If the prime minister knows who the kidnappers are, he should take any kind of action to press them to return the boys alive: stop transfer of funds, worsen the conditions for inmates, and put pressure on the Palestinian Authority, so that Hamas would understand that it doesn’t pay off to kidnap children.
She continued:
The Ramadan is coming up, how is it possible that our nation is living in a state of uncertainty, while the Palestinian people erupt in celebrations? It can’t be that the people of Israel live in insecurity while the Palestinian people live routine lives. Mr. Prime Minister, Public Security Minister, you got mixed up. An agreement with the hunger strikers is a big mistake.
And then it was Eyal Yifrach’s mother who finally gave voice to the frustration she has been feeling, despite the outward regal bearing the public has thus far seen. She burst into tears, according to YNet, and said:
Hannah’s prayer reads ‘Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard’, and later on it is said that ‘Eli thought she was drunk.’ Hannah was praying for her child. My son Eyal disappeared 13 days ago, and I, like a drunken person – like Hannah – am beside myself. My heart frets, worries, is destroyed. The daily routine gets broken up. My soul is overwhelmed with concern for the safety of Eyal, Gil-Ad and Naftali…I love my son Eyal and I want him to come back home.”
Following the meeting with the mothers, the Israeli government announced it was not scaling back its operation. In just 24 hours, Israel announced it was making a painful decision which appeared largely to be driven by efforts to appease a world that denounces Israel no matter what and then renounced that decision, which also seemed to be driven by outside influences. And if the mothers had not shown up?
Just as Gilad Shalit’s parents, especially his father, seemed to have an outsized influence on the decision making of Israeli professionals, so too do the mothers of the Kidnapped Boys.
But at least these mothers demand Israel be strong and act decisively to punish the wrongdoers, rather than to respond to terror by giving in to terrorists.
Gilad Shaar’s mother seems to have it exactly right: “Mr. Prime Minister Mr. Public Security Minister, you got mixed up.”
Thank God she straightened them out.