Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - The fate of the hostages, post Sinwar - with Maya Roman and Gil Dickmann

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

LIVE EVENT ALERT – PITTSBURGH: On Monday October 28th at 6:00 PM, Dan will be speaking at a live event in conversation with Dave McCormick, combat veteran, former CEO of Bridgewater Associates, and candidate for U.S. Senate. A West Point graduate, Dave was deployed to the Middle East during the first Gulf War with the 82nd Airborne Division. He later served as the Under Secretary of Treasury and Deputy National Security Advisor. Dave has distinguished himself as an outspoken ally of the Jewish community and of the U.S.-Israel relationship. In Pittsburg, Dan and Dave will have a conversation before a live audience and take questions. To register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dan-senor-and-dave-mccormick-live-in-pittsburgh-tickets-1042361389977?aff=oddtdtcreator TODAY’S EPISODE: The extraordinary success of the elimination of Yahya Sinwar has raised a number of questions about what happens next in the war. And among those asking questions is the community of families of Israeli hostages. In today’s episode, we sat down with two of those family members – Maya Roman and Gil Dickmann. 

I do think that the hostages have been used to explain why the war is still ongoing. It's true, but it's also been used to promote Israel's name and say, well, you know, we're still fighting this war because we want to save the lives of the hostages. But I also believe that if that's true, then that is up to our government to show that that's truly what they're doing. Especially now that finally Sinoir is dead, is out of the way. Now is the time for our government to really cement this. It's 10 a.m. on Sunday, October 20th here in New York City.

It's 5 o'clock p.m. on Sunday, October 20th in Israel as Israelis begin to wind down their day. Last week, during a routine military operation, IDF soldiers killed Yechia Sinwar. This was a huge moment, an extraordinary victory for Israel, both militarily in bringing Hamas closer to its demise, but it was also important symbolically, as Sinoir will not get to repeat the Kodak moment he had back in 2014 after another Israel-Hamas war in which he was sitting on a couch smiling atop the rubble in Gaza. I have said many times on this podcast over the last year that the image of Sinwar emerging atop the rubble of Gaza was an image that I feared,

and I think Israeli decision makers had the same concerns. Sinwar's death now opens up a wide range of questions about where the war in Gaza goes from here and actually where the war on other fronts go as well. As it relates specifically to Gaza, how functional will Hamas be after Sinwar? How is all this being processed by everyday Palestinians in Gaza and by Hezbollah and by Iran? Who will the next leader of Hamas be? In Gaza or abroad or both? Will there even be a Hamas?

And with the head of Hamas gone, will Gazans rebel and try to topple Hamas's regime, or at least what's left of it? But most importantly, how will this impact the 101 Israeli hostages who still today remain held captive by Hamas. Will those guarding the hostages try to avenge the death of their leader by executing the hostages, God forbid? Are they open to some kind of negotiation? Is there anyone to even negotiate with? Who's actually in charge? Is this just a disparate group of fragmented subsets and cells and impromptu hostage guards that are impossible to deal with. To help us answer these questions and others, we are joined by Maya Roman and Gil

Dickman. Maya and Gil are cousins of each other. They're friends of mine, longtime friends of my family. Our listeners will be familiar with Maya because she was on this podcast earlier this year. I think it was at the six month mark post October 7th. Their connection, just to establish this and remind our listeners, they are both related to two hostages, one who survived, Yarden Roman, who was released on November 29th by Hamas in the major hostage deal late last year. And Carmel Gat, who was tragically executed on August 29th of this year as part of the slaughtering of the six hostages that were being held and were murdered by Hamas late this summer while there were, quote unquote, hostage negotiations going on in real time that included their names, or so we think, as possible releases in the first phase of a hostage deal that never came to pass.

Maya and Gil, thank you for being here. Thank you for having us. Thank you, Dan. And you both join us from Tel Aviv. So I just want to start, Maya, I'll start with you. What was your reaction when you first heard that Sinwar was killed? I mean, relief, first and foremost. We don't know where things are going to go right now. I don't think anyone can know for sure. But this is a good thing to happen for the region.

I think anyone who doesn't see it that way is missing a big part of what was very obvious to us is that this is a very sophisticated terrorist, someone who has murdered hundreds, led to the murder of thousands. It was his tactic that led to the taking of the hostages and to using them in truly inhumane ways. And so I think it's a big relief to know that this terrible dictator who has been shaping our area for the past year is gone. Alongside that, there is a lot of worry because, you know, one of the scenarios that we thought about as hostage families very early on was, what if we do succeed in the goal of defeating Hamas before we are able, or instead of bringing back the hostages,

who are we then able to negotiate with? And I think this is now going to be a real problem because at least when you had someone like Senouar, you knew who was at the helm and you knew that he was able to probably keep most of his people in line, be able to know where most of the hostages are. Now, you know, we don't know what the situation is, in what stage Hamas is going to be post-Sinoir. But one of the concerns is, are we going to have to start negotiating with individual terrorists who have decided to act on their own and what does that mean and does it mean that the lives of the hostages are in even greater risk because there is no one to impose any kind of rule of of some kind of order which again we didn't really have before but at least before you had this powerful figure who was terrible and it was

his decision, as we now know, to murder Carmel and the Beautiful Six, as Hirsch's mother calls them. And again, so it's not like he was protecting the hostages, but just in the sense that there was some order, it allows us to think about how can we go about releasing the hostages. And now things are very uncertain and it's going to take a lot of smart thinking and politicking to be able to get as many of them out. Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about that because on the one hand, obviously it's an extraordinary event and one we should all have been striving for, trying to help make succeed and thank God it has happened, that Sinoir be slaughtered. But he was the sole, it seemed to me at least, the sole decision maker within the Hamas organization. So on the one hand, you had this brutal, barbaric, diabolical person who was in

charge, which was an extraordinary problem, but he was in charge. Now he's gone. As I said, thank God he's gone. But now we don't know who's in charge and who can actually deliver a deal. So he may not have wanted to deliver a deal. And I've always been, as Maya, you and I have discussed, I've always been quite skeptical that he was serious about a deal at any point in any of these negotiations. Gil, I want to ask you, and I know both of you are very involved with the hostage families forum, the hostage families movement within Israel. You are in touch and have been in touch with the hostage families forum, the hostage families movement within Israel. You are in touch and have been in touch with the various factions and the leadership of the hostage

families forum since the operation against Sinwar. I hate to say what's the mood, but I mean, just the movement has had one approach to the hostages and how to get the hostages back since October 7th. And now obviously you're in a new world. So how do these developments change your strategy? If they have yet? Maybe things are in such disarray and the kind of the chessboard has been turned upside down and the chess pieces are splattered all over the floor that you're now still in the process of the hostage families form is picking up the pieces, trying to figure out, OK, what's our play now? Well, I think that's exactly what we're dealing with right now. But we have to remain focused because these are crucial moments and there are opportunities right now that if we miss we might not be able to get a hold of them again and just

like Maya said the first thing we felt was that earth is a safer place now that Sinoir is gone and it has been such an important goal of this war to get rid of this terrorist who was holding all the hostages. I actually saw him as I think if we took two and a half million Palestinians as hostages. He's the butcher from Khan Yunus. He was in charge of killing not only Israelis, but also Palestinians. And the fact that he's gone is very important for the security of our whole region. When we all refer to him as the butcher of Khan Yunus, to be clear, where that term comes from is Yahya Sinwar was born in a refugee camp in Khan Yunus. He was called the butcher of Khan Yunus, not because of the Jews he had slaughtered, but because of the Palestinians he had slaughtered. He was serving four life sentences in an Israeli prison, not

because of Israelis he had killed, but because of Palestinians who he believed to be cooperating in some way with Israel in any way. That's why he was in an Israeli prison. So the fear that was cast all in and around the Gazan Palestinians because of his mere presence was extraordinary. And so him being gone is in its own way a form of liberation if the Palestinians see it that way. Definitely. And that's why this is good news on that note. And the other thing is that now you can say that the goal of eliminating Hamas and the goal of eliminating Sinwar himself, you can put a check on that. We've done it. And we're very happy for that. It's a very important question to ask whether Sinwar was the one and only obstacle to a prisoner swap or a hostage deal, as we say it. But if he indeed was the one and only obstacle for that, now we have a chance to actually have a hostage deal.

They'll get all the hostages out of Gaza and put another check on the second goal, which for me is the most important goal, the goal of releasing all the hostages. And I really hope that we can, you know, seize these opportunities that are in front of us right now. We don't know exactly who's in charge, but just like you said, and we as families of hostages and hostage families forum, we don't have any more information than the Israeli military and the Israeli intelligence, of course, but we want to make sure that just like the great success we've had in eliminating Sinoir as a person, we will have such an enormous success in actually getting the hostages back. Because if you look at what we've been going through in the last year,

you can't argue that Israel has failed its mission to get the hostages back. More than 100 hostages were brought back in a deal. A hostages were brought back through military operations. But 101 hostages are still in captivity. And 27 hostages were killed in captivity. And we will never be able to get them back home alive, just like my cousin Carmel. So after we said, okay, we finished Sinoir, now we have to finish the job and get the hostages back home and we can finish this whole

war. I just want to pick up on something Maya said a moment ago. You said that you now know that Sinoir made the decision to execute the six hostages on the 29th, including Hirsch Goldberg-Poland, including your family member, Carmel Gott. It makes sense to me based on events that we know that the IDF was getting closer and closer to the six hostages that included Carmel. And we now know that Sinoir was near them or with them and scattered. But is there something more we know that he actually made the decision? I just want to be clear on what we know. We have no way of knowing 100% what happened there.

What I'm saying is based on what we do know, an investigative report also done by Channel 12 a couple of days ago, which kind of tried to reconstruct Sinoir's movements as well as what had happened with the six hostages. So according to how they saw it is that the six hostages were probably Sinawar's human shield, something that was talked about a lot here, that Sinawar was probably hiding among some hostages, using them as kind of safety mechanism to make sure that the Israeli army will not kill him. And so it is believed that that's what these six hostages were meant to be, specifically because they were high value hostages in the sense that Hirsch was an American

citizen and Carmel Gott and Adonai Oshami were women whose names were very, very well known in Israel and abroad. And so it seems that he was using them as his kind of safety net. You did extraordinary work, both of you and your extended family, to tell Carmel's story and make it so accessible to people around the world. Like, I can't tell you how many people I know who feel like they knew Carmel, even though they never knew Carmel. I mean, I wish, God forbid, I were ever in some comparable situation that I could do that, to basically tell a family member's story to the world in a way that

people around the world feel that they know this person that they had never met. And I think obviously Rachel and John did that as well. I mean, they told Hirsch's story in a way that I just can't tell you. I mean, I just meet people all the time who felt like they knew this kid Hirsch, like it could have been their kid. It could have been their nephew. It could have been their friend. It could have been their peer. And this is, again, a very hard question to ask. Do you think on the flip side of that, Sinoir said, well, they're so well known, so they're going to stay with me because they're the most valuable? hostages near him. So it wasn't just like he was hiding only among these six hostages, which he chose for him to be his human shield. He had many human shields, and one of them was unfortunately Carmel. Six of them were unfortunately executed. So I've been debating on this, of course, after we heard the news. And our war is trying to tell her story has made her so famous that he chose her to be his own human shield.

From what I understand, the answer is no. The answer is that he was just moving between different human shields at the very point in which he was in close to him that he decided that he should run away and he should leave orders behind him to execute them if the IDF is getting closer. That's what we understand, but we have no way to know for sure. And that's sort of a gamble that we had to take. And we had to make sure

that the world knows about Carmel, that the world knows that Carmel was taken alive, that she was still alive. She was until August 29th, that she's a civilian woman who did nothing to deserve this kind of behavior. I think we chose correctly, but we will never know. My sense always with Hirsch is when you think about how he was taken over into Gaza with the massive injury he had, who lost his left arm. He was a medical mess, liability for the hostage takers. One could argue, because they killed a lot of hostages that were just difficult to deal with,

and they not only didn't kill him, they operated on him. They, I guess, did a formal amputation, or to the extent that they could. They clearly tried to keep him alive. I'm not giving them credit for this. I'm just saying that maybe to the degree to which Carmel and Hirsch and others were well known, incentivized Hamas to keep them alive rather than just dispense with them, as long as they did. And I think that that's exactly the point that, you know, very early on, we had this discussion, even when Yarden wasn't here yet. And Yarden's story was also very well known here in Israel and in Germany. And we negotiated among ourselves. We kept thinking, Arden's family, we have German citizenship.

So we made sure that Arden's story was very well known in Germany in the hopes that it will get back to Hamas so that they understand that she's also a German citizen. I think that, again, you can never really know. One of the reasons why this particular event of hostage taking is so unprecedented is because of the way it coincides with the war here, which is something quite rare. So there are cases of hostage taking around the world where a lot of times the advice of experts is don't bring this to the headlines, because the best way to get countries to release hostages is if this doesn't become a national issue. But in this particular case, you know, this kidnapping,

these hostages had made headline news on October 7th because there was no way for them not to. And so once this issue was already a public issue, it seemed crucial for us to make sure that Hamas understands the value of these hostages, even if it means that our particular loved ones might be, whatever, held close or just in a war. But at if it means that our particular loved ones might be whatever, held close or just in a war. But at least it means that Hamas knows that these people, which Hamas does not view as people, but views for what he can get for them, are very valuable. And we do believe, you know, a lot of the criticism that the families get in Israel is, you know, this is a terrible way of putting it, but you're driving up

the price of the bargain by constantly saying we have to get back the hostages. That's no way to negotiate. If you make sure the other side knows we will do everything to get our hostages back, then we're driving up the price. But, you know, the flip side of that is if we don't do this, then the other side realized that, well, these hostages aren't that valuable. So maybe we can execute them to bring harm to the people of Israel, to break their morale. And we can use them that way. And, you know, seeing as we know that they have no kind of moral qualms about killing civilians, we believe it is very crucial for them to at least understand how globally valuable it is to save human lives and save these particular lives. So that was kind of

our thinking. You know, in this journey, you never really know. You're constantly making these kinds of gambles and there's no way to know for sure. And you have the stories of Averam and Isto and the Shama Syed. Both of them are held in Gaza for now 10 years. And their families were told, don't talk about it so you don't drive up the price. And the result was that they're still there and nobody did anything to get them out. And we had to do this. We had to put the issue of the hostages on the table. And we had to do that by telling the stories of our loved ones. And the fact is that many other hostages whose names were not that well known, like Wawid Anino, who's not that well known as a hostage,

and Moksa Wusi or others, were also executed. So you never know. We decided that we're going to do whatever we can. We're going to put this on the table because nobody was going to do that for us. And we know for a fact that it was very effective in getting the hostages back before the first deal. That brought the other end home. That's what brought the first deal in November. More than 100 hostages were brought thanks to that campaign. So none of us wanted to be in this position, of course. But I don't think we would choose any other way because putting this on the table is not only an important thing to do in Israel, in front of Hamas, but in front of the whole world so that the world does not forget about this crime against humanity that Sinuag and Hamas is committing right now. inside Gaza. And people don't remember that if we don't remind them again and again and again, that there are people there, most of them are alive. And that what Hamas is doing,

what Dinhwar was doing until he was eliminated is a crime against humanity. Did you know before August 29th, when the six were executed, that they were together? No, we didn't. Okay. So you and I were together, Maya, on the six-month anniversary here in New York, and we recorded a podcast then. And then the next time I saw you in person was around Prime Minister Netanyahu's address to Congress. And we got together here in my apartment.

You guys were fixated on telling the story of Sinoir in a way that I had not seen in any other time we had met or any other time we'd spoken on the phone. You were fixated. You said, we've been researching, we've gotten a bunch of files about Sinwar from the Israeli security forces. We need to tell the story of Sinwar, this man who's just been a butcher, who's just been executed. Why were you so fixated on it then? Why was that to you such a pivotal moment to get out the story of Sinwar? So my focus and some of the focus of our family was advocating abroad. We realized that international pressure was and is crucial to being able to create a hostage deal and that we needed this pressure on both sides.

That was our understanding. We needed pressure on Hamas and we needed pressure on Israel and we needed it from all relevant factors. And so I was in the States a lot. That's why we met so many times. And I met with many Congress people and senators. And along the way, we started hearing, I started hearing senators telling me, you know, my constituency don't even know who Sinawar is. And I spoke along with my cousin Gili in several campuses in Columbia and Harvard. And, you know, this was before the protests, but it was very easy to see that for some reason there was a

misunderstanding about what Hamas is, what October 7th was. And there was this attempt to frame it as related to the Palestinian resistance movement. And as someone who believes in peace and understands the kind of Palestinian cause, I thought that was just terrible on many, many levels. It was terrible to the actual Palestinian resistance movement. And it was terrible to people being able to understand what it is that we're dealing with, because people are saying Hamas

and you have all these like 19-year-olds saying, well, it's this and it's that. And they don't know that Yahya Sinoar is a terrorist, a dictator. You know, people were asking me, well, if things are so bad, why aren't the Palestinians protesting? And this shows a very deep lack of understanding because they don't understand that Sinoar was in Israeli prison, as you said, for executing Palestinians who he felt were not supportive enough of his cause. So going and demonstrating in Gaza is not the same as demonstrating here in Israel, which is a democracy. You can be killed, you can be shot. And this lack of understanding of the situation made it so people did not see that Hamas was not under enough pressure to come to a hostage deal.

And that this is actually, in my understanding now, truly a global problem, which we are going to have to deal with going forward. And I saw this again and again, speaking to the UN, speaking to different organizations, that there's no understanding of the fact that Israel is here dealing with a terrorist group, with a non-state actor, and international pressure does not know how to deal with this sort of phenomenon and is leaving it to Israel to deal with it, and at the same time criticizing Israel for all that it should be doing more or could be doing more. And so what we felt was in order for us to get this pressure on both sides, that we really

need pressure on factors that can influence Hamas, that want to get international legitimacy, such as Qatar, such as even Iran. We need for people to be able to truly understand who this person is. And that is why we started focusing on getting media coverage of Sinoir, which really, when we started looking at it, was nowhere to be seen. It also took us quite a long while. So the reason we only started to see kind of the fruits of that labor in summer was because, you know, we worked a long time to be able to get access to the files of Sinoir's investigation, which required us to get approval from the military to see them, to send them out. And, you know, we contacted people who

were in touch with Sinoir when he was in Israeli jail. So we did all this so that we could really be able to put together a comprehensive understanding of who this person is that we can then, you know, send out to journalists who wanted to provide this deeper coverage. seeing that. And I think it has been very crucial in people kind of understanding, well, there are things that Israel should be criticized for, but let's understand the situation that we're actually in and its various problems. Yeah. And I've been trying to tell this story when I did interview abroad, that we're not only in an Israeli-Palestinian conflict or a Jewish-Muslim conflict, but we are a nation that believes in life, that fights for the lives of the hostages and for the lives of its own people. And on the other side, it's not like there are two and a half million Palestinians, but there's a terror organization that believes and sanctifies death. So it's life and death conflict. And it becomes

very easy to be on the right side of this once you understand it, that you should be on the side of life in this discussion. If you support what Israel is doing by getting the hostages back, well, you are on the side of life and you're not against Palestinians. You're against the terror organization that took these Palestinians in hostages and doesn't care about the lives of either Israelis or Palestinians. And that was very important to understand this. You had to know who Yechia Sinuau was and you had to understand that he was a true believer in jihad and the fact that there is a sacred thing and that you can sacrifice lives of Israelis and Palestinians to get what you want. And I think right now, after Sinoir is out of the way, this is our chance to show the world

that he was in fact the obstacle to the hostage deal. He was the obstacle for life winning this conflict between life and death. And if we do make a hostage deal now, get the hostages back and put the sport to an end, we can show the world that Sunwa is not like a freedom fighter, like Che Guevara, but more like an unbelievable terrorist like Osama bin Laden. Right. Can you describe what you're articulating here, Gil, and what you're

articulating, Maya? How representative is that in the hostage families forum more generally? Because I know there are different factions within this community of hostage families. I can say the large majority of hostage families believe what I'm saying. And I'm just in this WhatsApp group of the families just discussed that. And I think we all or almost all of us can agree that the most important thing right now

is to get all the hostages back in one deal and we'll show the world what Israel was actually fighting for. And, you know, there are people amongst the families, I do not criticize them and I never will, that may have other opinions. But, you know, we're 101 hostages. That means thousands of people are considered family members of hostages. And even among our family, there are disagreements about some of the things. But the large majority of families believe what we just said, because it's very simple. And it's not only the large majority of the hostage families.

It's actually the large majority of the people of Israel. And we poll them again and again and again. And we see that around 80% of Israelis believe that we have to get the hostages back. And that's the most important thing. And that's a good enough reason to finish this war if that's the price. And people are willing to pay this price right now after we have done so much in Gaza and after we eliminated Sinois. And I think it's both a moral issue and a public opinion issue, because most of the Israelis believe that. And I really hope that Netanyahu and the government will take this opportunity to actually make it happen. Because just like we said, if I had asked you October 7th, 2023, about what's going to happen one year later, on October 7th, 2023, about what's going to happen one year later on October 7th, 2024.

And I tell you, more than 100 hostages would still be in captivity. Would you say this is a success or a failure? How would you answer that? And I think many of us feel like it's a failure. Many of the Israelis feel like Netanyahu's government and Israel had great success in eliminating Hamas and a total failure in getting all the hostages back. And it's time and it's an opportunity to fix this and to make this a complete victory on both of these goals.

But Gil, I just want to, coming back to something Maya said earlier, no country has ever had to fight a war under these conditions. There's literally no country in modern history I can think of has ever had to fight a war under these conditions. There's literally no country in modern history I can think of that has had to fight a war on its border with an enemy that was holding, just to put it in American terms, proportionate to the U.S. population, the equivalent of 5,000 Americans. It would be like, I'm sitting here in Manhattan right now, it'd be like we in Manhattan were fighting an enemy that's like in Staten Island, except in Staten Island there were 5,000 New Yorkers being held in tunnels under in the subway system underground of Staten Island. I was in touch with one of the officials involved with hostage negotiations and when hostages returned from Gaza.

And he said when they would consult with the Biden administration, the hostage negotiating team from the Biden administration, this is a department dedicated to hostage negotiations on behalf of U.S. government for U.S. citizens, and they would get advice from them. Sometimes the Biden hostage team would say, we can't give you advice here. There's no precedent for this. The idea of this many hostages being held while a war is being fought, many of those hostages being women and children, we're like an unprecedented territory. So I take your point, Gil, where you say, yes, the Israeli government has had tremendous success defeating Hamas, but is failing on getting the hostages back. On the other hand, success compared to what? This is like nothing anyone has ever seen before. I think that's exactly right. But I think, you

know, I read this book, The Genius of Israel. Don't know if you've heard of it. Highly recommended. I mean, you know, critically acclaimed, but I... It is critically acclaimed. And one of the things it talks about is how the social fabric of Israel has allowed it to deal with the many unique challenges that it has faced since its founding. And I think that here we are exactly in such a position. Yeah, this is a unique challenge and it's very important for people around the world to really have, you know, what you just did of like understanding this perspective, this experience, which I think people who don't live here don't understand how close Gaza is, how it is to be in this situation, how terrible it is. At the same time, our country is unique

in the way that it has been able to keep our social structure intact, to keep this feeling of solidarity among our people here. That is what allows us to continue, even though we are experiencing these terrible, terrible situations and have to fight all these wars and have to deal with all of these things. And what allows us to go on is the fact that we all go to the military, the fact that we all support each other as though we are family members. And in that sense, bringing the hostages back is far greater than just bringing back these particular people. It's about continuing to say, this is what Israel is. We are a country that fights for life, that the most important value we have is protecting the lives of

our citizens. And that is something that we are willing to make hard choices for. We are willing to even give up on some of our security if it's going to help us save lives. And that is what we have done. You know, when my grandparents came here, it was scary and it was frightening, but they came here because of their Zionist values of we want to found a country. And so I think this is who we are. And in that sense, I believe the current government, and again, you're right, they are dealing with a situation none of us would want to deal with, and no one around the world has ever dealt with. But still, they are making policy decisions, which are impacting the very nature of what Israel is. At the same time, I understand that people who live abroad feel like we are all together

and the sense of the family is together, but we're not going to tell Israel what to do. But I do believe that we are at this point where you need your family to help you make the right choice. And what is giving me hope is what Gil has said, that we know that most of the people in this country, despite how hard this kind of decision is, would still prefer to see the hostages back home, even if it costs them some of their security. And that's a very big thing to do. And again, I think Americans don't always understand what they're asking us to give up when we're talking about a ceasefire deal. These are very big things to give up, to give up our sense of security, but it's worth it, I think. I've expressed concern, particularly over the last few months before Sunwar's killing, that the pressure you all were putting on the Israeli government inside Israel was actually undermining your cause internationally. It's sort of paradoxical, but because when I would do interviews making Israel's case here in the US, and I would try to focus on Sinwar, to try to

address this issue of Sinwar, the butcher that Sinwar is, rather than him being lionized, like trying to get people to understand who was ultimately responsible. When I would try to make that point that Sinwar was the problem, American journalists over here would say to me, like on television, they'd say, what are you talking about? They said there were hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting in the streets that are blaming Netanyahu. You're here trying to put the focus on Sinoir, but there are a large number of Israelis who are very visible saying the most damning things about Israel's prime minister, as though he single-handedly has the capacity to get a deal done or not,

and that he's choosing not to get a deal done. In fact, the whole language, bring them home, as though it's up to Israel's government to bring them home, as though Israel's binary, and Israel can either choose to bring them home or not. And I do understand what you're trying to do inside Israel, but from the perspective of Sinwar, who was watching all this pressure mount on Israel's government internationally pressure mount on Israel's government internationally and pressure on Israel's government inside Israel, I did often wonder, was this incentivizing him to stand back? And did it actually make it harder for those who wanted to defend Israel abroad to do so when international journalists could point to the arguments and the

criticisms many of you were making? I think, you know, there's several parts to this question. Some of it I will let Gil answer, because he's more knowledgeable what's going on here. But it's a tricky balancing act. And we knew it, where we felt like pressure within Israel is crucial. We had to make sure that our politicians understand how important this issue is, because, and this is true about politicians everywhere, you know, politicians are going to do what is politically beneficial for them. And so it was very, very important within Israel to make sure that the politicians know that this is something that Israeli society wants and is dedicated to and is devoted to. And we know that this was very crucial in getting the first hostage deal. So pressure within Israel, I believe, was essential.

And then when it comes to what our messaging abroad is, things become trickier. Part of it, by the way, is that this is how media works. So I cannot tell you the amount of interviews I have had and Gil has had and Gili has had, where we said, well, we must be sure to mention Sinoir because people aren't speaking about Sinoir. But it was cut. It was left on the editing floor because for news outlets,

it's much more interesting to hear me as an Israeli talk about my criticism towards my own government than it is to hear my thoughts about Sinoir. And so part of it is also kind of the narrative that the media is able to get and wants to get. Still, I do believe we also needed international pressure on our current government. You know, I agree with you that Sinoir was a big obstacle for many of the deals. I don't think anyone can dispute that. But I do believe that there were specific instances, and we know this, when a deal could have been signed and our government chose to act differently. I'm not saying they did it out of, you know, malice. They may have had their reasons,

but, you know, at the bottom line, they chose something else over the hostages. And I think it is crucial that our government understands that that's not a choice that most of the Israeli public is willing to live with. And I think it's even more crucial that they also understand that that's not the Jewish thing to do. That's not the value of the Jewish people, you know, who consider saving a life to be saving a world. And I think that they needed to hear this from abroad. And again, I understand from talking to you, but from talking to many, many friends and very smart people who were telling me, listen, as an American Jew, criticizing Israel is terrible for me. I don't want to do it. I feel like my job is to support Israel abroad. And I understand that. And that members to know what was going on here so they can help try and navigate things to the right place. And so, you know, sometimes it might seem like the families are only criticizing Netanyahu and they're doing it very vocally. I do think that

the hostages have been used to protect Israel, to explain why the war is still ongoing in a way that is, it's true, but it's also been used to promote Israel's name and say, well, you know, we're still fighting this war because we want to save the lives of the hostages. I believe that's true. But I also believe that if that's true, our government has to really show the world that yes, what we have been saying is true. We are fighting this war, not because we want to fight a war, but because we want to save the lives of our hostages. And so we're going to fight until we are able to bring them back. And that is up to our government to show that that's truly what they're doing, especially now,

as Gil has already touched on, especially now that finally Sinoir is dead, is out of the way. Now is the time for our government to really cement this in the international understanding sphere. Sinawar was the one who was holding back a deal. And now that we are finally rid of this man, we can show you that we Israelis want a good life. We want life and we're going to get the hostages back. And that's what we want and what this war has been about. To add to what Maya was explaining beautifully, it's just I was having the same questions at the beginning of the war. What should we do? It also connects to the question of driving up the price. Would protesting in the streets would maybe show Sinwa that this is a precious thing and that he should hold on to the hostages till the price is high enough? And there are so

many reasons not to protest. And I was actually in a meeting with the defense minister, Gallant, and there was an advisor of him. And I asked him, OK, I understand that you want us to be quiet right now. When should we open our mouths and go to the streets and protest? And he looked at me and he was sort of confused. He said, right now, you have to do it. You're obligated to do it. Your family members are now in captivity. What you're doing when you're protesting

is not driving up the price. It only brings the deal closer, and you must do it. And there was another meeting that I had with the head of the Security Council here in Israel, Zahiya Negbi, the head of the Malal. He's the National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister. Longtime member of Knesset in the Likud party. The Likud and Kadima.

And we asked him as family members of hostages, what can we do to make sure that the deal is completed? And he was very accurate in saying, you need to show in polls that most of the Israelis want to see a deal. And agree to a deal in which hostages come back and the war is finished. And that became very clear to us that we had to impact the Israeli public opinion polls and the public opinion in general. We had to do it to make sure that a deal was possible. So I had these two recommendations from these two specialists to go with. And just like Maya said, it doesn't make it a simple decision, but we had to go with something. And that's what we did according to what these people recommended

us. Okay. So I just want to wrap with this question. I've been trying to think through and talk to a lot of people, officials in the US, officials in Israel, officials in some of the Gulf states to try to understand what now. Is the mindset that Hamas is crushed? There is no Hamas, and we need to start thinking about a post-Hamas world, and that's what it means about reaching out to Palestinians, reaching out to those Palestinians that are holding Israelis hostage and trying to cut bilateral deals with them, pick them off one by one. So is that the world in which we should be living, or should we be living in a world in which there is going to be a successor to Sinwarir, that Hamas will remain intact, even

though it's been militarily seriously degraded, if not crushed? There's still some political organization there. And the successor could range from someone inside Gaza, like Mohamed Sinoir, who's Yehia Sinoir's younger brother, less experienced, less credibility, some argue even more brutal than Yehiya Sinwar, or could it be led by Khaled Machel, who was one of the leaders of Hamas in its international bureau, that we need to be thinking that Hamas will remain intact and Israel is going to be dealing with a weakened Hamas. And that's the mindset. I'm processing all of this. And I know policymakers in Jerusalem and Washington and elsewhere are processing the same things. I can't find a consensus yet. How on earth do you think about it? I mean, first off, you're right. I don't think anyone knows yet what's going to happen. Unfortunately, we have to give it a second to

see what's going to happen on the Palestinian side. There is a limit to what we can do. But I do want to say that personally, and I'm not an expert, but as someone who lives here, you know, we have successfully killed many terrorists, leaders of Hamas and different terrorist movements. And unfortunately, usually they go on. So I do believe that we will see some kind of success or just a noir. And I also believe from a pragmatic point of view, it is better for the state of the hostages if we are able to talk to someone who represents Hamas as a whole, because once you start dealing with individuals and it's every man and every hostage to him or herself, and you don't, you have no way

of controlling what's happening. But I do think what I have learned from this year, and I'm able to say without a doubt, looking back, and this relates to your previous question and what Gil said, is there were times when Sinoir was holding back the deal. There were times when Netanyahu was holding out for a better deal. And what has been true is that when Israel has had the upper hand, which has happened several times during this year, we have not used our leverage to get the hostages back, except for in the beginning of November. So we have had these military successes. And, you know, at times when we could have used that success in order to push a deal through. And, you know,

you can see this kind of up and down thing where whenever Hamas had some sort of success in the sense that there was a lot of criticism of Israel around the world, then Sinuwa would harden his position and not be willing to make a deal. And whenever we had a better position because Hamas had done something awful or because we were able to score some kind of military advancement sort of after the assassination of Nasrallah, after the assassination of Hania, we did not use that leverage to lead to a deal, but to continue the ongoing military war. And so I think we are at a stage when we have to use this achievement to bring the hostages back. That has to be the one thing that leads our administration, our government, is this knowledge that we've had this major military success. It's so important.

Let's use it to finally have the hostages back so that we can also have a moral success and, you know, an ability to rebuild Israel, which in the past year has been, you know, we've gone through a lot. Everyone here is extremely tired and we need to start thinking about our future. So I don't know what's going to happen in Gaza, but I trust that my leadership is able to broker a deal no matter what happens, if they want it enough, especially now when we have this leverage and this less success. So I guess that's the one thing that I can feel that I know for sure, is that we now have some sort of power and we should use it to bring the hostages back and to really shape this narrative so that the world understands what we have been trying to make it see all this time, is that we want peace.

Israelis want a quiet, good life. We want our people back. Yechia Sinuar is a terrible terrorist. He's finally dead and we can finally end this terrible war and We want our people back. Yechia Sinwar is a terrible terrorist. He's finally dead and we can finally end this terrible war and get our hostages back. And I feel like if that is what our government will do, it will give us a lot of hope and a lot of some room to breathe towards the future, which is going to require a lot of strength from all of us. All right. We will leave it there. Maya Roman and Gil Dickman, thank you both for helping me understand this situation,

both in a conversation like this and other conversations we have. And it's gut-wrenching to think about the loss that everyone in Israel in some way, either directly or indirectly experienced, but you both have experienced very directly with the murder of Carmel. May her memory be a blessing

and let's hope, pray, and work for better days ahead. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. Thank you so much, Dean. That's our show for today. If you live in the Pittsburgh area and want to attend the event that Dave McCormick and I will be having,

it should be a very good conversation. The link to the event is in the show notes. The event that Dave McCormick and I will be having, it should be a very good conversation. The link to the event is in the show notes. It's dananddave.eventbrite.com. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huérgo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.