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| Sinwar during a TV interview last night |
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar threatened to kill all of Israel's Jews if Gaza does not get enough ventilators.
“If ventilators are not brought into [Gaza], we’ll take them by force from Israel and stop the breathing of 6 million Israelis," he said, as reported by Times of Israel and Arab media.
Israel has close to 9 million people, of whom about 6.9 million are Jewish. Sinwar's use of the word phrase "six million" is meant to apply only to Jews, as well as to evoke the Holocaust.
No "human rights" group seemed bothered by that.
But, at the same time, Hamas pretended to offer a deal if Israel released prisoners who are old and sick, women and those under 18. A Hamas press release said, "We can offer a partial concession on the issue of the captured Israeli soldiers, in exchange for the release of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian prisoners, the elderly, the sick, women and children."
The nature of this "partial concession" is not even hinted at. Maybe Israel can expect a fingernail or a 1 cm square piece of cloth from one of the uniforms of the dead.
Left completely unspoken is the fate of the two Israelis who are still presumed alive in Gaza, Hisham al-Sayed, an Israeli Arab, and Avera Avraham Mengistu, an Ethiopian Jew, both of whom are said to be mentally impaired and both of whom walked into Gaza on their own where they disappeared. They are clearly not soldiers and therefore not mentioned by Hamas, although Hamas has implied that it is holding them hostage.
Under international law, the Israeli hostages and the remains of the soldiers must be released unconditionally.
Even though Hamas is not offering anything concrete or specific for the unnamed "partial concessions," it is congratulating itself on its humanity by even pretending to make an offer. "As a humanitarian initiative in light of the coronavirus crisis, it reflects the values, ethics and principles of this movement that values man, his life, his freedom, his dignity to everything, and the flexibility of Hamas in dealing with this situation," the press release said.