Today, one haunting image and a brief video.
We’ll come back to the video above, which is a clip share by Amit Segal, a highly regarded Israel journalist. Segal shared it on his X feed — it’s a clip of his comments on Israeli TV on Sunday, the day that the first three hostages of this deal were freed.
But first, a haunting drawing.
A day or two after the hostages returned home, this image by Moshe Shapira, the father of Aner Shapira, z’l, started appearing everywhere on my social media feed.
If you don’t recall the details of Aner’s bravery in throwing grenades back at the terrorists at the Nova until he was finally killed trying to defend those in the shelter with him, you can review the extraordinary story here.
Moshe Shapira sent this drawing out after he saw Emily Damari, below, return from Hamas captivity:
It takes a certain kind of soul to see the photo of Emily Damari below, and to think of the priestly blessing. The priest’s fingers are supposed to be spread in a certain way (see Wikipedia image below) when reciting the blessing. When Shapira saw this photo of Emily, that’s apparently what came to mind for him … so he drew the extraordinary image above, with the words יברכך ה' וישמרך, “May the Lord bless you and keep you,” the opening words of the blessing.
I suspect that many of us will have this image in mind during the priestly blessing for many years to come.
Amit Segal, a well known Israeli journalist who is a regular on Channel 12, was, I thought, excellent on Sunday afternoon as we watched the hostages come home. He was no less euphoric to see them alive and home than was anyone else, but he was deeply concerned.
As you hear above, he reminds his listeners that staying alive in this region depends not on being moral (alone), but on having people understand that “it doesn’t pay to mess with the Jews.”
Segal was clear — he was overjoyed that the hostages were alive and home, but he is deeply, deeply concerned about the precedent that Israel is setting, once again, in paying such a high price for hostages.
It’s not that one side is right and one is wrong, he reminds his listeners. It’s just that those “in favor” have not, he believes, spent sufficient time thinking about the cost and what it portends.
We share the clip that he posted (we’ve added the subtitles — he speaks very quickly so it’s a lot to stuff in to very brief seconds) to share this balanced view which, I think, ought to reflect more of the Israeli and Diaspora discourse about this trade, those that came before, and tragically, those that may well follow in the future.
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