OPINION: The latest iteration of Hamas’ barbarism has produced, largely, the sound of silence

The heartbreaking news about the brutal murder of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Alex Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, Carmel Gat and Ori Danino, cast a pall across global Jewry. Every Whatsapp, call or slice of social media made reference to it. The despair. The horror. Even the weather in Tel Aviv made its own pathetic fallacy with grey skies and rain on the last day of August.

But this latest iteration of Hamas’ barbarism has produced, largely, the sound of silence. Ambivalence. The qualifications, the omertà surrounding Israel and its citizens’ plight.

And while the front cover of some UK national media outlets published the faces of Hersh, Eden, Almog, Alexander, Carmel and Ori, the minutiae of the individual, the sanctity of their own selves becomes lost amid the sheer number of lives snatched. They are de-personalised: they are known simply as “the hostages” and end up being tarred with a political brush in death that may well have been anathema in life.

And whether attending a music festival or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time as a citizen in your own country, somehow all individuality of mass victims of terror becomes airbrushed by the weight of the atrocity. They each had likes, hopes, worries, fears, dreams. Each had their own identity and each one of them had Israeli citizenship.

But what does it mean to be a citizen? Certain rights are presented to you and in particular. For Israel, its “Basic Law”, which constitutes some of the State’s quasi-constitutional character, there is a particular clause dubbed the “worthy” clause”. It reads as follows: “the state will strive to secure the welfare of members of the Jewish people and of its citizens who are in straits and in captivity due to their Jewishness or due to their citizenship.”

Prime Minister Netanyahu has been quoted as saying that maintaining an Israeli presence on the Philadelphi Corridor was a “strategic, existential issue for the State of Israel.” And he may well be right from a military, operational perspective. But what about the other existential perspective: the obligation of the State to secure the welfare of its citizens who are in captivity? Fulfilling the covenant of the State, the “worthy clause”? This is not to diminish the importance of Israel’s presence on a tiny, narrow strip of just 14km: Hamas understands its importance as has already used it to pernicious ends.

And while this all makes sense rationally, for Israel’s citizens, for the Jewish people, for its heart, there is something out of joint. Because all we want is for our parents, our children, our brothers, our sisters, our friends, to come home, because that is where they belong.

And the State’s moral, almost sacred duty to protect its citizens can, to some, appear to be in a corridor far narrower than a mere 14km.

It is surely no accident that Israel’s national anthem, Hatikva, means ‘the hope’. Prime Minister Netanyahu must ensure that while he continues to maintain the security of the State, ensure that its people retain hope,for the return of those held in captivity, but also,hope that the State honours its covenant to its people. Not because they are obliged to do so, but because they ought to.

Because that is what it means to be a citizen of Israel. Because that is what it means to be a Jew.

• Andrew Freedman is a corporate and financial communications adviser at a major public relations firm