I learned with great excitement about the rescue of 4 hostages at the Neseirat camp in Gaza. I learned in the podcast Call Me Back that while the rescue of Noam Argamani went off without a hitch, the rescues of Shlomi Ziv Almog Meir Jan and Andrey Kozlov were met with great challenge and needed extra Israeli forces to come in to ensure its success. Thanks to Israeli soldiers who came in when the truck carrying Israeli special units and 3 of the hostages got stuck in order to make the rescue.

I feel for Meir Jan’s father who died of a heart attack just hours before the army arrived to deliver the news of his son’s rescue. At the same time, we saw the pure joy in the embrace of Noa Argamani and her father. Life is bittersweet, and we saw examples of both the bitter and the sweet with last week’s rescue operation.

We also saw secular Israelis enter into synagogues on Shabbat to inform religious Jews of this amazing rescue effort. It was a Fauda-like operation, with Avi Issacharov saying, “This is beyond belief” and if he tried to write this into a scene for Fauda it would have been unbelievable.

Due to the complexity of such an effort, it is unlikely to be repeated. This is because of the challenges of urban warfare, needing to make simulations with models of the buildings, weeks of preparations and strategy sessions and catching Hamas by surprise with a daytime attack, as well as multiple factors needing to line up. We pray for a hostage deal in which all Israeli hostages are released-and if not possible, for Israel to do everything it can to eradiacate Hamas and set the hostages free.

Please check out Rabbi Taff’s article in The Times of Israel about Arnon serving with his nephew https://www.jpost.com/israel-hamas-war/article-806269