The Winograd Commission’s unheeded hostage lessons
Had its conclusions been implemented, the current situation might have unfolded differently. Protesters certainly wouldn’t be staging a strike.
By Ruthie Blum
JNS
Aug 17, 2025
Anyone who thinks that Sunday’s national strike is anything other than a mass tantrum is delusional. It certainly isn’t helping the hostages. In fact, such displays of malaise and hysteria have been serving to encourage Hamas since before it launched its horrific invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Today, on the heels of the Cabinet decision to take over the last terrorist strongholds in Gaza—and in light of reports that Hamas might be willing to renegotiate the ceasefire proposal put forth by U.S. special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff—the attempt by the protest movement to shut down the economy is worse than counter-productive.
Indeed, the only effect such a strike can have is to convince Hamas that its intransigence works to cause a societal schism in the state it aims to annihilate. It knows that what it lacks in battlefield prowess against the Israel Defense Forces, it makes up for in the ability to play on Jewish heartstrings.
None of this is relevant to those who consider Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be a greater threat to Israeli security than any external enemy. These people are especially buoyed by the prospect of an early election. And their use of the hostages for political gain is as transparent as it is ugly.
Predictably, these are the same people who’ve been insisting that a state commission of inquiry be established to examine every aspect of the Oct. 7 attacks and attribute blame where it’s due. The government and its supporters want a different kind of commission—one that’s not tainted by deep-state bias, particularly where the role of the courts in the debacle is concerned.
So, the argument between left and right isn’t about the need for a comprehensive investigation, but rather on the makeup of the committee and the identity of its chairperson.
Setting aside the specifics of the controversy, pundit Kalman Libeskind raised a broader question in his column on Friday in the Hebrew daily Ma’ariv: “To what extent do we take the conclusions of such committees seriously, and how much interest and will do we really have to change our ways as a result of their recommendations?”
To answer his own rhetorical query—in the negative, of course—Libeskind pointed to the “commission of inquiry into the events of military engagement in Lebanon 2006.” Known familiarly as the Winograd Commission, since it was headed by retired justice Eliyahu Winograd, it researched and drew lessons from the Second Lebanon War. It first convened on Sept. 18, 2006 and submitted its final report to then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and then-Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Jan. 30, 2008.
Libeskind focused on Chapter 15 of the 600-page report, titled “Kidnapping as a Strategic Threat.” Since much of his piece is “inside baseball,” a review of the period in question is in order.
A Hezbollah ambush on an IDF patrol along the Lebanon border precipitated the 34-day war. In the incident, which took place on July 12, 2006, three soldiers were killed and two others—Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev—were taken hostage. It was assumed that both had been seriously wounded.
It wasn’t until 2008, when their bodies were returned to Israel in exchange for Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar, four Hezbollah terrorists and the remains of some 200 additional Lebanese and Palestinian terrorists that they were officially pronounced dead.
Meanwhile, less than three weeks before the abduction of Goldwasser and Regev, IDF soldier Gilad Shalit was captured by Hamas terrorists in a raid via a tunnel next to Israel’s southern border. He was held by Hamas for more than five years—from June 25, 2006 to Oct. 18, 2011—and was freed in a ransom deal that involved the release of 1,027 terrorists serving life sentences in Israeli prisons.
One of those many monsters was Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks, who was thankfully killed by IDF troops in Gaza on Oct. 16, 2024. It bears repeating, especially in this context, that part of his well-planned operation was the kidnapping of 251 Israelis and foreign nationals.
Some were murdered on the fateful day and dragged into Gaza. Others were killed during their captivity. Twenty of the 50 who remain—after most were either rescued or released in ceasefire deals—are still alive, starved and tortured by their sadistic captors.
Their plight pains every Israeli. How to save the living and retrieve the dead for burial, however, has become the source of an ideological battle between opposing camps.
The left is calling for a complete capitulation to Hamas as the only way to rescue them. The right is campaigning for total victory over the savages as the sole solution to the current disaster and for the sake of the future.
This is the very subject of the section of the Winograd report that Libeskind discussed in his piece. The following excerpts from the document are worth repeating to the irresponsible crowds chanting, halting commerce and blocking roads:
• “It is clear that kidnapping in our region is not only a possible event, but a central element in the operational planning of some of our enemies. This is against the background of the fact—already established as precedent—of prisoner-release deals, in which negotiations drag on for many months under enormous public pressure surrounding the families’ anguish. In these deals, dozens or hundreds of people imprisoned in Israel are released to secure the release of each abducted or captured Israeli soldier or civilian, alive or dead. As a result, the practical and psychological ‘profit’ of a successful kidnapping event for our enemies may be significantly greater than the ‘profit’ from another type of attack, even if that attack causes many casualties. This situation creates an inherent incentive for the enemy—created by Israel’s own policy—to attempt kidnappings.”
• “We do not belittle the importance of soldiers and their families—or indeed all Israelis and their families—knowing that Israel stands behind them. Nevertheless, it is equally clear that if the captives and their families know this, so too do their abductors. It is self-evident that the more our vulnerability is perceived as greater, and the more importance we ourselves ascribe to the return of captives—the higher the ‘price’ demanded, and ultimately paid, for their return. To the same degree, the incentive to carry out further kidnappings increases. Therefore, the argument that almost everything must be done in order to return captives, despite its emotional force, cannot withstand scrutiny. If we act to release captives in a way that significantly increases the likelihood that others will be killed or kidnapped, then the message we are sending is not one of immense respect for the life of every soldier and civilian, but of emotional conduct that necessarily creates unnecessary risks to the lives and security of soldiers and civilians.”
These conclusions were published by a committee of the sort that the protesters keep harping about. Ironically, had the above message been heeded in the 17 years since it was conveyed, the current situation might have unfolded differently.
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