Freeing Gurel
The safe return of Eliyahu Gurel, the Israeli cabdriver freed by commandos after five days in terrorist captivity, is a welcome reminder of those happier times when Israel’s military was a model of gallantry and derring-do, not a pariah. For the first time since the Entebbe operation of 1976, Israel managed to end a hostage situation not with hostages murdered by their captors or killed in crossfire but brought out alive and unharmed.
In a textbook operation, the crack General Staff Commando unit, backed up by the Border Police counter-terrorism squad, managed — by tapping his captors’ cellphone calls — to trace the missing cabbie to an abandoned factory outside Ramallah, then lured the kidnappers outside and freed him without a shot.
Leaks from the Israeli Defense Ministry this week, disseminated widely by Israel’s friends and allies in this country, were making much of the fact that Gurel was freed without any help from Palestinian security services. The idea seems to be to discredit the cease-fire. Palestinians, for their part, were complaining that they couldn’t do much to help because Israel wasn’t sharing its leads.
But the debate misses the point. As the army itself made clear, Gurel’s captors were a gang of freelancers without links to any established terrorist groups. Along with the fatal stabbing of an Israeli in Tel Aviv, the kidnapping represents a new wave of terrorism by amateurs without backup from the Palestinian leadership. That’s because the cease-fire, as shaky and mistrustful as it is, is working.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
