Unlike Buffett and Graham, who made fortunes buying low and selling high, Israel is paying an unbearable price

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arren Buffett, regarded as the world’s most successful stock market investor with a net worth of $150 billion, likes to quote his mentor Ben Graham, another legendary investor: “Price is what you pay, value is what you get.”

The concepts of price and value pertain to the hostage deal Israel signed with Hamas. The value Israel gains is the return of Jewish captives, each one a world unto itself.

However, unlike Buffett and Graham, who made fortunes buying low and selling high, Israel is paying an unbearable price.

It’s bad enough that in exchange for the hostages, Israel agreed to release up to 3,000 Arab terrorists, many of whom were imprisoned for murdering hundreds of Jews and maiming thousands more. Israelis are also suffering the trauma from Hamas’s degradation and humiliation of the hostages, as the terror group parades them on a public stage, sometimes forcing them to salute or kiss the captors who starved and tortured them for 500 days.

Prime Minister Netanyahu finally summoned up some of the vaunted Israeli chutzpah that’s been missing in action, delaying the release of the next batch of Arab prisoners until Hamas assured him they would treat future released hostages with the dignity required under international law.

Why didn’t Israel make this demand at the outset? Why didn’t the IDF destroy the stage right after the hostages were returned? Why is Israel squandering the ante President Trump has thrown into the pot by suggesting that he would stand behind Israel even if they terminate the deal with Hamas and resume fighting?

I’ve been covering the US-Israel relationship for decades. I don’t recall a similar time when a US president granted Israel such leeway. Even George W. Bush, considered to be the most pro-Israel US president before Trump, ordered Israel to restrain its military responses in the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

Does Israel have good reasons for hesitating? Is there more than one way to eradicate Hamas and ensure quiet and security in Israel’s southwest?

Brigadier-General (reserve) Udi Dekel, the former managing director of the Institute of National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, who now directs a unique research program on conflicts and agreements, issued a report late last week that provides some forthright answers and some recommendations on how Israel can leverage Trump’s support.

Dekel noted that on the plus side, the IDF has eliminated more than 17,000 terrorists (about half of Hamas’s armed forces), dismantled its military and civilian leadership, destroyed most of its military structures, and devastated much of Gaza.

However, the title of his report, “The Long-Awaited Victory Over Hamas Was Not Achieved,” presents a more sobering picture: Despite incurring significant losses, Hamas has managed to survive.

An Elusive Victory

“The IDF strategy [doctrine] defines victory as achieving the war objectives set by the political leadership and the ability to impose Israel’s
conditions for a ceasefire and postwar security-political arrangements on the enemy,” Dekel said. “Israel has not achieved these objectives in the war in Gaza.”

Only a victor can dictate to the vanquished. Israel has fallen far short of the type of victory it needs to set the terms, although Hamas suffered enough damage that there was no need for Israel to agree to its terms.

A lot of pundits blame Trump and his special Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, for pressuring Israel to sign the ceasefire agreement, for the purpose of handing Trump a foreign policy accomplishment before he took office, which is true. Still, it ignores the fact that Israel’s track record at negotiating hostage and prisoner exchanges is abysmal.

More on that shortly.

As a country that’s constantly being bashed and on the defensive, Israel’s diplomatic psyche is fragile, which helps explain why Israel hasn’t bombed or disrupted Hamas’s theater of terror. Israel’s default tendency is to seek sympathy for its plight instead of demonstrating might.

The need to generate pro-Israel media coverage is legitimate and has met with some success. The international media reacted with universal horror to the plight of the Bibas children, Ariel and Kfir, and their mother, Shiri, Hashem yikom damam, and the emaciated condition of some of the hostages.

But such sympathy is transitory. They pat their eyes dry and move on to the next story. Israeli eyes stay bleary and permanently tear-stained.

A New Use of Force

Perhaps President Yitzhak Herzog foreshadowed a shift in strategy when commenting to CNN’s Dana Bash about the Bibas children: “What brings somebody to kidnap a mother and two toddlers in their pajamas? This shows the cruelty of the enemy that we are dealing with. Pure cruelty that must be met forcefully.”

But will it indeed be met with force, bluster, or something in between?

Many of the prisoners Israel released in the exchanges returned to their former homes in the Arab enclaves of Judea and Samaria. Defense Minister Yisrael Katz warned sternly: “We are watching you. Anyone involved in terrorism will be hunted down and eliminated.”

Israel can boast of a solid track record of targeted assassinations, most recently Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon and Hamas’s “political” leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran.

Aside from the big names, Israel’s track record is spotty. Shabak chief Ronen Bar admits that more than 80 percent of the 1,027 terrorists Israel released in 2011 in exchange for one IDF soldier — Gilad Shalit — eventually returned to terrorism, including Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 invasion of Israel. It’s not practical to watch, hunt, and eliminate thousands of terrorists, including the recruits they are constantly grooming.

At press time, Israeli officials estimated that 21 of the more than 60 remaining hostages were still alive. It’s not too late to demand their return, this time at a lower price for the value to close a sad, divisive, and harrowing chapter in Israeli history and eradicate Hamas at the same time.

As much as we would like to think Israel could act alone and exclusively through military action, nobody knows how long that would take. Nor do we know the cost, in terms of soldiers’ lives, and the toll it would take on an economy already battered by 500 days of  war.

Udi Dekel suggests Israel continue to engage with Trump, following his wake-up call to Arab states to take responsibility for a refugee issue they helped create and perpetuate.

Arab countries are set to meet in Cairo next week to formulate a counterproposal to Trump’s plan for evacuating Gaza during its reconstruction.

There are no grounds for excessive optimism regarding the Arab summit, but Dekel believes they may propose a joint inter-Arab force to stabilize and reconstruct the Strip. He argues that the risk of Hamas attacking such a force is low. However, Israel could not agree to such a force unless it is granted sole security responsibility, which Dekel says is achievable.

“There is a growing recognition, both internationally and among moderate Arab states, that Israel is the only power capable and willing to prevent Hamas’s return through military means,” Dekel said. “Therefore, Israel’s military freedom of action must receive formal international recognition.”

While such a solution will be anathema to those calling for Israel to assume complete control of Gaza and restore the Jewish settlements that once dotted the landscape before the 2005 Disengagement, it could serve as the basis for further three-way negotiations between Trump, Israel, and Arabs who share a goal of booting Hamas out of Gaza, which is a necessary step if Israel’s beleaguered southern communities are to rebuild and flourish again.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1051)