Today, the government of Israel made one of the most morally and strategically complex and difficult decisions any group of elected officials can confront, making painful concessions to free hostages from the hands of their evil captors.

We support their decision. This support is consistent with the Orthodox Union’s long-standing policy to support the Israeli government’s positions on national security issues. We recognize and respect that this decision is based upon the primacy that the government of Israel, the people of Israel, and the Torah of Israel place upon the infinite value of human life, a value that our enemies have not begun to embrace.

But even as we support the decision of the government of Israel, we and all civilized people must hold responsible the many who made this terribly difficult decision necessary.

We hold responsible the Qataris whose ongoing hosting and support of the Hamas terrorists enabled them to massacre, rape, behead and kidnap hundreds of innocents. The Qataris are part of the problem and not part of the solution.

We hold responsible the United Nations who have yet to find it within themselves to unequivocally condemn the brutal massacre of Oct. 7, offering instead lame and ignorant presentations of context to excuse the inexcusable. The U.N. was created to prevent another Holocaust and has chosen instead to be its greatest promoter.

We hold responsible the politicians and NGOs who choose to focus their concern for humanitarian behavior on the world’s most humane army as it fights a war it did not start and never wanted, instead of shining the spotlight of moral and compassionate scrutiny consistently and completely on the brutal and monstrous murderers and kidnappers of Hamas.

We hold responsible the so-called progressives who will stand up for any victim if he is not a Jew, who will prosecute rapists as long as their victims are not Israelis, who forget the friendship and allyship of the Jewish community that has stood by their side in their every struggle, and who now oppose the Jewish people’s right to defend themselves.

We hold responsible the leadership of universities who have allowed their sacred spaces of learning to become places where Jews live in fear and where there is no room on their walls and bulletin boards to display compassion for the plight of hostages taken and held in unambiguous and undebatable violation of every law of war.

We hold responsible the biased media who fan the flames of hatred and antisemitism by their hopelessly imbalanced reporting, briefly telling the story of the hostages before turning their focus to the tragic plight of a population that — while certainly including thousands of innocents — is dominated by a majority whose values reflect those of Hamas in poll after poll, who elected the terrorist government it deserves, celebrated the massacre of Israelis, seeks one Judenrein state from the river to the sea, whose so-called moderate leaders continue to pay to slay, and who educate their children that Jews have no place on this earth.

We support the Israeli government in its painful decision, taken with the knowledge that the Oct. 7 massacre was planned and executed by Yahya Sinwar, yemach shemo vezichro, a beast who was freed from an Israeli jail in a previous prisoner swap.

We support the Israeli government and urge them to not let this pause in the fire provide an opportunity for Hamas to reorganize and rearm.

We support the Israeli government in this painful decision, and we hold the world responsible for their complicity in their having to make it. You have failed those men, women and children held captive and you must not allow this travesty to continue. You must not rest until each and every hostage from this conflict and from previous conflicts are returned home. You must support the Israeli army as it finishes the job of completely and totally destroying Hamas and does what is needed to ensure that the next plan for Gaza will not allow that territory to again breed the evil that the withdrawal of 2005 did.

We pray to God with all our heart that each and every one of the hostages return home safely, that they and their families find healing, and that they find their place in a welcoming world that has learned from its terrible mistakes and misjudgments and embraces a genuine love of both truth and peace, where Jews may live without fear.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer is the executive vice president of the Orthodox Union.