Ard, there’s nothing in the Torah about protecting our spiritual values at the expense of other people and Hashem’s values. If you are carrying such a sentiment, you then presume that lives and spiritual situation of other Jews is of no value to you. I think the authors of these letters realize the difficulty. That is why they are smoothing over it by constantly putting together prayers for hostages and for those who don’t want to serve, trying to somehow latch to the prayers of the whole am yisroel.
But this only highlights the contradiction; Hashem please save the hostages, but not thru us. Esther tried that but then she listened to Mordechai.
