For more than a year Israeli families have been living a nightmare paraded out in public—loved ones taken, some returned alive, others murdered and their remains held as bargaining chips. The recent fragile ceasefire offered a sliver of relief: living hostages brought home and a promise that the dead would be returned so grieving families could bury their children with dignity. Those promises matter because a nation that cannot bury its dead is a nation with its soul under siege.
The deal that produced those wrenching reunions was mediated by multiple actors, with the United States playing a central role alongside Qatar and Egypt in brokering the phases of the truce and prisoner exchanges. Under its terms Israel eased operations in key areas while agreeing to release many Palestinian detainees, and Hamas pledged to hand over hostages and the bodies of those killed. That arrangement proved fragile the moment Hamas treated the lives and remains of innocents like bargaining chips.
Families like Ruby Chen’s make the human cost unmistakable. Chen’s son Itay was killed on October 7 and his body remains in Gaza, and Ruby has traveled, protested, and pleaded with leaders for the right to mourn properly. This is not politics for these people; it is the most basic human demand—give us our dead so we can bury them and begin to heal.
The Haimi family, whose son Tal was killed defending his kibbutz, live the same terrible limbo. Their anguish is repeated village by village across Israel—men and women who fought for their homes now denied even a grave. The images of parents demanding closure should shame every diplomat who treats human remains like chips on a negotiation table.
Make no mistake: Hamas proved again that it is a murderous gang that weaponizes suffering. When some bodies were returned it came after international pressure and theatre, and the group’s evasiveness on the rest of the remains shows contempt for human decency and for any reasonable interpretation of international norms. Americans who still peddle the language of “both sides” owe these families an apology for blurring the moral clarity of what happened on October 7 and after.
If there is a lesson for Washington it is that weak diplomacy and moral ambivalence have consequences. Families like Chen’s have publicly questioned past approaches and demanded tougher, clearer American action to secure not just temporary cessations but real, enforceable returns of the dead and living. Washington must stand with Israel’s right to recover its people and insist that any mediator treat hostages and remains as non-negotiable human rights, not bargaining currency.
Patriotic Americans should demand nothing less than firm support for those who defended their homes and for the families left to bury them. Call it compassion and call it common sense: terrorists who kidnap and kill have no place at the negotiating table unless they actually comply—and they must be made to. Our values require us to back a policy that brings the living home, returns the dead for burial, and holds the beasts who stole them to account.
