Such a confusing time. Devastating, really, but not without hope.

The announcement at the beginning of the week by the despicable, degenerate Hamas terrorist organization that they were not happy and were not releasing hostages this past Shabbat as agreed, ushered in anger and perplexity which was miraculously transformed into unprecedented levels of hope with the announcement from our good friend in the White House, Donald Trump, that if they didn’t release “all the hostages” by twelve noon on Saturday, “the gates of hell would open up” for them.

This is the first time in this entire war that we have had such a clear, uncompromising message from Washington. What a pleasure! Instead of the mealy mouthed, wishy-washy Joe Biden’s half-asleep, grudging support, the “don’t” not one of our enemies respected or reacted to, we got firmness and moral clarity.

We wondered if the stance of President Trump would be echoed by our own Prime Minister Throughout the war, Netanyahu has been treading a fine line between winning militarily, dealing with the incessant demand by Israel’s fifth column to surrender and give into terrorist demands.

It is an unenviable and impossible position that any leader would have found horrifically dangerous and fraught, with very little room for mistakes or maneuverability. I think he has tried his best, but his decisions have left much to be desired. Instead of taking a firm stance at the very beginning that until all hostages were freed, there would be not one truckload of aid entering the Strip (isn’t that what the head of the United Nations just did to free the kidnapped U.N. workers in Yemen from the terrorists?) he caved into pressure from Joe Biden to allow thousands of aid trucks to enter and be used as a commodity to save the terrorist regime, giving Hamas not only financial stability, but power among the hungry Gazans. This was his first, fatal mistake, which he is continuing under the new regime in Washington, even though I have no doubt he would find more understanding from Trump than Biden should he choose to cut off all aid until all our hostages are released.

Netanyahu’s second fatal mistake was allowing Qatar to be part of the negotiations with Hamas. Qatar is the state sponsor of Hamas terrorism. They should have never received any role at all and had sanctions placed on them like Iran. The humiliation of our hostages and their deaths can be placed at Qatar’s doorstep.

There is no question that Mr. Netanyahu’s mistakes were grounded in the demand to see hostages released alive. You have no idea what is going on in Israel, the grass-roots, street by street propaganda to give into Hamas demands, the signs on every other house “to release the hostages NOW,” the takeover of municipal spaces by the Left, with photos of hostages “What if this was your husband, daughter, child?” As if the rest of us feel any less strongly about the freedom of our kidnapped. It’s vile, insidious psychological warfare against the majority of Israelis like myself who were not willing to open the floodgates to a mass release of the worst scum of the earth in our jails to murder yet again.

The results have been scenes that I never hoped to see ever again in my lifetime, the return of mass-murdering terrorists who go from life-sentences to cheering crowds in places like East Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria; the despicable public humiliation of our hostages before release on public stages complete with “gift bags” from their torturers.

Yes, every hostage released is a stone taken from our hearts. But who is going to take responsibility when these terrorists rob us of our husbands, wives, sons and daughters? Not my neighbors with their signs and posters. Not my municipality with its manipulative Leftist propaganda. Not my Prime Minister – as he didn’t for the wrong-headed and deadly release of 1,000 terrorists for Gilad Shalit – one of whom was Yaya Sinwar. We in Israel have paid, and continue to pay, for this deadly mistake stemming from weakness, in thousands of deaths.

There is inside every Israeli watching their television set as our hostages make their way to freedom, a person longing to see every masked Hamas operative surrounding them bombed, eviscerated, and beheaded on our television screens. There is a longing to hear that every terrorist released from our prison has been hunted down and slaughtered before they can do any harm. This is a longing for a long ignored need for the death penalty for the terrorists still in our jails. Most of all, there is a longing for our Prime Minister to finally find some guts to follow in President Trump’s footsteps and declare: “You missed the twelve noon deadline on Saturday. Let the gates of hell open wide!”

But sometimes we can’t get what we want, what we deserve. In the midst of my fury that only three hostages were released on Saturday, not all of them, I got a visit from my grandson and his wife, the newlyweds separated for so long during the war as he and his unit bombed Gazan tunnels. He is home now, after being called up for a training course last week which interrupted his university studies. What did he think about President Trump’s call? “Well,” he said in his sober, thoughtful way, “who do you think they are going to send in to open the gates of hell?”

May God help us all.

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