October 7 was a day of unique Jewish pain; two years later, has come a day of joy that only we can truly savor

The tableau that unfolded on Hoshana Rabbah was scarcely imaginable when this week’s issue went to print before Succos. It was a moment of homecoming, of national catharsis — the sign that Israel’s long, long nightmare was finally over.

For days, an entire nation held its breath, scarcely daring to believe that its missing sons were coming home.

From the minute Donald Trump announced the bombshell news of his ceasefire agreement, there was only one thought: the hostages. These were the names — Zangauker, Horn, Angarest, Kuperstein — that had featured in so many tefillos, their faces familiar from a thousand posters in the walkways of Ben-Gurion Airport to flyers ripped down in London and New York.

Had the anguished prayers of the Jewish People finally torn down the iron walls, or would some new Hamas devilry keep the hostages in their dungeons?

What would the captives look like as they emerged — haunted Mussulmaner, or relieved and proud?

As zero hour approached, all other thoughts were crowded from the mind and from news coverage.

Awestruck thoughts, such as the sense of those Heavenly wheels turning as captives taken from their homes on that dread day of Simchas Torah returned to jubilation exactly two years later.

Grieving thoughts about those who never made it back, and the price paid on the road to this day. The hundreds of soldiers killed. Those who died in the carnage of the Nova, the killing fields of the kibbutzim.

Those pure Jewish souls, innocent toddlers like the redheaded Bibas children, murdered with such depravity. Captives such as Hersh Goldberg-Polin who along with others were executed in a tunnel after months of torture.

All these thoughts faded for a moment as joy took center stage, at the sight of the impossible taking place. Here were people we’d written off for dead, back from their subterranean tombs.

Who could fail to be moved by the sight of parents embracing their sons, children their fathers — gaunt, pale but back among the living?

Was there anything more miraculous than seeing Omri Miran play with the little daughters he’d last seen when they were six months and two years old?

Was there anything more uplifting that a wan Bar Kuperstein sitting in the helicopter next to his mother, and holding a sign reading “How good is Hashem”? Or the family of Segev Kalfon enveloping him in a tallis as they cried their way through a brachah of matir assurim?

Those videos vied with that of President Trump arriving in what amounted to a triumphal procession on Hoshana Rabbah morning. Yerushalayim came to a standstill, as official Israel received him with adulation in the Knesset.

Trump’s speech reflected the fact that he is the architect of this deal. At the zenith of his global power, he possesses the political muscle to force both Israel and the Arab world around the peace table — on his terms.

That last fact was the subtext to the relief of the last few days — the looming question of whether those terms are good for Israel or not.

Within the post–October 7 context, this seems to be a far better deal than Israel could have hoped for even a year ago — thanks in part to the (failed) hit on the Hamas leadership in Doha. The smoke drifting over their capital convinced the Qataris that it was time to force their terrorist proteges into line, or they could be next for the high jump.

That switch enabled Israel to release its hostages without withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, with enough territory in hand to pressure Hamas into further talks.

But look beyond the euphoria and relief of the hostage homecoming, and it is clearly too early to know whether Donald Trump is right to declare victory for Israel.

Hamas once again patrols the streets of Gaza. And in return for American assurances that Hamas will be disarmed and that Gaza will be governed by a technocratic administration, Israel has committed not to restart the war.

Will Hamas disarm in any meaningful way, or emerge with a few cosmetic changes to rule Gaza and once again threaten Israel? Will the amorphous international-led administration work with Israel, or prove to be a front for the hostile powers — Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar — that have Trump’s ear?

To major figures on the right such as talk-show host Yinon Magal, Netanyahu has run out of political road given the failure to force Hamas to its knees. That assessment ignores two things: one, the reality that Bibi — and Israel’s right wing in general — had little choice. Having paid the piper of Israel’s war for nine months, Trump is now calling the tune.

The second is that for all the reports that Bibi had to be bullied into this peace deal, the agreement has his fingerprints all over it.

Netanyahu’s long-term strategy to head off the possibility of a Palestinian state has been a game of divide-and-rule, to split Gaza from the West Bank. Ensuring that no one single Palestinian political entity rules both territories is the central thrust of his policy, because political unification leads to pressure to link the two entities as a state that threatens Israel’s very existence.

That strategy of playing Hamas off against the Palestinian Authority was behind the modus vivendi with the terror group that exploded in tragic fashion on October 7.

It’s one that Netanyahu has reverted to once again as he discusses the future of Gaza with Trump. He is determined not to let Hamas reassert control, and equally determined to ensure that the coastal enclave isn’t handed to the PA.

Where Arab states see the deal as a pathway to a Palestinian state headed by Mahmoud Abbas, Bibi sees it as a continuation of his policy to reduce Palestinian aspirations to no more than piecemeal, local self-governance.

The near future will tell whether Bibi’s optimism is well-placed; whether the gray zone that Trump has taken the Middle East into is good for the Jews or for their foes.

Until then, as the region echoes to the sound of Air Force One’s engines, Israel is bathed in the warmth of a homecoming that no one dared to imagine.

October 7 was a day of unique Jewish pain; two years later, has come a day of joy that only we can truly savor.