judea & Samaria. Not in Kfar Aza. Not in Tel Aviv.

You don’t make deals with terrorists.You bury them!

Don’t get me wrong—if this deal goes through, watching those hostages come home will bring tears to my eyes. But those tears will quickly shift from tears of gratitude to tears of fear.

Fear for what comes next. Because we’ve seen what comes next. We’ve lived it.

This deal, no matter how emotionally tempting, is a test of national resolve.

Are we a nation that reacts emotionally in moments of pain?

Or are we a nation that knows its survival depends on thinking beyond the now?

Israel was not reborn to make the world feel comfortable.

It was reborn so Jews would never again have to negotiate for their lives with genocidal regimes.

We lose that truth—we lose everything.

So yes, we want them home. But only after the job is done. Only after Hamas is gone.

Only when the cost of kidnapping a Jew is so high that no one on earth ever dares do it again Finish the war. Then bring them home. Forever.

by Juda Honickman