When six innocent people are executed in cold blood to prevent their safe return to their families and their homes, the extremism of the act begets extreme responses. Human instinct is to be angry and figure out how the tragedy could have been prevented and to become even more certain about what we believed the day before Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Almog Sarusi, and Alex Lobanov were found with bullets in their heads. We look for the easy answers because the situation itself is not complicated. Six people were kidnapped by a terrorist group and held hostage underground for nearly 11 months, and then murdered. There is no moral complexity to weigh in this situation, and warranted righteous outrage about what happened makes it hard to confront what now stares us in the face rationally.

The air is now suffocatingly thick with some of the easy answers that have been floating around for months. For instance, if only the U.S. had not prevented Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from launching a full-scale invasion of Rafah in the early spring, then the hostages would have been freed, or Hamas would have folded by now. Or, if only the U.S. had imposed an arms embargo on Israel months ago, then Netanyahu would have been forced to back down and negotiate a ceasefire, and the hostages would now be home safe and sound.

These theories are not only unprovable but contradicted by mountains of available evidence, from the fact that Israel has operated unimpeded in northern and central Gaza on its own timetables and been unable to free hostages in those places beyond one-off circumstances to the fact that Netanyahu’s rhetoric and ceasefire conditions have only hardened as U.S. frustration and criticism—not to mention its withholding of one-ton bombs—have grown. These satisfyingly easy answers provide an either/or for which many yearn, but that does not exist. The either/or that is now all around us regarding the hostages also does not exist; it isn’t that either Hamas is reprehensible and responsible for spilling their blood, or that Netanyahu is throwing away their lives in his refusal to do everything possible to get an agreement, but both at the same time.

The thrust of Netanyahu’s Monday press conference, where he doubled down on the stance he pushed in the security cabinet vote last Thursday, is that the IDF cannot withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor. To do so, he argued, will prevent Hamas’ destruction and ensure that Gaza remains a risk to Israel’s security and that this is too important to sacrifice to conclude a deal for the return of the hostages. On the other side, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the IDF’s top brass, and former IDF chiefs of staff Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot argue that the IDF’s withdrawal from the corridor will not risk Israel’s security and that it must be done to get the hostages back.

I won’t pretend to know who is right about the Philadelphi Corridor as it relates to security. There are strong arguments for not wanting the IDF to withdraw from it to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its capabilities and establishing a lifeline to the outside world. There are also strong arguments that the years that the IDF spent there did not prevent smuggling underneath it, smuggling via the crossing that goes through it, or attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians in proximity to it. If the IDF leaves for 42 days, maybe it will be able to return right away, and maybe 42 days will turn into a permanent absence. Whether Netanyahu is right or wrong about the corridor’s importance is not the relevant question to ask. The pertinent question is whether it is possible now to get the hostages back without conceding it, and whether it ever was.

The biggest myth that Israelis and Jews around the world have told themselves is the one that Netanyahu invented about total victory. This did not suddenly become clear on Saturday. It was clear the week before when the IDF recovered the bodies of six hostages, five presumed to have been killed in Khan Younis earlier this year and one who had been thought to be still alive. It was clear for months as the IDF recovered eight living hostages but tens of bodies. Total victory was presented as the ultimate easy answer, one that would allow Israel to have it all. Hamas could be routed, the hostages could be recovered alive, and Israel would not have to make concessions in negotiations with terrorists.

Like all myths, this was not rooted in reality, but in a story that many Israelis wanted to tell about themselves. And, like all myths, it cannot be reconciled with the facts of the world that we live in. There is a terrible choice that the Israeli government has been pretending it does not have to make, all while it had actually made its choice. What comes next is whether it sticks to that choice, or reverses course.

Israel has fallen into a pattern with Hamas that is all too familiar to veteran observers of Israeli-Palestinian issues. No matter what, every development turns into a reason not to make a deal. When Hamas appears to be on the run after months of stunningly successful IDF operations to disrupt its chain of command and operations, the Israeli position is that there is no reason to negotiate since Israel has the upper hand and needs only a little more time before Hamas collapses and Israel gets what it wants. When Hamas executes six hostages in an act of desperate depravity as the IDF gets near in a clear sign of its growing weakness and distress, the Israeli position is that they can’t possibly negotiate now after Hamas’ latest atrocities since that will send the wrong message.

The evidence that only negotiations will allow the majority of living Israeli hostages a reasonable chance of returning home alive is incontrovertible to anyone who trusts evidence and statistics rather than platitudes about strength and blind faith in the IDF’s ability to produce miracles. If freeing the hostages is an objective that matters, then every effort must be made to justify negotiating rather than avoiding it. There is absolutely no guarantee that Hamas will agree to anything, since Israel is facing off against an actor that deserves no trust, no good faith, or benefit of the doubt. But if saving the hostages means anything to Netanyahu and his ministers beyond yellow pins and slogans on dog tags and banners, they have to demonstrate that they are doing everything they can to reach a deal and force Hamas to say no without any plausible excuses about Israeli intransigence or unreasonableness.

This week marks the beginning of Elul, the month on the Jewish calendar leading up to the High Holidays, which is meant to be a period of reflection and repentance in anticipation of the Jews’ holiest days. Repentance is acknowledging where you went wrong and, more importantly, committing to change. What happened in the past is less important than what you commit to do going forward. There were plausible arguments earlier in the war that a hostage deal was both reckless and unnecessary. While I believed from day one that the military campaign to smash Hamas and get the hostages back was irreconcilable, I would not have supported the deal on the table in the early months. But it is now clear not only that a deal is the only way to get the hostages back, but that they are literally out of time.

This Elul, everyone should hope that Netanyahu and the rest of the government have the fortitude and strength of conscience to embrace the spirit of the month, acknowledge that their theory about recovering the hostages through military means is wrong, and shift course immediately. Let the memories of these six hostages and the dozens of others be a blessing rather than a horrible prophecy of what’s to come.

This article was originally posted in Ottomans and Zionists.