“This” was the most difficult mission ever assigned in public service: bringing home an unprecedented number of hostages and missing persons—numbers that were not yet known at the time. In fact, Hirsch did not state the number publicly until the end of November, so as not to give Hamas the opportunity to claim that hostages were merely “missing.”

“By the evening of October 8, I realized we were missing 3,200 people. In the second week, 1,060. Later, 400,” Hirsch says. By then he had accepted “this” and assumed the title National Coordinator for the Hostages and the Missing. It was his job to bring the 400 home.

Yahya Sinwar, it now turns out, planned to keep the hostages as an asset that would yield returns for ten years—yes, ten years of negotiations.