Palestine

"It's clear today that not much more can be achieved. […] We are only entangling ourselves further and not accomplishing anything there, besides jeopardizing our soldiers."

In pointing to the growing futility of the war in Gaza, these words reflect the views of a large majority of Israelis by now. What makes them particularly noteworthy is the person saying them: the rabbinical leader of a prominent West Bank yeshiva.

During a speech delivered last week to mark the 600 days in captivity of the […] hostages, Rabbi Mosheh Lichtenstein, the spiritual leader of Yeshivat Har Etzion in the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut, concluded that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza had “exhausted itself.”

He used the opportunity to warn that Israel’s “bleeding wound,” as he termed it, would never heal until all the hostages were returned.

Lichtenstein is widely known as a voice of moderation with the settler movement. Still, it is not every day that a distinguished figure in the religious Zionist establishment breaks ranks with the political leadership and effectively calls for an end to the war.

But it is becoming more common, as growing numbers of Israelis, including those who identify as religious Zionists, have come to realize that it is impossible to achieve both of the government's declared objectives in Gaza — bringing home the hostages and bringing down Hamas — and that ultimately, one must come at the expense of the other.

The Religious Zionism party, headed by Bezalel Smotrich, has long held that ending the rule of Hamas must take precedence over freeing the hostages, and has warned that should the government decide otherwise, his party will pull out of the coalition and topple it.

Religious Zionism is the only party that represents the religious Zionist community (which accounts for about 10 percent of the total population in Israel) in the current Knesset, and until now, polls show that a majority within this community (the Israeli equivalent, more or less, of Modern Orthodox) have supported this hard line — some might even say heartless — position.

But prominent members of the religious Zionist establishment, like Lichtenstein, who believe the Maimonidean decree that there is no greater mitzvah than freeing hostages, are starting to make their voices heard.

Two weeks ago, Rabbi Ilay Ofran, the spiritual leader of Kvutzat Yavneh — a religious kibbutz in central Israel — and the head of a pre-military gap year program for Orthodox young men, was invited to deliver an address at the weekly Saturday night protest held in Carmei Gat. A neighborhood in the southern city of Kiryat Gat, Carmei Gat is where the residents of Nir Oz were relocated after their kibbutz was destroyed on October 7.

To the sounds of loud applause, Ofran told the crowd that if Israel [were] to have any future, every last hostage must be returned. “If we do not deliver all of them, to the last of our brothers, to freedom, if we concede this supreme value, we will not be ourselves anymore,” he warned. “We will not be the nation of Israel.”

He noted that when King Pharaoh of Egypt had offered Moses a deal whereby only some of the enslaved children of Israel would be set free, the great biblical leader rejected it out of hand, insisting that all must be released. “We need a Moses,” declared Ofran.

Miriam Lapid was one of the founding members of Gush Emunim, the ultra-nationalist, religious movement that built the first […] settlements in the territories occupied by Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War. Although she could hardly be called a peacenik, she has made several appearances in recent months at protests calling for the immediate release of the hostages. She may have very different ideas about how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but Lapid shares with the protesters a deep disdain for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, including Smotrich.

In an impromptu appearance at a recent Jerusalem protest, she turned to the crowd and asked: “Where are the beards, the wigs, the kerchiefs and the hats? Where are the Jews who love the people of Israel and care about this country? Where are they? I want to see them at these protests.”

Change of heart

Public opinion polls show that she may not have to look that hard anymore, because growing numbers are coming around.

Since January 2024, the Israel Democracy Institute has conducted several surveys in which it asks Israelis which of the war’s stated objectives, in their opinion, should be prioritized: bringing home the hostages or destroying Hamas. According to a detailed breakdown of the data shared with Haaretz, in the first survey, only 21 percent of religious-Zionist respondents said returning the hostages (compared with two-thirds who said destroying Hamas). In September 2024, their share had risen to one-third, and by March 2025, it was already 44 percent (almost identical to the share of religious Zionists that said destroying Hamas should be prioritized).

Indeed, the percentage of religious Zionists who would choose returning the hostages over continuing the war has more than doubled in little more than a year — although it is still far below the percentage among the general population, which has gone up from 51 percent in January 2024 to 68 percent in March 2025.

This change of heart is evident on the ground as well. Among the regular participants at the Saturday night protests in Carmei Gat is a group that drives in every week from the West Bank settlements of Gush Etzion to show their solidarity. The main message at these protests — deliberately timed to start after Shabbat ends in order to accommodate these religious participants — is that the war must end to save the remaining hostages.

It was at a joint march organized by leaders of this unusual alliance forged between religious settlers from Gush Etzion and secular kibbutzniks from Nir Oz where Rabbi Lichtenstein chose to speak out against the war last week.

This softening in Orthodox positions is also evident in a gathering held every Shabbat in Jerusalem to raise awareness of the plight of the hostages. As part of this relatively new initiative, at the conclusion of Shabbat prayer services, hundreds of shul-goers — including members of several mainstream Orthodox congregations — converge at Oranim Junction in the city, where they sit quietly on the ground and recite a prayer for the release of the hostages written by Zvi Zussman whose son Ben, a 22-year-old soldier, was killed fighting in Gaza. The prayer implores the government to complete the deal to return the hostages “even at the price of ending the war.”

Despite its name, Smotrich’s party represents only a small minority of the religious Zionist community, says Shlomit Ravitsky Tur-Paz, director of the Center for Shared Society and head of the Religion and State Program at the Israel Democracy Institute.

“At most, he has the support of about 15 percent of the religious Zionist community, but because he is the only party representing this community in the current Knesset, he seems a lot more powerful than he actually is,” says Ravitsky Tur-Paz. “Most polls show that if elections were held today, his party would not get in, which is a more accurate reflection of his power.”

Growing numbers of religious Zionists take issue with the party's position on the hostages, she says, and a large majority oppose legislation, supported by Smotrich, that would maintain military exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men.

“I sense a lot of discomfort among people who voted for the Religious Zionism party in the last election, including in my own circles,” says Ravitsky Tur-Paz but concedes that the vast majority still identify with the right. (A few years ago, a group of religious leftists in Israel started a movement called “The Faithful Left,” which recently set up a chapter in New York, but they represent only a small percentage of the Orthodox population in both countries).

In January 2023, after the government unveiled the judicial overhaul, a group of Orthodox Israelis opposed to this assault on democracy formed a group called “Religious. Zionists. Democrats” that joined the protest movement. After October 7, they stopped demonstrating out of a belief that it is not appropriate to express dissent during wartime.

Pasit Siach, a teacher and former high school principal from Maʻale Gilboa — a religious kibbutz in northern Israel — had been among the founders of this group. About half a year into the war, she thought [that] it was time to take to the streets again.

“I felt that if we didn't get rid of this government, our soldiers would not have a place to come back to,” she explains. Siach waited for the rest of the group to reach the same conclusion, but it never happened.

“At some point, I realized that if they were not back on the streets by now, they weren’t going to come back,” she says.

With the consent of the group, about a month-and-a-half-ago, she set up another group called “There are religious people in the protests.” It is not a break-off group, she insists, but rather, a “subsidiary.” Since then, she has been back with her signs in the streets and running a WhatsApp group with nearly 400 members.

“I don’t understand how so many religious people don’t understand the urgency of bringing home the hostages,” she says. “This is not Judaism.”

Last week, a dispute broke out within the WhatsApp group about whether members should stick together as a group during the protests or blend in with the other demonstrators. The group member who suggested they blend in argued that if they stood together, it would be obvious how pitifully small a group they were.

For someone like him who wore a kippah and was, therefore, visibly religious, it might not make a difference, countered Siach. But for someone like her who did not cover her hair and often wore pants, nobody would take note that she was religious unless she was part of a group.

“And I’ve come to realize that it’s very important for the other protesters to see us religious people out there — in fact, I would say that what we are doing is a kiddush hashem [sanctifying the name of G-d] by showing that there is no contradiction between being religious and being humane.”

In the end, Siach won the argument.