Sharone Lifschitz attended six funerals last week for eight hostages the Israeli army retrieved from Gaza tunnels in body bags. “Four of them were members of my community,” she told me wearily by phone from Israel. These were neighbors and friends from Kibbutz Nir Oz, near the Gaza border.

Meanwhile, her father, Oded Lifschitz, 83, remains a captive, if he is still living. Like many hostage families, Lifschitz blames Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for Israel’s failure to free them.

She said they have become pawns in a political game.

Lifschitz’s story reflects a tragic political schism in Israel that threatens to scuttle any deal to halt or end the Gaza war and could drag the United States into an open conflict with Iran.

“Netanyahu is using these hostages for his political survival,” said the 52-year-old Lifschitz, an artist, filmmaker, and university lecturer. “There were plenty of opportunities to return the hostages, but he used them to stay in power.”

‘He knows when the war ends, his power will end’

While Hamas has also thrown up many obstacles, Lifschitz said the unpopular Israeli leader sees any cease-fire and hostage exchange as a threat to his political survival; it would open the door to new elections, and the possibility that he could no longer avoid trials for corruption.

“He knows when the war ends, his power will end,” she said. She is spot on.

In his desperation to cement his governing far-right coalition, Netanyahu has basically endorsed the views of two messianic fundamentalists, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich — who was arrested in 2005 on suspicion of terrorism — and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, convicted in Israeli courts of supporting a terrorist organization in 2007.

Both these men call for annexation of the West Bank and provoke settler violence there. They want Israel to maintain permanent occupation of Gaza. As if that recklessness is insufficient, Ben-Gvir is trying to spark a Mideast holy war over the Temple Mount, a Jerusalem holy site sacred to Jews and Muslims.

These ministers, along with Netanyahu, scorn the hostage families who engage in constant demonstrations because the hardest-hit kibbutzim were settled by leftists who supported a two-state solution to the Palestine issue.

Lifschitz’s journalist dad, Oded, a fifth-generation Israeli, helped found Nir Oz based on ideals of social justice and good relations with Palestinians. “My dad had many Arab friends in Palestine. Only two weeks before being taken hostage by Hamas, he was carrying on his weekly efforts to drive Gazan mothers and children to Jerusalem to get medical treatment,” she said.

Her mother, Yocheved, 85, was also taken hostage by Hamas, who ripped her from her nightly oxygen machine but released her, in a wheelchair, in late October. When Nir Oz’s hostage families met Netanyahu after last week’s funerals, her mother demanded to know why the prime minister had never visited any of the destroyed kibbutzim. Of 400 Nir Oz residents, at least 38 were murdered and 75 taken hostage. The prime minister brushed her off.

‘Netanyahu fed Hamas’

If her father were back alive, I asked, would he have any regrets about having helped ordinary Gazans?

“No!” she replied swiftly. “He really wanted to preempt the disaster that has befallen us, wanted Israel to make difficult choices when we had a position of strength.” She added: “My father fought against (Israel’s long covert relationship with) Hamas. He never believed you should have an alliance with fundamentalists.”

She was referring to Netanyahu’s support for Qatar sending millions of dollars monthly to Hamas, up until the Oct. 7 invasion. He believed the cash would buy off the extremists who wanted to destroy Israel while he undermined the more secular Palestinian leadership on the West Bank that supported two states.

“Netanyahu fed Hamas. It’s a monster he created,” Lifschitz stated bluntly.

Yet, equally shocking is the effort by the prime minister and his partners to demean families who rally weekly at his door in Jerusalem. Israeli police, who serve under Ben-Gvir, have attacked the demonstrators. Netanyahu, who has never apologized for the government’s failure to prevent the Hamas massacre, has scheduled a highly controversial official TV memorial service on Oct. 7 that is deeply resented by the kibbutzim and millions of Israelis.

“Bibi is a master of tearing us apart,” Lifschitz mourned. “The vast majority of Israelis want a deal. Israel can’t survive as a nation without the feeling we are all in this together.”

The latest polls hover around 60% or more wanting the return of hostages compared with around 30% who prefer to continue the war. Yet, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have stated clearly that the hostages are of secondary importance to “destroying” Hamas, a mantra Netanyahu echoes.

Although at least 30 of 108 remaining hostages are believed dead, and the rest are at high risk of imminent death, these ministers insist there must be no cease-fire deal — despite intense efforts by U.S., Qatari, Egyptian, and Israeli negotiators. The Israeli press is filled with accounts of how the prime minister has undercut his own negotiators.

Only negotiations can free the hostages

It is painfully clear that the remaining hostages can only be freed by negotiations. The military has rescued only eight alive, while more than 27 have been killed in Gaza by Hamas or Israeli military strikes, including three escapees shot by soldiers while waving white flags and shouting in Hebrew. The Israeli Bedouin hostage freed this week was found by accident in a tunnel.

Better to free the hostages, pull back overstretched Israeli troops, and use a cease-fire to cool down the dangerous tensions between Hezbollah, Iran, and Israel, which keep tens of thousands of evacuated residents from returning to their homes in cities in the north. Israeli media report that the military leadership favors this option.

Then, after the first phase of the cease-fire, depending on progress, the next phase may begin. Yes, there will be risks, but Netanyahu’s path leads to endless insurgency and regional war.

Instead, Netanyahu’s extremists appear eager to expand the tit-for-tat exchanges with Hezbollah into full-scale war with Lebanon. Israeli TV hints that Netanyahu is urging an attack on Tehran’s nuclear sites, and is again urging Washington to strike Tehran’s nuclear program with two U.S. aircraft carriers in the region. Netanyahu waits hopefully for his supposed friend Donald Trump to win.

Dragging their own country toward the abyss

“I’d like the U.S. to put its foot down,” urged Lifschitz. “I really hope that Biden doesn’t wait until after the elections. That will be too late for many of the hostages. They don’t have the time.”

Again, she is on point. Joe Biden is still president, and Vice President Kamala Harris has shown more stomach for a stronger U.S. position toward ending endless civilian carnage in Gaza.

It’s past time for the United States to sanction ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, who are dragging their own country toward the abyss. And it is time for Biden, who has shown great love for Israel, to stop Netanyahu from treating his U.S. ally with the same disdain he shows to hostage families.

“Biden is free now to do what it takes,” said Lifschitz. Now is the time to not only pressure Hamas but be far tougher on Netanyahu, and to explain why to the U.S. public.

“It would be the most profound humane gesture to get the hostages back,” said Oded Lifschitz’s daughter.

Before they are all dead.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for The Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101. Her email address is trubin@phillynews.com