Tuesday, November 28, 2023
From Ian:
10 Israeli and 2 Thai hostages arrive back in Israel after 53 days in Gaza captivity
10 Israeli and 2 Thai hostages arrive back in Israel after 53 days in Gaza captivity
Nine Israeli women and a 17-year-old girl were released by Hamas on Tuesday night after 53 days in captivity in Gaza, amid an extended truce deal with the Palestinian terror group that is expected to last at least until Wednesday, when another group of about 10 hostages is expected to be freed.The doctor leading freed hostages from darkness to light
Hamas on Tuesday also released two foreign nationals from Thailand as part of a separate agreement.
The release of eight Israeli women, six of them elderly, and one mother and her teen daughter on Tuesday came hours after an apparent violation of the temporary halt in fighting, now in its fifth day, when Israeli troops were targeted in northern Gaza by Hamas explosives and gunfire. A number of soldiers sustained light injuries.
All the hostages were handed over by Hamas and terror ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad to the Red Cross in Gaza Tuesday night, then arrived in Israel via the Kerem Shalom crossing — sidestepping a transfer in Egypt — in a process that was also observed for the past two days of hostage transfers.
They were being brought to hospitals in Israel for further treatment and monitoring, before being reunited with their families.
Hamas released footage of the handover in which the women can be seen walking, flanked by armed, masked terrorists. One of the hostages, Ditza Heiman, 84, was in a wheelchair and was helped into the Red Cross ambulance by medical staff. The handover, brightly lit and filmed by multiple cameras, was stage-managed by the terrorists in front of a large crowd.
Teen hostage Mia Leimberg, 17, was seen in initial clips of the release from inside the Gaza Strip holding her dog Bella, which was thought to have been killed in the October 7 onslaught. That day, thousands of Hamas-led terrorists killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took some 240 hostages including about 40 children.
The youngest among the nine remaining child hostages is Kfir Bibas, who was just nine months old when he was captured along with his parents and four-year-old brother from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. The baby’s aunt Ofri Bibas pleaded Tuesday for the family’s release as soon as possible.
The IDF said Monday that the Bibas family had been transferred by Hamas to another Palestinian terror group in Gaza, dampening hopes of their release during the current truce.
Dr. Hagai Levine worries about four-year-old Abigail Edan, who saw her parents murdered by Hamas terrorists before she was kidnapped to Gaza on October 7 and released on November 26.We must never forget that Israel is not a luxury — it is a necessity
He worries about 84-year-old Alma Avraham, deprived of essential medication for the seven weeks she was captive in Gaza.
He worries about each of the remaining approximately 160 hostages, from the youngest baby to the oldest octogenarian.
But Levine isn’t just sitting around fretting.
While national leaders are working out the difficult details of getting hostages released back to Israel, Levine is working out the difficult details of their medical care.
Levine, chairman of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians, volunteered to head the medical team of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum established by the families of the approximately 240 abductees less than 24 hours after the deadly Hamas attacks and kidnappings of October 7.
“This is an unprecedented event,” says Levine.
“Hostages ranging from a nine-month-old baby to an 85-year-old woman with dementia and Parkinson’s were taken and held underground in inhumane conditions. Hamas did not allow them access to the Red Cross or connection with their families,” he says.
“Very early on, we established a medical and resilience team with the aim of bringing them home now, safely, and protecting the health of the hostages and their families.”
The doctor leading freed hostages from darkness to light
Hostage Eitan Yahalomi is reunited with his mother on his return on Nov. 27, at the Kerem Shalom meeting point. Photo courtesy of the IDF Spokesperson.
Levine and the forum worked with the Health Ministry to innovate new guidelines for treating released hostages.
“We are writing a textbook that wasn’t written before because nothing like this has ever happened before,” adds Orna Dotan, head of the forum’s resilience team comprising hundreds of mental-health professionals.
The Jewish homeland has been a constant throughout our history. In exile we yearned to return. Then, as the state was granted independence, a partnership across the diaspora brought those dreams to life. When Jews needed to flee persecution, Israel wasn’t just ready and waiting, it orchestrated their escape. It has been a relationship of existential necessity.Jake Wallis Simons: The Jewish State Is Determined to Defeat the Enemy, Whatever the Price
And then, October 7, in an instant, Israel stopped feeling like a safe haven. Worse, it felt like its existence was under threat. Those of us too young to remember 1948, 1967 or 1973 had taken Israel for granted. Even with every lesson from our history, we still took Israel for granted.
As it evolved, as the skyscrapers rose and the military grew in power, Israel became an insurance policy to cash in, as and when needed. Israel was there for us. Yet, as a result of our complacency, we could not always say the same.
The immediate response to October 7 has been everything you would expect and more. People who have not given for years have dug deep. The insurance premium is being paid in full — for now. But what happens next? The relationship between Israel and the diaspora had stagnated. As we come out of this trauma we need to press the reset button and, together, re-establish what it means to be the Jewish homeland and to be a Jew outside its borders. The starting point must be a focus on that which brings us together as opposed to the things that drive us apart.
On peoplehood, on a shared history and a desire for a better Israel without demanding a perfect Israel. Too many had made their support for and relationship with Israel conditional. We looked over our shoulder to determine when, how and even if we should state our Zionist credentials, as we sought to avoid the political or social wrath of those who would hold Israel to a higher standard.
Israel is not a luxury, it is a necessity. Never has this been more apparent than when it is seemingly at its most vulnerable.
As people take to the UK’s streets in their hundreds of thousands, some calling for the dismantling of Israel, others for jihad and a number even glorifying the murder of babies, it would be naive not to ask, again, “What if?” What if the baying mob gets its wish? What if it becomes too dangerous to send our kids to Jewish schools?
What if university campuses become no-go areas for Jewish students? Just pick up the suitcase and get on the next flight to Israel? What if there were no Israel to turn to? What if that insurance policy suddenly got cancelled when we needed it most?
And as I look at Britain and look to Israel, struggling to work out how any of this has happened I ask myself, where do we go from here?
On Oct. 7, in the sleepy kibbutz of Kfar Aza near the Gaza border, Aviv and Livnat Kutz were hoping to spend the afternoon with their three teenage children and other likeminded locals flying kites near the fence as a gesture of peace towards their Palestinian neighbors. The corpses of the murdered Kutz family were later found huddled together in the same bed.
Looking back, the complacency that prevailed in Israel regarding the threat from Gaza was not only remarkable but agonizingly naive. In the conventional Israeli security picture, the Gazan militias were dwarfed by the threat of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Iran, which was on the threshold of nuclearization. Indeed, as one defense source told me: "If Iran had directed the attacks, Mossad would have known about it."
What Hamas has always missed is the fact that Israel is not a colonial power like France in Algeria. The Israelis have no other country to which to withdraw. And such is the alchemy of Israeli society, whose conscription culture creates deep bonds of social responsibility and national pride, that turning up the volume of agony on its public produces an equal and opposite reaction of solidarity and grit. The Jewish state is determined to defeat the enemy, whatever the price.
On the Israeli side, everything changed on Oct. 7. In butchering the innocent with such savagery, Hamas had changed the security calculation. Israel's policy of containment was torn up.
By way of spectacular success, Hamas had signed its own death warrant. If an effective deterrent is to be re-established, Hamas must be dispatched unequivocally, as costly as this will prove in terms of blood, treasure and international standing.
Last week, an old Palestinian colleague called me from the grounds of the hospital in Khan Yunis in Gaza. Hamas was facing a groundswell of repressed rage from its own people, he confided in hushed tones.
