In his book And None Shall Make Them Afraid, Rick Richman provides eight portraits (parts of which first appeared in Mosaic) of courageous Jews who played a role in the creation of the state of Israel. Alongside such better-known figures as Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann, Richman examines the playwright and screenwriter Ben Hecht, who turned his considerable talents and extensive show-business connections first to alerting Americans to the Holocaust and then to raising financial support for the nascent Jewish state—in ways that were far too bold for the American Jewish establishment. Seth Mandel writes in his review:

Hecht did not live an avowedly Jewish life, and that is important. . . . In fact, the Herzls and the Hechts were the perfect Paul Reveres for precisely that reason. The observant Jew could tell you that assimilation would not save you from anti-Semitic regimes, but the plight of the secular, integrated Jew proved it. A novella published by Hecht seven months after Kristallnacht features a “global pogrom,” after which its narrator says: “We who had gone to sleep the night before on the borrowed pillow of civilization woke in the Dark Ages. . . . We were Jews again.”

Hecht himself recounted a telephone conversation with Rabbi Stephen Wise, trying to talk him out of staging his 1943 pageant about the Holocaust, We Will Never Die. Wise, then the foremost representative of American Jewry, believed it poor taste for American Jews to call public attention to the mass-murder of their coreligionists in Europe:

Hecht hung up, annoyed and unbowed. Wise may not have liked the script, but First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, in the audience when the play came to Washington, was blown away. Perhaps Hecht knew better than Wise how to get the attention of those in power: not with meek flattery but by making “the free world” stare right into its own hypocrisy and using the money from ticket prices to make sure that the Jews fighting for their survival might have the necessary guns and ammunition to do so. Ben Hecht was not sorry to bother you.

Even if the agreement with Hamas to secure the release of some, and possibly all, of the remaining hostages—and the bodies of those no longer alive—is a prudent decision for Israel, it comes at a very high price: potentially leaving Hamas in control of Gaza and the release of vast numbers of Palestinian prisoners, many with blood on their hands. Nadav Shragai reminds us of the history of such agreements:

We cannot forget that the terrorists released in the Jibril deal during the summer of 1985 became the backbone of the first intifada, resulting in the murder of 165 Israelis. Approximately half of the terrorists released following the Oslo Accords joined Palestinian terror groups, with many participating in the second intifada that claimed 1,178 Israeli lives. Those freed in [exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011] constructed Gaza, the world’s largest terror city, and brought about the October 7 massacre. We must ask ourselves: where will those released in the 2025 hostage deal lead us?

Taking these painful concessions into account Michael Oren argues that they might nonetheless be necessary:

From day one—October 7, 2023—Israel’s twin goals in Gaza were fundamentally irreconcilable. Israel could not, as its leaders pledged, simultaneously destroy Hamas and secure all of the hostages’ release. The terrorists who regarded the hostages as the key to their survival would hardly give them up for less than an Israeli commitment to end—and therefore lose—the war. Israelis, for their part, were torn between those who felt that they could not send their children to the army so long as hostages remained in captivity and those who held that, if Hamas wins, Israel will not have an army at all.

While 33 hostages will be released in the first stage, dozens—alive and dead—will remain in Gaza, prolonging their families’ suffering. The relatives of those killed by the Palestinian terrorists now going free will also be shattered. So, too, will the Israelis who still see soldiers dying in Gaza almost daily while Hamas rocket fire continues. What were all of Israel’s sacrifices for, they will ask. . . .

Perhaps this outcome was unavoidable from the beginning. Perhaps the deal is the only way of reconciling Israel’s mutually exclusive goals of annihilating Hamas and repatriating the hostages. Perhaps, despite Israel’s subsequent military triumph, this is the price for the failures of October 7.