There are times when the true test of leadership is not in what was accomplished, but in how one speaks about what was not. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office recently declared that “his forceful application of combined military and diplomatic pressure has so far achieved the release of 205 hostages out of a total of 255.” This is not just tone-deaf political messaging; it is a distortion of reality, delivered at the expense of the dead, the detained, and the grieving.
Jon Polin, the father of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was kidnapped on October 7, taken into Gaza alive, tortured, and ultimately executed, responded with clarity and restraint. “Please do not take credit for ‘achieving the release’ of Hersh,” he wrote. “This is offensive to Hersh and to our family.”
He continued: “This insensitive claim whitewashes the lives of the 20% of the 205 who were taken into Gaza alive, survived a period of torture, and were then killed in captivity, including my son Hersh.”
Even those who support the broader strategy, including those who believe that killing Yahya Sinwar in October 2024 was a national necessity, must acknowledge this truth: it is one thing to fail to rescue Hersh. It is another to fail and then turn around and call it a success. That crosses a moral line. It erases the cost and rewrites the loss.
Polin explained that in August 2024, “a negotiated deal was possible to release a number of hostages, including Hersh and at least three others of the five with whom he was held (together ‘the Beautiful Six’). Instead of completing this deal… a decision was made to continue with the risky military operation in Rafah.” Two days later, all six were executed. “Ironically,” Polin writes, “the deal that could have saved them was finally completed in January 2025 under pressure from President Trump.”
Perhaps Hamas never intended to release them. But the Israeli government cannot speak with certainty about what might have been and then treat the return of murdered hostages’ bodies as proof of policy success.
Since August 2024, Israel has made real strategic gains. Hamas’s leadership has been hit hard. Deterrence has been reasserted across Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iran. These are accomplishments. But they do not entitle the government to declare moral victory over what remains, in many cases, a story of lives lost while other priorities took precedence.
Are we allowed to talk about the other side of “military and diplomatic pressure”? About what that pressure actually cost? Are the soldiers killed or maimed while wearing expired gear part of the story? Are the reservists now battling severe PTSD factored into the government’s definition of success? Or are we only allowed to count the lives recovered, never the ones lost, shattered, or sacrificed along the way?
Can we at least agree on this: if a hostage was alive, tortured, murdered in captivity, and then his body was recovered days later, that probably should not be called an achievement?
And does the government also consider it a success that Hadar Goldin’s remains have now been held in Gaza for 3,999 days?
The tragedy of Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s death is not just that the state failed to bring him home alive. It is that the same government that failed to save him now counts his recovery after murder as an accomplishment. That is not leadership. It is moral failure disguised as success. It does not honor the fallen—it uses them. To present the return of bodies as proof of strength is grotesque. Let those who were murdered rest in peace. Stop turning their loss into a line item of credit.
