I've posted a bit about EU-BAM Rafah, the EU program to monitor the Rafah crossings. Its website has no press releases since September when it announced:
EUBAM Rafah maintains its full operational capability despite the closure of Rafah Crossing Point since 9 June 2007.
In remarks to journalists after the meeting Mr. Solana congratulated mission members for their excellent and important work which constitutes an essential aspect of the EU's support to the Palestinian Authority.
I have been wondering what exactly these people are doing. I dug up one other document on the EU website from December concerning their current activities; mostly they are now helping out another EU group called EU-COPPS.
It would be reasonable to get more details about this group that clearly has not done anything related to its mission for six months now, especially since there are multiple employees still on the EU payroll. So I emailed both the public relations head and deputy:
I am a blogger, following the news stories of Palestinians crossing the Rafah border in both directions since Hamas took over Gaza. My understanding from your website press release in July was that EUBAM has not completely given up on monitoring Rafah and keeps observers in the area. But I have been struck that there has been no official EUBAM comment on the reported violations of the original Rafah agreements between Israel, the EU, the PA and Egypt.
Specifically, I am referring to the Hajj pilgrims who traveled through Rafah to Egypt in mid-December, the possibility that they will return (since confirmed) through the same crossing (perhaps including known terrorists and millions of dollars,) as well as the reported movement of over a hundred members of Hamas and other militant groups from Egypt to Gaza through Rafah in September and October.
Is there any official EU-BAM comment on these activities? Are they condemned? In light of these activities, why are the observers still in the area? How many observers are there and who pays their salaries while they are waiting to re-deploy?
How many EU-BAM employees are there? What is the annual budget? Where are the EU-BAM employees still deployed in the Middle East staying?
Thank you very much for any response you can give.
I first emailed them on Sunday, and then twice more. The deputy email address bounces back. The main public relations person named Maria Telleria, who is living in the Dan Gardens Ashkelon Hotel on the Mediterranean, has not responded after repeated attempts. (Her number is 972 (0) 542 247 250.)
The EU-BAM press and public relations officer has responded to my inquiry:
Dear (Elder, I used a fake name),
Thanks for your interest in EUBAM and to get in touch with us,
As you know and despite the RCP being closed since the 9th of June, the European Union decided to maintain the European Union Border Assistance Mission - Rafah (EUBAM) in the area. Due to the prevailing political and security situation the Mission has been downsizing even if it maintains its full operational capacity. At present moment EUBAM strength is a total of 42 composed by the 34 International staff from 17 different EU states members and 8 locally contracted staff members. In June 2007 the Mission had 96 Mission members in total.
Since the beginning of the Mission in November 2005 we have had our Headquarters in Ashkelon is still in here where the Mission is based and from we continue working. Our task nowadays consists in looked at ways to increase further the EU's support to the Palestinian Authority, and in particular in helping to build up an effective Palestinian civilian and border police force. As you know the EU is playing an important role in training and mentoring the Palestinian police and this is an essential element in developing the structures of a Palestinian state.
About the annual budget I’m afraid that this is not public information, but I can tell you that part of it is paid for each Member State . In this way part of my salary is paid by Spain and in this way it differs from my colleague’s salary.
Concerning the Hajj pilgrims who traveled trough Rafah it is obvious that is not our task to condemn any action in the area. In this regards I would like to remind you that our Mission is an operational one and all policy decisions are made in Brussels . I take the opportunity as well to inform you that we are not an executive Mission and the Rafah Agreement was signed between the EU the Government of Israel and the Palestinian Authority but not by Egypt .
I hope that this information will be useful for you if not, please feel free to contact me at any time.
About the late response and as you can probably understand most of the Mission member including myself belong to the catholic tradition and we have been celebrating Christmas and New Year with our families. In this respect I take the opportunity to wish you a happy New Year.
With my best regards,
Maria Telleria Press & Public Information Officer EU BAM Rafah Mobile: +972-(0)54/2247250 Fax: +972-(0)8/6845740 E-mail: maria.telleria@eubam-rafah.org Visiting address: Dan Gardens Ashkelon Hotel, Ashkelon
I wasn't aware that Egypt was not part of the agreement, that this means that Egypt and Hamas can completely go around the EU's and international community's wishes for Rafah. It is interesting that the EU, so keenly interested in a Palestinian Arab state, seems to have nothing to say about this.
UPDATE: According to a report in London Al-Quds al-Arabi, Israel has written letters to Washington and the EU requesting taking over Rafah again and giving the EU observers control again over people crossing over.
The European Union Border Assistance Mission at the Rafah Crossing Point – code name EUBAM Rafah – was launched on 24 November 2005, to monitor the operations of the border crossing point between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, after Israel and the Palestinian Authority concluded an Agreement on Movement and Access on 15 November 2005. The Council of the European Union welcomed the Agreement and approved that the EU should undertake the third-party role proposed.
The operational phase of the mission began on 30 November 2005. The Rafah Crossing Point was last opened with the presence of EUBAM monitors on 9 June 2007. ... [when Hamas took over Gaza - EoZ.] Since then, the mission has remained on standby, awaiting a political solution and ready to re-engage at very short notice.
For nearly ten years, the members of the EUBAM have been doing, literally, nothing. There is nothing on the horizon to indicate that the PA will take over control of the Rafah crossings from Hamas. Egypt is more frightened of Gazans and Gaza weapons going to Egypt than Israel is of smuggled weapons into Gaza from Egypt since Egypt cracked down on smuggling.
The Council ...extended the mandate of EU BAM Rafah until 30 June 2017....The mission maintains readiness to redeploy to the Rafah crossing point once the political and security situation allows. Natalina Cea has been Head of Mission since 1 July 2015. The mission's budget for the period between 1 July 2016 and 30 June 2017 amounts to € 1.54 million.
€1.54 million every year to keep people on call for something that will never happen! The mission has existed for nearly 12 years, of which 10 have been doing exactly nothing.
Yet they still hire new Heads of Mission. They create useless seminars. They get together every few years with other EU officials.
This isn't the only useless EU organization on permanent assignment in the PA. The EU police mission for the Palestinian Territories spend over €10 million a year in order to help the PA learn how to run a functioning criminal justice system since 2006. And as far as I can tell from Palestinian media, there are extraordinarily few cases that actually make it to Palestinian court, after over 10 years of EU mentoring and oversight.
But in both these cases, the EU doesn't want to admit that it was throwing money away, so it continues to throw good money after bad and pretending that it is making a difference. Unless someone starts asking why the EU auditors aren't looking for results from these missions, they will continue to waste money - and incidentally continue to infantilize the Palestinians by telling them that 25 years after Oslo, they still don't know how to build their own institutions by themselves.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
The Israeli Conflict Is Far Too Nuanced And Complex To Sum Up In One Op-Ed
By James Berillo
For as long as I can remember, the Israelis and Palestinians have been in conflict. And for as long as I can remember, there have been myriad opinions about who is right and who is wrong. They are often convincing opinions—passionate, personal, and eloquent. But the violence, the bloodshed, the senseless intractable hatred, is far too complicated to be explained by one newspaper column or a single on-air commentary, no matter how well composed. The names and dates in the latest violence are new, but the scars are from wounds that reach back more than a century—countless families across many generations, each with their own deeds and stories, all with their own reason to carry on the conflict.
Opinions can be dangerous. They can provoke a people to take action, when that action might not be just. Opinions can be powerful. They can shape the way a nation sees a problem, when that one perspective might not be enough. Opinions are imperfect. They are based more in politics and preference than in facts, though facts are what matter most. And those facts remain, buried beneath the rubble in the Gaza Strip and Bethlehem. Facts and truths that only the men and women at the heart of the conflict can uncover for themselves—not professional journalists on a tight deadline or amateur bloggers with an ax to grind.
No. The skirmishes fought in the desert are as ancient as the mountains that loom above and as complex as the eddies that swirl in the rivers below. The world must address this struggle with a measured approach that takes all sides into account and acknowledges the decades of conflict.
It would be far too difficult—and far too arrogant—to attempt to sum up the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in one op-ed.
Counterpoint
Not If You Hate Jews!
By Frank Haas
Interesting, but I really dislike the Jewish people, so this whole "unending conflict with no easy answers" thing doesn't seem very complicated to me at all. In fact, summing up the "delicate and multifaceted situation" in the Middle East couldn't be simpler: I hate the Jews, therefore everything the Jews do is automatically wrong, therefore I hate the Jews.
Bam! Complex and nuanced issue resolved. Chalk another one up for blind, sweeping prejudice.
Now, I know what you're saying. "How can you take decades of cyclical violence, and with no prior understanding of historical context, come to a tidy conclusion on the matter?" Well, kind of like this: I absolutely abhor every member of the Jewish race. Voilà. Done. Moral ambiguity cleared up. And with plenty of time for me to go on with my hateful day!
It's easy as pie, really. For instance, when trying to parse out the conflict in the Middle East, there are many arguments for one to consider. There's the right to a homeland. There's the question of original sovereignty. And there's the fact that all Jews are inherently greedy and that I'd like for their whole godless country to burn in eternal hellfire. See? When you break it down like that, there's no uncertainty at all.
Listen up, United Nations! You can learn a thing or two here.
Don't get me wrong. It's not like I love the Palestinians. After all, they're Muslims, and all Muslims are trained to be suicide bombers at an early age. So, I don't like that. Also, the way they pray frightens me, and their skin color is different from mine, so that doesn't bode well for them, either. However, I can't start hating the Palestinians as much as I hate the Jews, because then how am I supposed to carelessly assign blame to one specific group of people? I'd be right back to square one!
No thanks. I'll stick to vilifying the Jews, if you don't mind. Makes the whole entire thing a lot easier to sort out.
Sure, I suppose I could probe deeper into the issues at hand, but I prefer to make up my mind based on myths I picked up from my father at the age of 12. After all, every moment spent deciding who took what land away from whom, and who fired retaliatory strikes against whom, is time that could be spent spouting off at the mouth with unrestrained vitriol. And isn't that what having an opinion is all about anyway?
Now who wants to go egg a synagogue and run away like little schoolgirls before someone comes to the door?
Javier SOLANA, EU High Representative for the CFSP, congratulates Alain FAUGERAS on taking office as Head of Mission of EUBAM Rafah
Javier SOLANA, EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), congratulated Colonel Alain FAUGERAS who today is taking office as the new Head of the EUBAM Rafah Mission. He succeeds General Pietro PISTOLESE. Javier SOLANA made the following comments:
"Colonel Faugeras' extensive police background acquired in the French Gendarmerie and his international experience makes him most suitable for the new position he takes up today. Colonel Alain Faugeras can count on my full support and that of the European Union as a whole in the fulfilment of his new responsibilities.
I also would like to warmly thank General Pietro Pistolese for his dedication and the excellent work he carried out as the head of EUBAM Rafah since it was launched in November 2005. The mission has been instrumental in allowing thousands of people to cross the border at Rafah.
Since the closure of the crossing point, the mission has maintained its operational capability and the European Union is prepared to redeploy its personnel at the border as soon as conditions permit.
For the past fourteen months, Colonel Faugeras has done literally zilch related to his mission, as Rafah is still not operational according to the EU agreement and has been closed since June, 2007, when Hamas took over Gaza and kicked out the PA, which was the only entity that coudl work jointly with the EU at the crossing. (EU-BAM wrote to me a couple of years ago that while the mission was still waiting to redeploy, they were training Palestinian Arab police. I wonder if the PA officer who killed an Israeli a couple of weeks ago was trained by them.)
However, the Colonel might end up working after all. Hamas, in the face of the Egyptian wall that is threatening to strangle their ability to bring in cash and weapons, is negotiating with the PA to figure out a way to re-open Rafah according to the original agreements between Israel, the PA and the EU.
The Hague, The Netherlands, January 7 - Following the lead of the nascent State of Palestine, the international terrorist organization Al Qaeda submitted its application today for membership in the International Criminal Court, specifically seeking the court's action on actions by the United States and its allies since the 12th of September 2001.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made good on his intention to join the international body earlier this week, in a move calculated to put pressure on Israel by threatening Israelis with criminal prosecution for alleged war crimes in the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians. The Palestinian application requests that the prosecutor look into Israeli military actions beginning 13 July 2014, when IDF forces began rounding up Palestinians in a search for three Israeli teens kidnapped the day before.
Inspired by this precedent, Al Qaeda leaders decided to seize the same opportunity to punish the US for its continued assault on the organization, an assault that began in earnest the day after nineteen Al Qaeda operatives killed almost 3,000 people in airplane crashes aimed at symbols of American economic, military, and political might. By placing the start date of the investigative window precisely, the organization hopes to enable prosecutors to take the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, and its ongoing operations in Pakistan, Somalia, and elsewhere, as a discrete series of events unconnected to cumbersome notions such as context.
"Here we were minding our business then bam! Friggin gringos came out of nowhere," said Qaeda operative Binther Dunthat, recalling how he lost his left arm in a Special Forces raid on the Afghan city of Kandahar in November 2001. "If an unprovoked assault like that isn't a war crime, I don't know what is."
ICC prosecutors have yet to comment on the validity of the Al Qaeda application, or on the strength of any cases that may be brought under its terms. Analysts are divided over whether Qaeda's status as non-state will hinder its cause, but even those who contend it is an obstacle concede that the same would apply to Palestine,and the Court has not said it will reject any Palestinian cases against Israel out of hand on those grounds.
"International organizations, as a rule, bend their rules to allow for singling out Israel for violations of every kind imaginable," notes legal scholar Richard Goldstone. "So it's not inconceivable that the ICC would disregard ts own requirements for membership and accept cases - but only if those cases can be used directly in the campaign to isolate, deligitimize, and ultimately destroy Israel." The question in this case, says Goldstone, turns on whether pursuing the United States in the ICC can be leveraged in any concrete way toward punishing Israel. The US is not a member of the Court, but its leaders will nevertheless be subject to harassment stemming from any case against them.
President Abbas defected credit for the inspiration, noting that he had simply copied the UN Human Rights Council in mandating that William Schabas's investigation into alleged war crimes this past summer also explore events beginning only the day after the abduction and murder of Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Shaer, and Naftali Fraenkel.
Jerusalem, December 18 - The firebrand preacher attempting to exhort his Islamic flock to defend their faith and land by visiting bloody vengeance against Jews and asserting dominance over them found that his address missed the mark, the man confessed soon after the event, probably because his momentum was disrupted by the unavoidable commercial clips that plague online media and must be viewed to completion before anyone may proceed to the content for which they came in the first place.
Imam Mustafa Massikr of the Al-Aqsa Mosque voiced his frustration and disappointment this morning following a sermon that he had anticipated would ignite a violent fervor among those in attendance, but that fizzled when the unskippable ads began playing over the compound's sound and video systems.
"I had planned for something grand, something inspiring," he lamented. "Something to restore the pride of our Islamic flock, which faces disappointment after disappointment in the fight against the Jews. A hundred years now of seeing triumph around the corner, of a victory so close we can taste it. Of driving the Jew into the dirt, or into the sea, only to find..." he trailed off.
"Let's just say that any moments of victory have been just that, moments, when in the larger sense, Israel isn't going anywhere, and deep down, we all know it."
"The ads are just a microcosm," he acknowledged.“ I’m up there, voice rising, fists clenched, about to deliver the classic ‘Itbāḥ al-Yahūd’ line that never fails to get the blood up, and suddenly—bam!—a smiling blonde woman in a hijab that somehow costs three hundred dollars appears on every screen telling us we can consolidate our payday loans in three easy steps. At a volume somehow even louder than we thought the speakers could carry. By the time she’s done explaining the APR, the moment is gone. The flock just stares at their phones, wondering if they qualify.”
Worshippers confirmed the account. “I was ready,” said Rami al-Qawasmi, 29, from nearby Silwan. “Knife sharpened, will steeled, everything. Then some guy in a lab coat starts yelling about reverse-osmosis water filters ‘that Israel can’t poison.’ I actually wrote down the website before I realized what I was doing. Now I have cleaner water but zero dead Jews. Mixed results, honestly.”
Technical staff at the mosque blamed the Waqf’s new cost-cutting streaming package. “We switched to the free tier,” admitted sound engineer Hassan al-Dajani. “Turns out the free tier includes fifteen-second unskippable ads every four minutes. We thought it would only affect the ladies’ section livestream. Lesson learned.”
Imam Massikr has vowed to try again next week, this time with a paid subscription. “Ad-free jihad is apparently twenty-nine ninety-nine a month,” he muttered. “Infidel capitalism has found a way to monetize even our sacred rage. Allah help us, the Jews don’t have to fire a single bullet anymore; JewTube Premium is doing it for them.”
Fools, apparently, rush in where angels fear to go. At the same time, he who hesitates is lost. So it seems that folk wisdom doesn’t provide
obvious advice on how fast to move when military or political advantage opens
up.
As mentioned last time, timing is one
of the crucial ingredients for any sort of political or military strategy. And for a small nation such as Israel, which
has been at the center of military and political conflict since the nation’s
birth, deciding between “full-speed-ahead,” “steady-as-she-goes” and
“proceed-with-caution” is a routine decision.
At this moment in history, when a U.S. President hostile to
the Jewish state has been replaced by one respectful of its interests, there is
an understandable tendency to want to rush ahead and gain as much advantage as
possible. In some cases, this is a wise
choice, especially in places like the UN where American backing of Israel has
returned with a vengeance.
At the same time, while it might seem that this is the right
moment for Israeli politicians to push controversial legislation, or for
Israel’s supporters abroad to assume a friendly White House and Congress means
brighter days ahead, there are a number of reasons to move cautiously through
the today’s uncharted waters of US and international politics.
To begin with, the new US President has become a lightning
rod for a broad range of opposing forces, domestically and internationally. And as we have seen in recent years, such
forces have little resistance to being infiltrated – if not entirely taken over
– by anti-Israel activists ready to force their issue to the top of everyone
else’s agenda.
The mercurial nature of now President Trump also means that
assuming continued unalloyed support from this White House is as much a folly
as counting on anyone outside of ourselves to make protection of Israel’s
interests an ongoing top priority. While
it is highly unlikely we’ll see the same kind of animus we experienced with
Trump’s predecessor, there is no shortage of potential flash points Israel and
her friends need to navigate. Are we
prepared, for example, if the new President gets it into his head that he can
resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute with some grand bargain that has eluded
less talented “deal-makers?”
Last time, I mentioned the difference between
administrative, legislative and cultural victories which can provide a
framework for determining how to best proceed during unpredictable times.
The sorts of Executive Orders we’ve seen flowing from the
White House represent the sort of slam-bam wins that make supportive partisans
cheer and opposing ones squeal, but such “victories” tend to be highly
unstable. President Obama’s major
victories (including ObamaCare, the Iran Deal and various Executive fiats he ordered), for instance, are all
examples of victories won without widespread legislative and public
support. So it’s no accident that these
are the very issues most easily undone by his successor.
Legislative victories – especially ones that take into
account multiple perspectives – tend to be more stable and longer lived. One need only look at how bi-partisan
Congressional support prevented the Obama administration from doing even more
damage to the US-Israel relationship to see the power bi-partisan consensus
wields within a democracy.
But on the whole, the most long-lasting political victories
take place at the cultural level. Civil
rights, women’s rights, LGBQ rights, victory in the Cold War and – yes –
support for the Jewish state are societal transformations within the US that
were cultivated over decades, to the point where they are now givens threatened
more by over-reach of their supporters than by hostile forces eager to see these
examples of social progress overturned.
Anti-Israel forces assume they are playing a long game,
hoping that the violence and propaganda they have visited upon the world will
eventually translate to an abandonment of the Jewish state – if not by this generation
of Americans, then perhaps the next.
What they have failed to take into account is that Israel
and her friends are also capable of long-game strategy. Bi-partisan Congressional support, for
example, did not emerge out of thin air but was cultivated over decades by
smart, political operators within the organized Jewish community – leveraging
general support for Israel within a US public cultivated by countless other
Jewish groups and individuals dedicated to telling the truth to counter the
lies of the BDS “movement” and its antecedents.
What this means in today’s unstable world is that Israel
needs to continue to leverage the current supportive atmosphere while not
becoming joined at the hip with today’s administration – or any administration
– to the exclusion of alliances that contribute to ongoing legislative and
cultural support.
Friends of Israel happy with the new President need to
understand the cost (and potential instability) of administrative victories,
and plan accordingly. Similarly,
pro-Israel forces hostile to Trump et al need to fight within the movements
they work with to ensure the anti-Trump agenda doesn’t become yet another
progressive cause that falls to ruins after infiltration and takeover by the
ruthless foes of the Jewish state.
Winning in a long game requires forgoing
today’s single marshmallow for tomorrow’s two. In other words, it requires resisting
impatience, thinking in terms of decades, rather than weeks, and refusing to
allow foes or friends to turn support
for the Jewish state into a domestic partisan football.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
GOD TV, an evangelical broadcasting
company with programming in 200 countries worldwide, launched Shelanu (Hebrew
for “Ours”) TV on April 27, having snagged a seven-year contract with HOT cable
television network through chicanery
and misdirection. In the run-up to the launch, GOD TV CEO Ward Simpson boasted
about this “triumph” on the GOD TV website, and in a video uploaded to the GOD
TV YouTube channel. Simpson was positively jubilant as he described how the evangelical
community had at long last, found a way to convert the “lost” Jews of Israel,
bringing the message of Jesus Christ as messiah straight into Israeli living
rooms, in Hebrew. It was a miracle, he
said. But then the evil motives of these evangelicals and the nefarious means
they used against Jewish Israelis were exposed, laid open to the Israeli public
in a media blitz and BAM.
Down came the webpage. Down
came the video. Poof. Like they had never been there before.
All those media pieces you saw
on the subject citing the video and launch page, were now giving you errors.
There was no longer any proof that Simpson had said those things: had bragged
about converting the “lost” Jews of Israel and bringing them to Jesus.
Except that some people, in
particular, my friend Shannon
Nuszen, was already wise to these tricks of the trade, having once been an evangelical
missionary herself. Today an Orthodox Jew living in Israel, Shannon works for Jewish Israel, and a key facet of her work
is to preserve such materials, thus exposing the evangelicals, their unsavory
methods, and their lies. The minute Shannon became aware of the launch page and
video, she made copies, thus preserving them for posterity.
“Jewish Israel is, in fact, a
database of exactly this sort of thing—we copy their blatant materials proving
their agenda, and then report on it. Because as soon as a report like this hits
the media, the site goes down, and all of a sudden a newly carefully worded
site goes up looking KOSHER,” said Shannon. “Of course they deny everything in
our original report, except that we always follow up with screen shots and pdfs
of their previous site. It’s always the same MO, with all of them.”
Facebook post created with materials copied from GOD TV:
“I downloaded the video because
I fully expected the original video, posted by God TV, to be taken down as soon
as trouble started. I knew to expect
this because I was once a missionary myself.
I am a ger, a convert, and
have been living as an Orthodox Jew for the past 15 years.
“Much of the media coverage on
the issue links to the original 15-minute video by God TV that is now no longer
available, leaving these stories with a dead video link,” said Nuszen.
Why put up the video in the
first place? As Shannon put it, “The
video was removed because it was never meant to be seen by Jewish people.”
Short version of the video that was taken down:
Commenting on the above (copied
and documented) GOD TV video, Gavriel
Sanders, a former evangelical missionary minister said he finds it
particularly unsavory that Simpson speaks of “lost Jews” that need Jesus to
save them. “That's not Christian education—that's proselytizing,” says Sanders.
Shannon was flabbergasted when
she discovered that these missionaries had wangled a seven-year contract to
preach the gospel on TV to Israeli Jews. "How this received government
approval is beyond me, and hopefully this is a mistake that will be rectified
immediately. This is an assault on every Jew. An attack on Judaism
itself."
Exactly what kind of people engage in this sort of sneaky business, anyway? Rabbi Tovia Singer, of Outreach Judaismexplains that the people who make it their business to evangelize the Jewish population of Israel are fundamentalist evangelical Christians. “They secured the Shelanu TV station on HOT TV, and the way they operate—their MO—is to blur the distinctions between Judaism and Christianity, in order to lure Jews who would otherwise resist a straightforward message. The plan, in their own words, is to evangelize 9 million Israelis, using the HOT TV channel and of course, GOD TV.
“When they say “9 million Israelis,” that means everyone. That’s as many people who are here. As it turns out, however, that’s not legal in Israel. You’re not allowed to evangelize minors in this country.
“But to speak to the way they speak—it’s a double speak,” says Singer. “To one audience, they’re very clear. To the non-Jewish evangelical Christian audience, who they want to raise money for this massive project, they put up that video, which in very plain words, expresses their intent on converting the Jews, young men and women, the elderly, to Christianity. That wasn’t meant for Jewish consumption. That was meant for their own supporters, primarily in the United States, who want to see the Jews here in the Holy Land, convert to Christianity.”
Full video here:
“It’s striking, and not
surprising, that the moment they got wind of the fact that the video they had
put up—which was completely unambiguous, it’s transparent in what their intent
is, to convert the Jews—the moment they got wind of the fact that the Israelis
are onto what they do—that the Jewish community recognizes what they are doing,
they took down the video,” says Singer. “Why would they take it down? That’s their whole MO.”
Singer shared with this writer a communications card that is used by
missionaries to train evangelicals on how to “witness” the Jews. It’s included
in their training manual materials. The communications card tells missionaries to
say “Yeshua the Messiah” rather than “Jesus Christ.” When speaking to Jewish
people, the card tells them, “Don’t say, ‘Come to church,’ but rather ‘Come to
a Messianic congregation.’ Don’t say ‘Christian,’ say ‘Believer in the messiah’
or ‘Messianic Jew.’”
Messianic "soul winners" card: Missionary communications card trains evangelicals how to speak to a Jew: "Do say," "Don't say"
“That’s what they’re planning
to do with GOD TV and Shelanu TV in particular,” explains Singer. “They’re notorious
for using Jewish symbols, icons, and liturgy. It’s a war on the weakest of all
people. In fact, they say it straight out: we want to bring this to the young,
we want to bring this to the elderly. And they want to do it in the native
Hebrew language, which they clearly state, has never been done before.”
Shannon Nuszen has seen it all
before. She grew up on this stuff. “It is not uncommon to hear Christian
supporters of Israel profess their love for the Jewish people, and deny that
they have any intention to proselytize while in the Jewish State. Yet, if you
were to see these same Christians speaking in churches around America you'd
hear something completely different. Among themselves, they are free to take
their masks off.”
Rabbi Singer calls Shelanu TV, “A
very aggressive project. To seize and use HOT cable—which is in the homes of
some 700,000 Israelis—to witness to the Jewish people. Their view on their part
in this is if the Jews en masse in the Holy Land are converted to Christianity,
this would enable Jesus to make a second coming. So their press now, more than
ever, is to bring back the second coming of Jesus,” says Singer who explains
that this belief is based on a passage in Matthew 23:39 which evangelists
interpret to mean that Jesus cannot make a second coming unless the Jews convert
to Christianity en masse.
“Hot, of course, should
completely nullify this agreement because this particular station was supposed
to be educational. The license was not given to them for the purpose of converting
people to Christianity.”
The good news is that Likud MK David (Dudi) Amsalem, who heads Israel’s Ministry of Communications is working to drive Shelanu TV out of business, fast. Here’s a rough translation of his Hebrew statement:
“We will not allow any missionary channel to operate in the State of Israel, under any circumstances.
“It is important to note that the Cable and Satellite Council is an independent and sovereign body which makes its own decisions, but as soon as I learned of this case, I immediately contacted the chairman of the Cable and Satellite Council to launch a thorough and comprehensive investigation into the matter, ensuring that no channel violates the terms of its license, and that the channel in question will be removed immediately.
“On the face of it, this is a failure, and as the representative of the State of Israel's media, I will not allow the unfair impact of religious broadcasts on viewers in the State of Israel.”
Shannon Nuszen, in her capacity
as a board member of Jewish Israel, on the other hand, was never fooled. She has spent years
monitoring missionary activity in Israel, and has helped the organization amass
an extensive database of websites, screen shots, and videos of the internal
communications of missionaries. These are always taken down after they are
found by Jewish organizations that expose their agenda. That’s why she began a
concentrated effort to copy the GOD TV materials as soon as she uncovered them.
And she knew, right away, that something underhanded was afoot. And it was. “If
God TV had applied for a license using the description for its programming in
the same way they did in that fundraising video, I do not believe they would
have been granted the right to broadcast on HOT TV.”
Hence the deception.
The moral of the story? Let the
cable TV buyer and just regular Jewish Joes on the (Israeli) street beware.
Because you’re not just paranoid. These (sneaky, underhanded) evangelists
really are out to get you.
We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.
As I mentioned last week, Egypt allowed some 85 Hamas terrorists to enter Gaza through the Rafah border crossing late last month.
Today, the EU BAM Rafah website still has not acknowledged that it was complicit in this event by allowing it to happen. Their last press release is from July 7, saying that even though Hamas had taken over Gaza they still plan to maintain their presence.
Now, that's a cushy job! Live in Israel, stay on the EU payroll and don't lift a finger to stop terrorists and weapons from freely entering Gaza.
Over the past couple of weeks Hamas has been insisting that Hajj pilgrims go to Egypt via the Rafah crossing, while Abbas' government arranged for safe passage through Israel. Hamas' intentions is to assert authority over the Rafah border, only negotiate with Egypt concerning its operations, and bypass the EU and Israel as per the Rafah agreement brokered Apparently, Hamas has won:
The Egyptian authorities on Monday allowed the passage of 700 Hajj pilgrims from the Gaza Strip into the Egyptian territories en route to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
... Now, the Gazan pilgrims will head to Saudi Arabia in tandem with the West Bank pilgrims.
The first group of pilgrims crossed the Rafah crossing on foot, standing in line up as the Egyptian security called them by name individually as they crossed.
Hamas leader, Sheikh Salim Salamah, says he hopes the rest of the pilgrims will be permitted to cross through the Egyptian border.
Over the past few days, there has been disagreement between the Gaza-based de facto government, and the West Bank-based caretaker government over which crossing the Gaza pilgrims should leave through. The caretaker government was insisting that the pilgrims leave through the Erez and Al-Uja crossings.
As I have mentioned in the past, the Rafah crossing is supposed to be closed. Only the EU-BAM observers in Rafah are supposed to be able to facilitate opening that border, and it must be operated by the PA, not Hamas. Egypt knows this and so does Hamas. Most importantly, so does the EU.
They are once again complicit in strengthening Hamas politically and weakening Abbas.
The Passover
offering (Korban Pesach) was the
central feature of the Passover holiday until the destruction
of the Temple. Today, only a remnant of this important ritual remains, in
the form of a roasted shank bone on the seder
plate. The Passover seder, in fact,
has replaced the Korban Pesach so
that most of us are now unaware that the Passover sacrifice
was ever more than an anecdote we reference at the Passover table. And yet, as
sure as death and taxes, each year in the run-up to the Passover holiday, Arabs
claim that Jews have stormed the Temple Mount to perform the Korban Pesach using the lie as an excuse
to commit violent acts of terror against Israeli Jews. The media then trumpets
the lies even as it sweeps the acts of terror under the rug.
It is not only the lies, the corruption of the media in
repeating the lies, and the heartbreak of the resultant seasonal terror that
rankle and disturb those of us who track these events. It’s the fact that the main
reason we no longer perform the Korban
Pesach is the desire to avoid offense to and prevent subsequent violence by
Muslims—both local and abroad.
For this reason, it is against Israeli law to make a Korban Pesach on the Temple Mount. This fact, in and of itself, is
completely sickening to contemplate: that an important Jewish practice is
outlawed in the Jewish State for fear of upsetting non-Jews in and outside of
Israel. We are accused
and attacked for an observance we do not observe.
Some Israeli Jews, however, are not content with waiting a
further 2,000 years to perform the Korban
Pesach. Raphael Morris, chairman of the Chozrim
L’Har (Return to the Mount) movement, for example, has been attempting
to perform the Korban Pesach for
years on end. Every year he is arrested. “He goes to prison every year. It's a
regular thing,” said his uncle by marriage, Edward Horowitz, a cardiologist.
Morris’ crime this year? A lamb was found in his home, deemed evidence
of intent to perform the Korban Pesach.
According to a report
from Honenu, a legal aid organization that defends “Soldiers and civilians who
find themselves in legal entanglements due to defending themselves against Arab
aggression, or due to their love for Israel,” Morris and three other activists
were strip-searched
and detained on Thursday and released late Friday afternoon, on the eve of
Passover. “They were generous this year,” said Horowitz. “They let him out of
prison for the seder.”
At the hearing, police submitted material from the Telegram
channel of Raad Salah,
“who has consistently made threats in light of the activists' intentions to
perform the Passover sacrifice on the Temple Mount. In reply to a question from
Rom regarding the threats, the police representative answered that the police
do not intend to investigate Salah about the matter.”
Honenu Attorney Nati Rom, representative for Morris and the
other Chozrim L’Har activists, criticized the police over their handling of the
incident:
"The Israel Police makes declarations that freedom of
worship will be maintained for all religions. Unfortunately, that does not
happen. Tens of thousands of inciters call for the destruction of the State of
Israel and for violence on the Temple Mount, but when two people walk around
with a young goat, they are illegally detained and humiliated.
"The Israel Police refused to answer our questions
regarding threats to violence, and which sector poses them. In court, the
police presented a post from the Telegram channel of Raad Salah, a terrorist,
who threatened violence if the Passover sacrifice were performed. To my question
of whether or not the police intended to investigate or detain Salah over his
incitement to violence, the reply was 'no.’"
In a statement
to the court, Raphael Morris said that, "every year, the State of Israel
prevents Jews from performing the Passover sacrifice in its designated place on
the Temple Mount. This is in addition to preventing Jewish worship on the Mount
during the entire year. The police find various excuses for detaining Jews
whose only fault is that they would like to fulfill the commandment of
performing the Passover sacrifice according to Jewish law. Time after time, [the
charges] are unceremoniously thrown out of court.”
Responding to a Jewish
Pressreport stating that “The arrests came as the terror factions in
the Gaza Strip threatened Wednesday to attack Israel if Jews arrive on the
Temple Mount and ‘practice their provocative rituals in the courtyards of the
blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque,’” one reader remarked that “It's pretty likely people
would have died as a result of their planned action, not to mention violation
of Israeli law to start with. The Jewish
Press' suggestion that Hamas and the Israeli Police are in cahoots may well
violate Israeli laws against incitement and slander.”
These are perhaps valid points. The vast majority of
Israelis, even those on the religious right, would not make the preparations
necessary to perform the Korban Pesach
even once, let alone year after year. At the same time, it is tragic that in
the Jewish State, such is the state of things that preparing to perform an
age-old Jewish ritual stands as an act of incitement. Especially since we’re
damned if we do, and damned if we don’t. The ritual is illegal and hasn’t
happened in thousands of year, yet Muslims yearly claim that we have “defiled”
the Mount with our sacrifices and dirty feet.
Why then, should Israel continue to maintain the status quo
in regard to the Korban Pesach? The
enemy slanders, smears, and kills us, even as we refrain from performing the very
ritual they protest. Will terror victims somehow be deader if someone should
slaughter a goat or a lamb on the Mount? "If there is concern that Arabs will riot
following an attempt to perform the Passover sacrifice, says Honenu Attorney
Itzhak Bam, the rioters should be dealt with. Those wishing to realize their
right to freedom of religion should not be harassed."
And still, the law is the law, and not every Temple Mount
activist agrees with violating that law to make a point. “Redemption Expediter”
Josh Wander, Founder and Managing Director of Bring Them Home said, “I don’t
believe getting arrested on Erev Pesach is a Mitzvah. On the other hand, there
are many Jews, us included, who prepare sheep and goats before every Pesach and
have everything ready hoping that the prime minister will finally allow us
access to the Temple Mount to fulfill our religious obligation. The reenactment
is for educational purposes and is done every year a week before Pesach.”
Asked about the relevance of the Korban Pesach now that the Temple no longer exists, Wander
explained that it is a common misconception that the Korban Pesach cannot be performed in the absence of the Temple. “The
Mishne in Ediyot clearly states that sacrifices can be brought without a mikdash and indeed that was what was done
when Ezra returned from Bavel* until
the second mikdash was built. The two
concepts are interrelated, not interdependent,” said Wander.
Many believe that performing the Korban Pesach on the Temple Mount would usher in the Messiah.
Wander calls this “another interrelated concept.” “I’m in the process of
writing a book on the subject…all positive acts move the process forward,” said
Wander. “Things that specifically deal with Geula
(Redemption, V.E.) more so. But there actually is a tradition from the Vilna
Gaon that the proper bringing of a sacrifice would immediately usher in the Geula.”
Through the ages, Jews have spoken of the resumption of the
observance of the Korban Pesach. Some
have even made elaborate plans to carry out the sacrifice on the Temple Mount. Rabbi Tzvi Pesach Frank who was
instrumental in the establishment the office of Chief Rabbinate of Israel and
served as Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem for several decades, was rumored to have
created a plan to perform the Korban
Pesach on the Temple Mount, only to be stymied by his own death before the
plan could be realized. According to an anecdote heard by this author, Rabbi
Frank planned to convey everything needed for the Korban to the Temple Mount by helicopter, thus ushering in the
Messiah and the Final Redemption.
Will Israel someday have a government willing to allow the Jewish people to once again perform the Passover offering? This seems a faraway dream. But then again the Jewish State of Israel was also once only a dream, a seemingly unattainable idea, and yet the desert blooms today, in our time.
*Babylon
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!
Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.
The Arabs and Democrats are only the most vocal of the many opposed to Trump’s initiative. Left-wing governments from Europe to Australia are lining up to pledge their allegiance to the fantasy of a Palestinian state, in the hopes of propitiating Muslim and Arab constituencies at home—whose understanding of “peace” means eliminating Israel. But even leaving the patent bad faith of those professing “peace” aside, moving Gazans out of Gaza is the only sane option 14 months after they initiated a campaign of rape, murder, and hostage-taking that brought their own house down on their heads.
After all, what’s more fanciful, moving 1.7 million people out of Gaza, a large portion of whom would simply be required to board air-conditioned buses or walk across the nearby Egypt border, or compelling them to live in a giant rubble field booby-trapped by an Iran-backed terrorist group? Estimates vary as to how long it would take to clear Gaza of explosives—half a decade or more? 15 years? 20? Are the Gazans supposed to live quietly in tents for the next decade or two while their homes are rebuilt next door? Where? In “temporary cities” made of Dwell Magazine-like rehabbed shipping containers built by graduates of Birmingham University? In Hamas’ tunnels?
Regardless, should the Palestinians remain in Gaza, they would invariably return to war no matter how much munificence the Gulf Arab states, the European Union, and perhaps even the U.S. might shower on the toxic sand-castle built over the past two decades with billions of Western aid money. Proof the Palestinians can’t and won’t keep the peace is that even after they won a reprieve when Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff forced the Biden administration’s ceasefire on Jerusalem, Hamas and its NGO-supported human shields celebrated in the streets as if the Hamas space program had successfully landed Palestinians on Mars. Even as Israel released jailed murderers, the Gazans paraded Israeli hostages through the ruins of Gaza like trophies of war.
The Saudis, Qataris, Emiratis and others who now rend their clothes while lamenting the likely fate of their ant-farm death cult might well have counseled: Quiet brothers, you have been spared. Don’t bring attention to yourselves. For the winds of Gaza shift on a whim and who knows if you are not next to be swept away by fate—or the American President.
Here is the stark reality: Gazans, not just the enlisted members of the Hamas brigades, waged an exterminationist campaign against Israel, and they lost. At virtually any other time in history, save the last 75 years, they would be lucky to lose only territory and not have their legend and language permanently deleted from the book of the living.
Trump’s generous offer to the Gazans therefore signals a return to history, but with a twist. Trump has not only spared them, but vowed to provide them with new lives, better lives, work, new homes, a chance to raise their families in peace, an existence not premised on total and permanent war with a more powerful adversary destined to rout them entirely, and would have already done so if not for the objections of other powerful global players.
Trump, in his innovative mercy, has offered to save the Palestinian people from their own history, and give them a new idea to live by. They should thank their maker for the chance to start anew—and give thanks as well to the American President, who realistically promises them a better future, backed by U.S. global power. Given the repeated failure of the multi-decade-long dream of eliminating and replacing the Jews of Israel, it seems unlikely that the Palestinians will receive a better offer.
Let’s rewind briefly to set the stage. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, had finally been defeated a dozen years into his second stint as premier, in 2021. Eighteen months later, Bibi found his way back into power, but in order to do so he had to assemble a coalition that was guaranteed to make trouble for him from Day One. His government proposed a radical democratizing of the Israeli judiciary that alienated half the country for a year, and failed anyway.
Then came Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s 9/11. Netanyahu, who had long (with good reason) branded himself as Mr. Security, had presided over the worst domestic security failure in 50 years. He was made to prosecute the ensuing war effort with Joe Biden tying one hand behind Israel’s back. The International Criminal Court put out a warrant for his arrest.
And then came a series of cinematic operations: the simultaneous detonation of thousands of pagers that Israel had tricked Hezbollah operatives into carrying, the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a safe house in Tehran, the elimination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah deep underground, and the zapping of Iran’s air defenses, among others.
The rollercoaster ride continued: The electoral victory of Donald Trump—no doubt the Israeli government’s preferred candidate—was followed by a painful cease-fire deal that, by all accounts, Netanyahu had been strongarmed into by the new administration while Bibi was still recovering from prostate-removal surgery.
Which brings us to this week. Netanyahu’s stay at the Blair House in Washington, a guest house of sorts for foreign dignitaries, was his 14th—more than anyone else in the history of the house. He is the first foreign leader to meet with Trump since the new president took office.
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump had floated his Gaza-relocation idea, warned the Iranians to watch their step, and pulled U.S. funding from some of the United Nations’ atrocious anti-Israel committees. Trump then led Netanyahu into a packed room for the press briefing. “Congratulations,” the president said to the prime minister. “You bring them out, you really bring them out.”
And suddenly, Netanyahu once again appeared to have made the right bet. His willingness to sign the cease-fire deal and give Trump a big policy win to start his presidency seems to have won him barrels of goodwill. Trump acted as though the four-year Biden presidency was a rude interruption of a U.S.-Israel victory tour:
In his Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche proposes what he calls a “rule as a riddle.” It goes like this: “If the bond shan’t burst, bite upon it first.” If you can’t fix a problem with conventional means, go unconventional. If something is insoluble, do something radical. It’s the same idea as the Gordian Knot—no one could untie it, so Alexander the Great simply sliced it open. What you don’t get, in the end, is a single piece of rope that remains intact. But the knot no longer exists.
So it is with what Donald Trump did at the most dramatic presidential press conference of my adult lifetime by announcing his plan for Gaza. As my sister Ruthie Blum put it on X, “To all those who’ve been screaming for 16 months about the ‘day after’: TAKE THAT!” You want a way forward for the area that has been decimated as a result of the terrorist war launched against an unsuspecting Israel on October 7, 2023—a war Israel neither sought nor planned for nor expected to have to fight? You want to cry bitter tears over the uninhabitability of Gaza as a result of the consquences of the war that is entirely the moral, logistical, and geopolitical responsibility of the terrorist organization Hamas and its sponsor in Iran? Dry your tears, says Donald Trump. Here’s the plan.
Gazans will have to go elsewhere for a while. Gaza will be cleared. It’s a “demolition site.” Unexploded ordinance will have to be dealt with. Many existing structures will have to be torn down. It’s an area the size of Chicago, so it’s quite the job. Following the demo will come the rebuilding. All of this, Trump says, will be paid for by the very wealthy countries in the region, which will also be responsible for housing the displaced Gazans in one, two, four, seven, maybe even twelve comfortable sites. Gaza will be turned into the Riviera of the Middle East. At that point, the people once resident in Gaza can return…if they want to. Otherwise it will become an international city for world people.
Bam! A plan! The bond couldn’t be burst, so Trump bit upon it first. No solution, eh? OK, here’s the solution.
Oh, but President Trump, they won’t pay for it! And they won’t take in the Gazans. Oh, I think they will, Trump says airily.
What’s going on here? Simply the shifting of tectonic plates, not naturally, but through the force of will—the will to power, as Nietzsche might have put it. Yesterday, Trump asserted the will of the United States as the world’s most powerful, richest, most influential, and most dominant nation in saying something must be done about Gaza, here’s what needs to be done, here’s who’s going to pay for it, and here’s who’s going to manage it after. What must be done is it needs to be cleared and rebuilt. Who’s going to pay for it are the fellow Arabs who have been “supporting” the Palestinians in order to keep the Palestinians far away from them. Who’s going to manage it after is the United States, really more as a real-estate management company than a political entity.
Is this all a fantasy? Maybe. But are any of the other ludicrous and cockamamie ideas being floated for the future of the area any less fantastical?
Marwan Barghouti is hungry no more.
Last month, the Palestinian terrorist currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for his role in planning three attacks that claimed the lives of five civilians, took to the pages of The New York Times to tell the world that he will join with many of his fellow incarcerated terrorists and starve himself in protest for what he described as “Israel’s inhumane system of colonial and military occupation.”
Like so much of Palestinian nationalism, however, Barghouti’s protest turned out to be just a piece of bad theater, lacking any candor, courage, and conviction. Yesterday, Israel’s prison authority released videos that clearly show the allegedly suffering Barghouti enjoying cookies and candy bars in the privacy of his own cell. Talk about a hungry, hungry hypocrite: as soon as he’s done wolfing down the treat, Barghouti rushes to the toilet and flushes away the evidence, like a furtive smoker in an airplane bathroom.
Having gone on a prolonged hunger strike myself some decades ago, I know what forgoing food does to your mind and your body. I know how hard it can be, which is why I’m not at all surprised to learn that Barghouti just didn’t have what it takes to transcend. Men who have no qualms about murdering innocents are not and can never be resilient leaders, just as national movements focused on advertising and exaggerating their victimhood are not and can never be committed to true reconciliation. Barghouti, poetically, is the perfect embodiment of Palestinian officialdom: speaking of virtue to a gullible international audience before retiring to a corner and indulging in vice. Bon appetite, Marwan, and if you’d like some more snacks, Israel’s inhumane system of colonial and military occupation will be happy to provide.
Perhaps one day, Marwan Barghouti will lead the Palestinians to a historic compromise. In the meantime, however, he is a Hamas collaborator and an enemy of the possibility to renew the peace process. Weakening him, under the current circumstances, is the right thing to do.
We want peace. We fight for peace. But in the meantime we must remember that we are in a state of war. Not one war, but two wars. One is taking place on the battlefield. Hamas drags us there every few years. This war is being waged on a lower key, both through the knifing and stone-throwing terror attacks and through different other measures targeting Israel nonstop.
The second war is a war on the collective consciousness. A war of demonization. A war that seeks to present Israel as a monster. This war has had quite a lot of achievements.
The jailed terrorists, from Fatah and Hamas, have become full partners in both wars. Some of them try to launch and plan terror attacks from prison. Others try to present themselves as martyrs fighting for “an end to the occupation” or for “liberation.” Every other prisoner tries to present himself as a freedom fighter, and every other prisoner is actually Nelson Mandela. It’s true that they murdered civilians and babies and women and elderly people. And it’s true that when they say “an end to the occupation,” they are referring to Tel Aviv as well. And it’s true that their liberation is sort of like the Islamic State is liberating Iraq and Hamas is liberating Gaza. But in the war on the collective consciousness, they are winning.
Allegations regarding Israeli treatment of Palestinian prisoners- a group that includes many convicted terrorists guilty of murder, bombings of buses and cafes, and other atrocities- gain international visibility through hunger strikes.
The current hunger strike follows in that tradition, with the participation of members of terrorist organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Islamic Jihad, and Fatah terror groups.
As in previous years, a number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) joined the public relations campaign, promoting the hunger strikers while failing to acknowledge the reasons for their jail sentences- conviction for violent crimes.
The NGOs leading this media campaign also support discriminatory BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) against Israel, and have alleged ties to terror groups.
Now that Hamas’s abuse of Israeli hostages threatens to derail the cease-fire, the subject will get more attention. The hostages, especially those who were freed recently, have been concentrating on recovery. In the future, we expect to learn in much greater detail what happened to the captives in those tunnels and dungeons, but what we know already is troubling enough.
This week the attention is on Or Levy, Ohad Ben Ami, and Eli Sharabi because their abuse was evident before they even said a word. But more information has come trickling out: they were, reportedly, burned with hot objects, hung upside down, kept in chains, at times gagged to the point of suffocation, starved and dehydrated.
It is not the first shocking testimony from ex-captives.
Amit Soussana was chained up in a child’s bedroom. After her captor let her bathe, he stripped her of her towel and sexually assaulted her, Soussana told the New York Times in March. Later, she was suspended in the space between two couches and beaten. According to recently released hostages, Soussana’s captors beat her at gunpoint viciously until another captive convinced the Hamasniks that they had mistaken her for an IDF officer.
According to other testimony, sexual assault of the captives was widespread. Hamas also apparently tortured a child with an item similar to a hot branding iron.
Physical abuse is common, according to the captives. Yarden Bibas and Ofer Calderon were beaten and kept in cages. Bibas was also subject to the psychological abuse Hamas takes special pleasure in doling out. His wife and two young children were also taken hostage. At one point, Bibas’s captors told him his family had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, and took a video of his anguish. Hamas has not confirmed the fate of Bibas’s wife and children, even after his release. They reportedly tormented Bibas about his family throughout his nearly 500-day captivity.
The hostages would often be told they were being freed when they weren’t. Gadi Mozes, an 80-year-old farmer released last month, was at one point kept in a hot pickup truck for 12 hours underneath a Red Cross building in Gaza. He hoped he was being processed for release, but it turned out he was just being moved to a new location.
During the initial Oct. 7 attacks, before taking Emily Damari captive, Hamas terrorists shot her dog. While she was comforting the dog as it lay dying, Hamas shot her in the hand, taking off two of her fingers, then dragged her to Gaza.
Another form of torture practiced by Hamas was to let serious injuries go untreated and force the captives to watch them deteriorate.
A year and a half ago, Iran's nuclear weapons program was steadily producing enriched uranium; by 2024, it had enough for several bombs. Washington was largely not enforcing its sanctions on Iran, greatly improving the regime's finances. And the "ring of fire" of Iranian proxies - Hizbullah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, and the Houthis in Yemen - seemed to be a problem Israel could not solve.
But since then, Israel has turned the tables. Hamas has survived the invasion of Gaza and remains dominant there. But it will never again pose a serious military threat to Israel. The Israelis have wiped out Hizbullah's leadership and given Lebanon a chance to reclaim its sovereignty. Assad's regime is gone, and the weapons highway that has long run from Iran through Syria to Lebanon, Gaza, Jordan, and the West Bank appears to be closing.
Trump can take advantage of the situation, but only if his administration is willing to abandon Washington's habitual goal in the Middle East - "stability" - and presses instead for dramatic changes that will bolster its interests and allies and actively weaken its adversaries.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reacted to the video of the latest Israeli hostages released by Hamas on SiriusXM Patriot 125 radio on Monday:
"You look at these images of what they - first of all, the humiliation that they have to go through. Just put aside for a moment the horrifying conditions they were kept in and the horrifying things that happened to some of those hostages, on top of the fact that these were innocent civilians. I mean, none of these were soldiers. These are not combatants. These are just people that were abducted for purposes of being used as leverage. And they're getting, what, 200 certified killers in exchange for one innocent hostage. But it reveals who Hamas is."
"Look at the humiliation they put them through before they're released, where they do these big public displays of force. Do any of those Hamas fighters look like they've been skipping meals?...And then the conditions they're held in. So, it's incredibly revealing about what we're dealing with. This is an evil organization. Hamas is evil. It's pure evil. These are monsters. These are savages. That's a group that needs to be eradicated."
"If they still are the dominant power in Gaza when all this is done, there is not going to be peace in the Middle East, as long as a group like Hamas physically controls territory and is the most dominant power in Gaza or anywhere in the Middle East. And I hope people can see who these people actually are, in the condition of these hostages."
"The big challenge for this whole two-state solution has not been Israel. It's been: Who's going to govern that second state? Who's going to be in charge of it? If the people in charge of it are Hamas or Hizbullah or anybody like that, these are groups whose goal is the destruction of the Jewish state."
"I don't know how you're going to have peace if you're turning over territory to a group whose stated purpose is the destruction of the Jewish state. Why would any country in the world agree to create a second state on their border that is governed by armed elements who kidnap babies and murder babies and rape teenage girls and abduct innocents and whose stated goal and purpose for existing is your destruction? Who would agree to that?"
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