Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

A Price of Pain: Hostages Returned, Terrorists Released (Judean Rose)

“The nightmare is over.”

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Last Sunday, the entire nation of Israel was riveted to their screens, hoping for a glimpse of Emily, Romi, and Doron. At the same time, at least where I live, in Efrat, the joy and relief were tempered with the knowledge that the cost is higher than any of us can stomach: the release of 1700 terrorists. Among those terrorists to be released is Khalil Ali Jabarin who fatally stabbed and killed Efrat resident Ari Fuld, a husband and father of four, in 2018.

And now, apparently, he will be released from prison, to do it again. It’s what they do. Kill Jews. It’s a proven fact. The recidivism rate is high. Terrorists were released in exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011. By 2014, half of them had committed further acts of terror. So now we have three amazing women back, but we feel unsafe.

In an address to the nation the night before the hostage release, Netanyahu assured us that no terrorists would be released to Judea and Samaria. “We have established that terrorists who have killed will not be released to Judea and Samaria; they will be expelled to the Gaza Strip or abroad, and we also decided in the cabinet on a very significant reinforcement of our forces in Judea and Samaria to protect our citizens,” he said.

Yet we see report after report suggesting that the terrorists slated to be released in this “deal” will indeed be released to Judea and Samaria. Efrat, once home to Ari Fuld, is located in Judea. We are in agony at the injustice of his murderer and so many other murderers of Israelis, going free. How do we trade this for that? Three young woman, but Ari’s murderer is set loose to wander free, and perhaps among us. 1,700 terrorists to be released into the wild.

We are winning. Why should we trade anything at all for a ceasefire, let alone release 1,700 murderers for 33 hostages? Why did Trump insist that we accede to Biden’s very bad May ceasefire plan? Does the new president not know that this means the release of terrorists who murdered American citizens, such as, for instance, Ari Fuld and Richard Lakin?

But that’s not the entire story either. It’s not the only reason our feelings are a bewildered mishmash of orphaned puzzle pieces. Israel has been fully mobilized for more than a year. We are in constant fear for soldier husbands, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters. They are gone for months. Wives and mothers are left on their own, some for more than a year. They are terrified. They must be strong for the kids. And how to soothe children when daddy is away and there are sirens.

As a mother of soldiers, I can tell you that it is hell to be a mother of soldiers in wartime. And now our soldier sons wonder why they served. Did they do their jobs bravely and well only to see the release of these monsters? Here, too, there is no justice. Especially for families who lost soldier husbands, sons, brothers, daughters, and sisters.

We are winning the war. Why are we being forced to capitulate, forced into Biden’s very bad “deal” from May, by Trump’s envoy, Witkoff. A man in Qatar’s pocket. Word is, Witkoff not only strong-armed Bibi into agreeing to this terrible deal (at Trump’s behest of course) but forced him to meet on Shabbos telling him that he knows Bibi isn’t orthodox, that he doesn’t wear a yarmulke, so he better damned well meet with him on Shabbos. Rumors. But rumors that rankle.

One woman friend told me that she had never cried so much as she did on Sunday, the day we waited for the hostages to be released. We didn’t know what feeling to land on: the fear, the feeling of being betrayed, that it was all for nothing, yet joy at the prospect of getting those girls, those three precious souls, out of hell.

Now, the newspapers are focused heavily on the hostages. The terrorist release is like a mere whisper in the media compared to the huge story of Emily, Romi, and Doron. They deserve our love and our joy. They deserved their hell to end. But to release terrorists who are almost certainly bound to kill again, is a terrible thing. And we can’t stand it.

I keep thinking back to October when JD Vance called on Americans in Israel to vote for Trump (emphasis added):

Vance stressed the importance of every vote in what is expected to be a close race. "This election could be decided by just a few votes. Do you want Kamala Harris, or do you want Donald Trump? If you want Donald Trump, get out there and make it happen."
Aryeh Lightstone, Former senior advisor to Ambassador David Friedman, told The Jerusalem Post, "In an election that may be decided by just thousands of votes, the Trump-Vance campaign is convinced that Americans in Israel know better than anybody else, the value of strong leadership, and they are speaking directly to these voters to make sure to show up through these videos."

"They have promised to continue to stand by Israel, and they are asking Americans in Israel to stand by them," Lightstone said.

We did stand by them. We voted for Trump and Vance, and now they are forcing us to release terrorists from our prisons who have American blood on their hands. If this is Trump and Vance standing up for us, no thanks. They could have come up with a different “plan.” It didn’t have to be this one. The cost is much too high.

There is also the issue of the dearth of information regarding the terrorists to be released. The government is obligated to inform the families of terror victims before the terrorists who killed their loved ones are let loose. But the government has not done so. None of the families have been notified. If I am wrong about this, please do let me know. I would feel better to be proved wrong.

Not too many people know about it, and it is light on information, but there's a list of terrorists slated to be released on Israel’s government website. The names of the innocents they murdered are not listed there, of course, but only those of the murderers. It makes it difficult for the public to get a good picture of what this all means, the gravity, and the enormity of releasing these particular prisoners. For how can we know how bad this is without knowing their names and what they did?

Families of terror victims and the press have been sifting through some the information on this list as best they can (once they know a list exists). That's how Ari Fuld’s murderer was discovered there, as was Balal Abu Gaanam who murdered American citizen Richard Lakin.

Balal Abu Gaanam as his entry appears on the list of terrorists slated to be released in exchange for the hostages.

The mastermind of the murder of Rina Shnerb is on the list, Khalida Jarrar.

Khalida Jarrar

Slowly, we are finding out who is there on that list. The horrible people who killed our loved ones. Who would not hesitate to kill once more, a dozen times more. With passion.

Khalil Yusuf Ali Jabarin, murderer of Ari Fuld.

I asked Ari Fuld’s younger brother, Hillel, if anyone in the government had contacted the family regarding the impending release of Khalil Ali Jabarin. How did they find out that Jabarin would be released. Do they even know for sure that he will be released?

Hillel Fuld

Hillel Fuld has not heard anything from the government. Perhaps it's because he's a brother, rather than a wife. “The government didn't contact me. I'm not sure if they contacted Miriam, not that I know of, as far as I know they didn't contact us, but again, I can only speak with certainty about myself. I definitely didn't hear anything from anyone other than that list that was published,” said Fuld.

I asked Arnold Roth, father of 15-year-old Malki Roth, murdered in the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria bombing by Hamas, if he’d heard of any families of terror victims being notified by the government that the murderers of their loved ones were about to be freed. “I saw an Israeli news report in the past few days which said the families of terror victims were going to be contacted by appropriate Government of Israel people once a decision had been made to free any of the terrorists convicted in the murder of a family member of theirs. That ought to include people like my wife and me. Our 15-year-old daughter Malki, was murdered in an act of Palestinian Arab terror orchestrated by Hamas in 2001,” said Roth.

“Although an entire gang of killers was caught, convicted, sentenced and imprisoned, they were all freed in the 2011 Shalit Deal. The woman who spearheaded the massacre at the Sbarro pizzeria, Ahlam Tamimi, was one of them - perhaps the most famous of the entire Shalit Deal list of freed savages. She returned to her native Jordan the day after Israel let her loose and has gone on to make herself a spectacular career there as a media personality and commentator on issues that speak to the hearts of people who support the murder of Jewish children.

“But there's one exception. One of the terrorists who played a key role in the Sbarro atrocity (and numerous other atrocities) and who did not walk free in 2011 is Abdullah Barghouti. He's the weapons expert who fabricated the massively-explosive guitar case that a human bomb carried on his back and into the pizzeria with the help of the Tamimi woman.

Arnold and Frimet Roth gaze at a photo of their daughter Malki, HY"D

“Barghouti is currently serving a sentence of 67 life terms, the longest ever imposed by an Israeli court and tied to the number of innocent lives wiped out by his bombs.

I don't know if Barghouti has been designated as one of the beneficiaries of the current hostage-freeing deal. But this report says he's on the Hamas list of demands. This doesn't mean he will be released but who knows? If they get their way, meaning if Israel capitulates to the mass-murdering terrorists as it did in the Shalit Deal, this is horrific and indefensible,” says Roth.

As it stands, that particular Barghouti is not on the Israeli government list of terrorists slated for release, though a different terrorist Barghouti family member, Ahmed Barghouti is there. But it is all very unclear. Roth tells me that Abdullah Barghouti, a relative of Tamimi, boasted on Sixty Minutes of his “passion to kill again and again.” I took a look at the interview:

The most notorious of all the prisoners held at the Be'er Sheva Prison is Abdullah Barghouti. It's not easy to get to see him because he's being held in indefinite solitary confinement. He's been convicted of being the mastermind behind Hamas' deadliest suicide bombings, responsible for the deaths of 66 people, including five Americans. How does he feel about this death toll?

"I feel bad because the number only 66. This the answer you want to hear it?" Barghouti told Simon.

"I want to hear what you have to say," Simon replied.

"No, this is the answer they want to hear it? Yes, I feel bad, because I want more," Barghouti said.

Barghouti has already killed more Israelis than anyone else. For two years, he sent suicide bombers to places, ordinary places, the names of which no Israeli will ever forget. They include "The Moment Café," the Hebrew University cafeteria [where American citizens Marla Bennet and Ben Blustein were murdered, V.E.] and the Sbarro Pizzeria, where seven children were killed.

Still, Ari Fuld is dead, the hostages are yet alive and suffering immensely, clinging barely to life after more than a year underground. Those who aren't dead, that is. We owe it to those both living and dead to get them out. But in my opinion, not like this.

Ari Fuld's funeral

I asked Hillel Fuld if he would share his own feelings about the deal. He said, “I feel there are two parallel lines when it comes to this deal. There's the beautiful line and there's the terrible line. These two lines can't coexist on one line like what social media would have you believe, that everything is just black and white. It’s beautiful and beyond beautiful and emotional that those poor hostages get to be reunited with their families and we all experienced that emotional moment a few nights ago.

“It’s also a terrible deal because they're releasing a thousand monsters to the streets and that could not be more terrible so it's both beautiful and terrible at the same time.”

Asked what he thinks of the framework for the ceasefire deal as proposed by Biden in May, now being set in motion, and how it went down now, with Witkoff, Hillel chooses to be positive. “I don’t know the details of what went on behind the scenes. I want to believe that there is more than meets the eye that there was some kind of incentive to get Netanyahu to agree to this deal. I don't have any information but that is something that I tell myself to make myself feel better and I hope that it will become clear in the coming months in terms of what was promised to Netanyahu.”

Freed hostage Emily Damari with her mother, Mandy.

What would you like to see happen now, I asked Hillel.

“What would I like to see happen now? I'd like to see our hostages come back so we can return to the war and obliterate Hamas and achieve our war objectives of eliminating Hamas from this world; removing all threats from Israel's borders; and getting our hostages back."

I appreciate Hillel Fuld’s life-affirming positivity. Unfortunately, I’m more like the people he describes on on social media who can’t see parallel lines. Like everyone in Israel I love, love, love to see the moving photos, stories, and videos of the freed hostages. Still, I am concerned that we are letting down the memories of terror victims, and leaving our people as unsafe as we were on October 6.

Perhaps that's not even the worst of it. It goes to the core of who the Israeli people are as a society. “No self-respecting government can justify to its citizens the restoration of the freedom of a barbarian like Barghouti,” says Arnold Roth. “Allowing him out of his cell would be a monstrous act of moral bankruptcy.”

And yet here we are, giving many killers of Jews a fresh start so we can get a very small number of hostages out of hell. I don't think it had to be that way. We are winning, or at least we were winning. Until the point where we were leaned on by Witkoff to capitulate to the enemy on behalf of President Donald J. Trump.

Now look, I am happy, truly happy, that Trump is doing so many nice things for Israel--I will let others talk about suspending UNRWA and lifting the sanctions imposed on Israeli Americans in Judea and Samaria because of where they live and their religion, and all the other goodies--but this “deal” spits on the memories of American citizens murdered because of their religion.

I ask you, is this right, Mr. Trump? Is it just in your eyes?

I don’t expect an answer from President Trump, nor, the truth is, from my own government. The Israeli government is not being forthright with the families of the victims whose murderers are soon to be, if not already released.

This has engendered a deep sense of betrayal and despair in many of us Israelis, a feeling of why did we do all this--why did we sacrifice so much? To what purpose? To strengthen the hand of terror? And yet, it fills our hearts to see Emily, Romi, and Doron in the arms of their families once more. Can anyone really put a price on that?

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

01/22 Links Pt2: The Red Cross is humiliated as it again serves murderers of Jews; BDS: Twenty Years of Failure; Elbit systems hits record highs as global defense budgets surge

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: A Breakthrough in the Fight for Jewish Students’ Civil Rights

Good news for once out of Harvard. The university has settled two anti-Semitism-related lawsuits with agreements that will require concrete action instead of vague promises of better behavior. It will make students’ BDS demands dead-on-arrival. And it may be a model for future such settlements—an outcome that would go far toward helping American higher education finally break its intifada fever.

“It’s a terrific result and I think it’s going to be really influential,” Daniel R. Benson, of Kasowitz Benson Torres, told COMMENTARY today. The firm represented Students Against Antisemitism, one of the plaintiffs. The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law represented the other. (Benson is a member of COMMENTARY’s Board of Trustees.)

Among the more significant outcomes of the case is that Harvard will be adopting the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism to govern its anti-harassment and non-discrimination rules. The definition, as worded by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, is the mainstream Jewish community’s preferred definition: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The IHRA definition is often described in the press as “controversial,” but what that really means is “misunderstood.” Along with the definition, IHRA includes examples of anti-Semitism. Among those examples are expressions of anti-Israel bias that “may” amount to anti-Semitic intent when they form the basis of discriminatory acts. The definition does not outlaw speech; it merely makes it more difficult for anti-Semites to hide their bigoted intent. This cynical excuse has been responsible for enabling universities to violate Jewish students’ civil rights at will; the Harvard settlement therefore makes it less likely that Jews will openly be treated as second-class citizens on campus.

The settlement also aims to end the broad use of obvious euphemisms to get around non-discrimination statutes, especially when it comes to the anti-Jewish loyalty oaths some university groups around the country have begun requiring from their prospective members. The university handbook will make explicit that those rules apply to both Jews and Israelis, and it will include the following explanation: “For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity. Conduct that would violate the Non-Discrimination Policy if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the policy if directed toward Zionists. Examples of such conduct include excluding Zionists from an open event, calling for the death of Zionists, applying a ‘no Zionist’ litmus test for participation in any Harvard activity, using or disseminating tropes, stereotypes, and conspiracies about Zionists (e.g., ‘Zionists control the media’), or demanding a person who is or is perceived to be Jewish or Israeli to state a position on Israel or Zionism to harass or discriminate.”

The settlement, if implemented properly, would bring Harvard into compliance with Title VI civil-rights protections. It also might encourage other universities to do the same. Having seen where the process got Harvard, other schools might save themselves the effort and expense required to fight against applying civil-rights laws to Jews.

Key to Middle East peace is accepting the past

For decades, the Palestinians and their allies have launched wars they then lose and complain to everyone about losing. It never seems to strike them that a better idea might be not to launch these wars.

In the West, the various campaigns that express solidarity to Palestinians are not, in fact, showing them any solidarity at all. They have their own agenda about their own power and status and which uses Palestinians as a rhetorical prop. And they are misleading the people they pretend to support. They are like a friend who would advise me to throw up my life, pick up a gun and go and invade Lviv by myself in the name of Marshal Pilsudski and his brigades of Polish legionnaires.

These western-based supporters provide solidarity only for the most violent rejectionists and leave bereft those people in Palestine itself who might be willing to come to terms with both reality and Israel. For as long as Palestinians hold out hope that there will be a Palestine “from the river to the sea” there will be war and death, however hard we all work to prevent such calamities, such horror.

Any protester chanting this slogan is encouraging others to go to their death, and to go and kill innocent people, while themselves promising only to write a cross message on a piece of cardboard and wave it outside the Garfunkel’s restaurant near Trafalgar Square.

This is all worth saying because what we have now is a ceasefire and not a peace. It is the duty of Israel’s supporters — people like me — to insist that Palestinians must be allowed the dignity of their own state. And we will. But our insistence will come to naught if Palestinians are not urged equally firmly to accept that they must live in peace with their Jewish neighbours. This means financial compensation and not a right of return, which is a practical impossibility.

This war is so unnecessary and so tragic. And this ceasefire is so fragile. There will not be peace until everyone makes their peace with history and reality.

The Red Cross is humiliated as it again serves murderers of Jews

It took more than a month before the American Red Cross said the ICRC was pursuing “every possible avenue to secure the release of all remaining hostages.” It would remain silent, however, because its experience—ignoring the Holocaust—was that it was most effective if it kept a low profile. Well, it succeeded in making its profile invisible while not gaining the release of a single hostage or providing them with assistance.

For the transfer, they showed up as if they were heroes when they were essentially Uber drivers taking the former hostages a few miles to an awaiting military helicopter.

First, though, they played a part in the grotesque Hamas spectacle in which heavily armed masked terrorists in freshly laundered uniforms delivered and surrounded the hostages. Hundreds of jeering civilians lined the streets celebrating the dehumanization of the women right to the end of their ordeal. Civilians, including children—frequently portrayed as innocent victims of “genocide”—actively participated in the degradation of survivors of the Hamas massacre.

The Israelis were given “goodie bags” as if they were leaving a bat mitzvah, but instead of shouts of mazel tov! they heard only blood-curdling chants of Allahu Akbar. The Red Cross literally endorsed this farce by co-signing Hamas-drafted “certificates of release” that the hostages were forced to sign before posing for photos holding the documents with their captors.

You must give Hamas credit; their skill in media manipulation has not diminished with their loss of power. The terrorists carefully stage-managed the handover with their Al Jazeera collaborators to show pictures designed to give the world the impression of widespread support and military resilience. For their supporters, Hamas wanted to pretend that thousands of fighters survived the war to pursue their goal of committing repeated massacres. Aerial photos later revealed the crowd was no more than a few hundred people crammed into a narrow street that was part of a calculated media strategy to portray Hamas as victorious despite its decimation.

At this point, the least the Red Cross can do is to ensure that it does not participate in another terrorist photo op to promote the Hamas narrative. The organization, backed by the United States, Qatar and Egypt, must ensure that future transfers occur in neutral, secure locations with no armed personnel or civilian onlookers. Hamas has managed to keep the location of the hostages secret for this long; let them maintain that secrecy for the point of exchange.

The Red Cross should not allow its reputation to be dragged further through the mud by being a party to the disgraceful abuse of innocent Israelis who miraculously survived months of torture and abuse without its medical or any other assistance.

01/22 Links Pt1: How Hamas became invisible; Freed Hostages Say Hamas Held Them in UN Facilities; Trump sanctions could destroy the ICC

From Ian:

Clifford D May: Hamas celebrates

Hamas’s supporters on American campuses will continue to insist that Gazans are victims of Israeli oppression and cheer Hamas.

For the deal to move into a second phase—which would include extension of the ceasefire, release of the remaining 61 hostages, and Israel freeing almost 2,000 convicted terrorists in total—will require that negotiations not break down. It’s not difficult to imagine why they might.

Hamas’s goal is to resume power in Gaza, get the “international donor community” to write big checks for reconstruction while U.N. agencies provide Gazans with social services including education accredited by the Muslim Brotherhood. That would leave Hamas free to begin planning new atrocities.

Israel’s goal is to bring home as many hostages as possible and ensure that never again does a terrorist army rule Gaza.

Ask yourself: Is there any way to satisfy both Hamas and Israel’s goals?

And is it not both immoral and demoralizing for American diplomats to prod the citizens of a free and democratic ally to compromise with openly genocidal Islamic supremacist terrorists?

I’ll end today’s column with three pertinent facts—not opinions—that most of the media consistently neglect.

One: On Oct. 6, 2023, Gaza was not occupied. No Israelis lived there. No Israeli soldiers patrolled there.

Two: Gaza was not then an “open-air prison” as Hamas manipulated the media into reporting. Gaza had hospitals, schools, libraries, malls, supermarkets, restaurants, a zoo and sandy beaches. Members of Gaza’s elite lived in villas with swimming pools and could come and go via neighboring Egypt.

Three: Hamas leaders could have brought a halt to this war at any time over the past 15 months by simply releasing its hostages and laying down their weapons.

Ask yourself: Who is responsible for the death and destruction on both sides—in the past and, in all probability, in the future?

If you know the answer, you also know that it won’t be through ceasefires and deals that this long war is brought to a conclusion.

How Hamas became invisible

Think back to the coverage of the fighting in and around al-Shifa Hospital over the past 15 months. The IDF first clashed with Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters there in November 2023, after intelligence showed hostages were being held captive inside. After a protracted shootout, the IDF gained access to the area around the hospital only to discover the hostages had been killed. Fighting re-erupted in the vicinity of the hospital last March, after Hamas had started using it again. On each occasion, the gun battles were intense and went on for days. Yet the coverage virtually removed Hamas from the scene. ‘Israeli soldiers raid al-Shifa hospital in escalation of Gaza offensive’, reported the Guardian in November 2023. ‘Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital in ruins after two-week Israeli raid’, declared the BBC in April last year. It gave the impression that the IDF were attacking the hospital for the sheer hell of it.

Or recall the coverage of Israel’s hostage-rescue operation in Nuseirat last June. Hamas attacked IDF troops with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and mortar rounds. As the battle became more entrenched, Israeli airstrikes were called in, causing many more deaths. Yet in the subsequent reporting, Hamas’s role simply disappeared. ‘An Israeli operation rescues four hostages and kills scores of Palestinians’, announced CNN. ‘Gaza health ministry says Israeli hostage rescue killed 274 Palestinians’, reported the BBC.

Politicians soon drew the predictable anti-Israel conclusions. Then EU diplomat Josep Borrell called it ‘another massacre of civilians’. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, went even further, claiming that the IDF’s hostage-rescue operation revealed Israel’s ‘genocidal intent’.

This has happened time and again since the Israel-Hamas war began. As Brendan O’Neill has argued on spiked, Hamas is constantly being ‘invisibilised’. It is an absent combatant, dark matter in a war in which only Israeli forces are seemingly observable. Even the unspeakable act that started this awful conflict on 7 October has been reduced to a mere moment in a much longer tale of supposed Israeli aggression and occupation.

As French poet Charles Baudelaire put it, ‘The greatest trick the devil pulled is to convince the world he didn’t exist’. Hamas hasn’t had to do much convincing. Too many among the Western political and media class have been only too happy to pretend it doesn’t exist – and to present Israel’s war of self-defence as a war of aggression.

Yet now, as Hamas parades on the streets of Gaza, this propagandistic fiction has become unsustainable. In a statement it put out on Monday, Hamas has vowed that Gaza ‘will rise again to rebuild what the occupation has destroyed and continue on the path of steadfastness until the occupation is defeated’. That is not a statement of peace. That is a statement of aggressive intent.

Hamas has certainly been diminished by the past 15 months of conflict, but there can be no doubt that it is still there – and is still the ultimate cause of the Gazan tragedy.

America Must Let Israel Finish Off Hamas after the Cease-Fire Ends

While President Trump has begun his term with a flurry of executive orders, their implementation is another matter. David Wurmser surveys the bureaucratic hurdles facing new presidents, and sets forth what he thinks should be the most important concerns for the White House regarding the Middle East:

The cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas may be necessary in order to retrieve whatever live hostages Israel is able to repatriate. Retrieving those hostages has been an Israeli war aim from day one.

But it is a vital American interest . . . to allow Israel to restart the war in Gaza and complete the destruction of Hamas, and also to allow Israel to enforce unilaterally UN Security Council Resolutions 1701 and 1559, which are embedded in the Lebanon cease-fire. If Hamas emerges with a story of victory in any form, not only will Israel face another October 7 soon, and not only will anti-Semitism explode exponentially globally, but cities and towns all over the West will suffer from a newly energized and encouraged global jihadist effort.

After the last hostage Israel can hope to still retrieve has been liberated, Israel will have to finish the war in a way that results in an unambiguous, incontrovertible, complete victory.

From the North Africa Post:

In a new antisemitic move, the Algerian regime ordered the closure of a publishing house named after Franz Fanon in Boumerdes, after it published a book on Jews in Algeria.

Authorities gave the pretext of “threats to security and public order, attacks on national identity, and hate speech” for its censorship.

The book in question, dubbed “Jewish Algeria” by Heda Bensahli, delves into the two-thousand-year presence of Jews in Algeria, highlighting their cultural and historical contributions despite the challenges they faced, especially after the colonial period.

The Algerian regime has embraced a version of Arab authoritarian nationalism that occulted cultural, political, linguistic, and religious diversity. Jews, in particular, were forced to leave the country after independence and their belongings and real-estate were confiscated. Many cannot return to the country of their forefathers, as the Algerian regime surfs on antisemitism and populist discourse.

The closure of the publishing house is part of a larger crackdown on free speech. The Algerian regime has closed critical media outlets and imprisoned writers such as French-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal, who has been in jail in retaliation for challenging the state’s rhetoric on colonial borders.

What, exactly, do Algerian rulers find so threatening about the book?

In October, an Islamist Algerian lawmaker, Zouhir Fares, canceled a planned reading of the book claiming the book a form of “cultural normalization with Zionists.” The forward was written by Valerie Zenatti, a prominent author and translator, whose family moved to Israel from France when she was 13.

But that appears to be a pretext. The problem is the supposed "attack on national identity."

The blurb on Amazon says:

The Jewish presence in Algeria has often been minimized, even denied in the speeches of all the victors.... In postcolonial Algeria, the jubilation of independence and the ideological stakes (also) end up making these natives an anecdotal reality. However, two thousand years of history and a most fertile cultural heritage are there to testify to a historical trajectory that places Jewishness at the heart of Algerian intimacy. Jewish Algeria is not an Algeria next to, or against other Algerias, but it is one of the most authentic nuances of a multicultural and multiethnic melting pot several thousand years old.

Bensahli argues that Jews are an integral part of Algerian history. That is apparently what bothers the Algerian Islamists so much, to think that their history and culture owe anything to the hated Jews.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

1970's era Fatah posters show that "peace" is another word that Palestinians changed the meaning of

The Palestine Poster Project has been collecting thousands of posters about Israel and Palestinians, including some of mine.

I did a search for posters with doves of peace. A significant number of them were created by Fatah or the PLO in the 1970s - and many of those included weapons as prominently as the dove in the same posters.

Peace and violence co-existed in the minds of Palestinian leaders of the time.

"War is peace" was a the totalitarian government's slogan in Orwell's 1984. Palestinian leaders said the same thing that Big Brother did without any irony.

And they have been brainwashing the world the way Big Brother did as well, by changing the definitions of words like "justice" and "peace" to mean killing Jews.

There is no indication that anything has changed. After all, the Fatah logo still features weapons like rifles and a hand grenade even today.

No dove there.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Iran appears to be using the Gaza ceasefire as a means to climb down from its promise to attack Israel

For over two months, Iran has pledged to respond to Israel's late October attack with a devastating blow they call "True Promise 3."

They know that Israel attacked with impunity and that their air defenses did literally nothing to stop it. So they have been stuck between a solemn promise to respond - which Iranian officials have pledged hundreds of times since then - and the knowledge that any Israeli response would be no holds barred, likely targeting economic targets like ports and oil depots, unlike the October operation.

Iran's already tenuous economy cannot absorb such a blow. But its honor makes it difficult for it to abandon this "promise" of an attack.

Right before the ceasefire, Khabar Online gave the first excuse for Iran not attacking: Iran wants to deter Israel but does not want to things to escalate into a war. It is seeking a "balanced approach to reducing tensions."

Over the past week, with the Gaza ceasefire, Iran's propagandists appear to have struck a new way to avoid fulfilling the "promise": by declaring victory by the Axis of Resistance, and claiming that the previous two attacks have been instrumental in that victory.

Iranian media is filled with declarations of victory, including this hilarious article in the IRGC-run Defa Press that celebrates "victory" by showing a billboard with major "axis of resistance" leaders killed by Israel.

Iran is soliciting its terrorist allies to thank them for their role in Hamas' "victory."

Islamic Jihad's secretary-general Ziad Al-Nakhala said, "Our brothers in the Islamic Republic of Iran have been providing us with full support for the past decades and continue to do so. The Islamic Republic of Iran reached its peak of support with Operation True Promise. We cannot forget our brothers in the Islamic Republic of Iran who stood by our people with all their resources."

A Hamas official similarly thanked Iran for its attacks on Israel in April and early October, claiming that they helped Hamas' supposed victory. So did popular Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida. So did the deputy political head of Hamas Khalil al-Hayya.

These are not spontaneous expressions. Iran told its clients to issue these statements - apparently so it could claim that there is no longer a reason for the promised crushing revenge Iran pledged to inflict on Israel.

At least one Iranian newspaper literally said that the ceasefire fulfilled "True Promise," implying that a third attack is not necessary.

The head of the Islamic Propaganda Coordination Council of Khorasan Razavi said that Iranian unity is effectively the same as an armed attack. "This year's Bahman 22 march will fulfill the work of Operation True Promise 3. The presence of the people will expose the soft power of the Islamic Republic regime to the enemies. The enemy is seeking to distance the people from the Islamic Republic regime through high prices and maximum sanctions. All organs and departments must have a lively presence with all their personnel in the Bahman 22 march." Apparently, Iran not falling yet is another victory, and not only that, but it may even obviate the need for another attack on Israel.

While there are still some noises about the promised attack - for example, a staged rally of women in Mashhad demanding the revenge attack on Israel - it sure looks from Iranian media that the regime has finally found a way to excuse itself from its promise.

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The ceasefire agreement in Lebanon requires Israel withdraws from southern Lebanon by January 27. So far, Israel is claiming that the Lebanese Armed Forces are not doing their part of ridding southern Lebanon of Hezbollah forces and weapons.

Last week, US negotiator Amos Hochstein insisted Israel will withdraw by the deadline, but more recent stories indicate that it may not.

Naharnet reports:

A meeting Monday of the ceasefire monitoring committee witnessed a negative atmosphere that does not indicate that Israel intends to withdraw from south Lebanon by the weekend, when the 60-day timeframe expires, al-Akhbar newspaper reported on Tuesday.

“No statement was issued after the meeting,” the daily noted.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati had announced overnight, during a TV interview, that the head of the ceasefire committee, U.S. major general Jasper Jeffers, had told him that “the Israeli withdrawal might be delayed for several days.”

An informed source meanwhile told al-Akhbar that the Israeli army “has complained that the Lebanese Army has refused to seize resistance assets from depots and homes, or to confiscate arms at a time Lebanese authorities are in a transitional phase, which prompted it to act on the ground by itself, as it did in al-Salhani, Wadi al-Slouki, Tallousa and Bani Hayyan.”

“The Israeli enemy has threatened through UNIFIL to bomb new sites suspected of containing resistance weapons should the (Lebanese) Army fail to raid them, while (Lebanese) military officials have refused to turn into a security force that works at the enemy’s instructions and clashes with residents,” the source said.

This sounds consistent with what has been happening during the past two months. When the LAF shows that it can take over an area and village, Israel withdraws, but it has gone slowly.

Israeli analyst Yoni ben Menachem wrote yesterday:

As things currently stand, the Lebanese army has deployed in the western sector of southern Lebanon, in the Naqoura area. The day before yesterday, the Lebanese army also deployed in the town of Bint Jbeil, but senior security officials doubt its ability to enforce the ceasefire agreement and withdraw Hezbollah forces from north of the Litani River, as stipulated in UN Resolution 1701.

The fear in the Lebanese political system is that Israel will not fully withdraw from southern Lebanon and will continue to hold several strategic points, which could reignite the fire in Lebanon and provide Hezbollah with the excuse that it is "defending Lebanon." Hezbollah has already begun vigorously rebuilding its military force, which was damaged in the war.

The expectation in Lebanon is that President Trump will prevent Israel from doing this and oblige it to fully withdraw from southern Lebanon according to the agreement.

The new Lebanese president Joseph Aoun said that only the Lebanese Army should have weapons, meaning Hezbollah should not. Hezbollah has indicated that it will maintain its army but north of the Litani River. It has been attempting to rebuild its military capabilities after being routed by Israel.

Meanwhile, a Hezbollah officer from the Radwan forces spoke anonymously with Al Arabiya and admitted that Israel inflicted major blows on the group and it would be difficult for it to reconstitute itself in the south:

He pointed out that the Israeli warplanes and drones were able to destroy the largest part of those [missile] sites, in addition to hundreds of tunnels in more than one border town in the south, some of which were close to reaching the edge of more than one Israeli settlement.

When asked whether Hezbollah is able to rebuild its capabilities again, especially after its presence in the south of the Litani River was prevented under the provisions of UN Resolution 1701, as well as not getting a weapons from Syria after the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, he stressed that the matter had become difficult.

He said: “Things have become difficult for us, and yes, we misjudged the strength of Israel." However, he stressed that Hezbollah will rebuild again in the north of the Litani River and other areas in the southern suburbs of Beirut and Bekaa.

He also admitted that the pager attack was devastating to Hezbollah's military capacity:

The officer added that "the biggest blow Hezbollah suffered was the pagers operation that struck the arteries of its military and logistic. It paralyzed his military column after disabling about 3,000 of its cadres by injuring them in their faces, eyes and hands.”

Notice that he doesn't even pretend to claim that it was an attack on civilians as Hezbollah apologist in the West claim.

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01/21 Links Pt2: The Red Cross Abets Hamas’s Crimes; Only Hamas can claim victory and genocide at the same time; A happy 20th anniversary for Mahmoud Abbas

From Ian:

The UK still hasn’t come to terms with the Muslim Brotherhood

Islam is no longer something that only matters in Islamic countries. It has a global reach and therefore global influence. That has been the case for decades, though we have tried to pretend otherwise. Most Muslims are perfectly at ease in the West. But Islamists by definition see our societies as corrupt and decadent and our political systems as illegitimate. Revelation, not rationally discovered secular law, should determine how we live and are governed.

Given the symbolic power for Muslims of Islam – which Islamists seek to harness for their own ends – and the growing numbers of Muslims in Europe, that is a challenge to the liberal order of a magnitude we haven’t experienced since the Cold War. So when the UAE decides to proscribe organisations and individuals which they claim are linked to the MB, and some of those are resident or registered in the UK, we should pay attention. This is not necessarily because we know that the UAE are right or – if they are right – that we should take legal action ourselves. The MB is not a proscribed organisation here – though Hamas, which arose out of the Palestinian MB certainly is. The issue is rather different. Successive British governments have seemed to believe that if only we ignore Islamism or pay attention only when a bomb goes off on the Tube or someone is horribly murdered on Westminster Bridge, at Borough Market or on a street in Woolwich, then everyone will get along nicely and everything will be fine. It won’t.

The Islamist challenge to the foundational norms of western societies is clear enough in the current debate over Islamophobia. We have seen the results in Batley, in Wakefield and in Birmingham, where there has been a sustained effort to pretend that the so-called Trojan Horse affair never happened (Policy Exchange, the think tank where I work, has begged to differ). The French see this with Cartesian clarity: its interior minister spoke about the threat from Brotherhood-inflected Islamism on 6 January. So do politicians in Austria, Germany and Sweden. They continue to have difficulty formulating a coherent and collective response. But acknowledging you have a problem is the first step to resolving it. British governments continue to be reluctant to do even that. So reviews like the MBR or those by Shawcross and Sara Khan come and go. Whitehall is repeatedly urged to set up proper structures, to develop proper expertise and use that to shape policies designed at the very least to resist Islamist efforts to create parallel structures or separate societies, promote dependency, disguise funding flows, dismantle the connection between rights and the individual and constrain criticism by restrictions on free speech. The response under the Tories was feeble: they were admittedly distracted. But the response of the current government seems likely to be more regulation, more legal constraints and perhaps the adoption of an expansive and unnecessary Islamophobia definition. That isn’t the answer. The UAE shows what can be done if you know what you’re talking about and have the confidence of your convictions. Perhaps we should try learning from them?

The Red Cross Abets Hamas’s Crimes

While any hope of reforming UNRWA is a fantasy, that isn’t to say the organization is completely incapable of self-correction. In 2019, writes Richard Pollock, its director Pierre Krähenbühl

was forced to resign . . . because of immoral and unethical behavior, including creating a “toxic environment” within the organization, according to the official investigation. . . . The devastating ten-page UN report said he and his top associates, “engaged in abuses of authority for personal gain, to suppress legitimate dissent and to otherwise achieve their personal objectives.”

So what happens to the disgraced former head of UNRWA? In 2021, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) made him its personal envoy to the president of China. He became the organization’s director-general in December 2023. And that brings us to the events of Sunday, when ICRC officials supervised the handover of three Israeli hostages. As Pollock observes, these officials “stood by and permitted Hamas gunmen and frenzied Gaza City residents to surround and shake the vehicles [transporting the women] as they were about to be released.” This was

the final human-rights indignity supervised by the International Red Cross, which has steadfastly ignored its obligation and mandate to protect unarmed hostages. Unlike . . . in other conflicts, not once did the ICRC never meet with a single hostage during their captivity since they were seized on October 7. The relief agency never provided them with comfort, delivered needed medicines, or assured their safety.

It’s not well known, but in fiscal year 2022, the State Department contributed more than $622 million to the ICRC, making it the largest single donor to the relief agency. . . . The new Congress most likely will hold hearings to investigate the ICRC and consider withholding funds from it.

Only Hamas can claim victory and genocide at the same time

Hamas wasted no time declaring victory, even before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed the existence of a hostage release deal. Despite its losses, the destruction of its leadership and the devastation in Gaza’s streets, the terror group’s propaganda arm pressed forward. "The Al-Aqsa Flood brought pride," they claimed in a flurry of social media graphics, showcasing their creative team working overtime.

This is a population uniquely capable of claiming both genocide and victory simultaneously. The objective is clear: to entrench Palestinian consciousness and reinforce Hamas' grip on Gaza. The armed terrorists who emerged amid celebrations as the cease-fire began underscore this.

Yet, beyond the absurdity lies a critical reminder of the parallel battle for public perception. The potential silence on the battlefield in the coming weeks doesn't necessarily signal a reduction in this campaign. On the contrary, it’s likely to intensify in the absence of physical fighting.

Israel faces a steep challenge countering Hamas’ messaging to its own population. If the Palestinians haven’t realized by now that their actions led to disaster, no Israeli awareness campaign will change that anytime soon.

But the Palestinian public isn't Israel’s primary target audience. The focus should be on the international audience, which has lost sight of why Israel is fighting and what it has yet to achieve. The world needs a reminder of the cruelty of the enemy and the reality that Israel’s national trauma won’t begin to heal until every hostage is returned.

In this sense, the hostage deal represents not only a source of joy, hope and worry among many— but also an opportunity to provide the world with critical context. While the IDF prepares the operation for the hostages’ return, "Wings of Freedom," Israel must also plan a parallel campaign: "Freedom of Truth."

Amid the inevitable flood of media coverage surrounding the deal, Israel should embed content that advances its interests — personalizing the hostages, putting faces and names to those coming home and underscoring that Israel won't rest until all are freed.

It must be made clear that their abduction is not just a personal tragedy but a collective catastrophe and that Hamas' existence remains a dire threat requiring its complete eradication.

01/21 Links Pt1: Hamas held hostages at new Gaza hospital as UN health agency criticized for inaction; Report: Four female hostages to be released Saturday; Australia is in the grip of an anti-Semitic nightmare

From Ian:

Israel Enters Truce with Unfulfilled Goal: Destroying Hamas

As a ceasefire begins in Gaza, Israel hasn't fulfilled its top war aim: to destroy Hamas. Hamas is claiming a win despite its heavy losses, and parading its fighters in the streets of Gaza, because it has reached its own goal of surviving the onslaught. Yet the strategic gains from 15 months of war are almost all on Israel's side. The country has emerged stronger, having cut several of its adversaries down to size.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian cause is facing its bleakest prospects for decades. Despite widespread international sympathy, the Palestinians are more divided internally, more isolated in the region, and face an Israel that, after Oct. 7, 2023, is even more firmly against a Palestinian state.

"On the Israeli side, there is disappointment and frustration about the war in Gaza," said Michael Milshtein, a former head of Palestinian affairs for Israeli military intelligence. "But Israel has a lot of strategic achievements. It caused severe damage to all its enemies. They are not the same threats that they were on Oct. 7. Israel's deterrence is much improved, and the society demonstrated its resilience."

The real defeat for Hamas came on Israel's other fronts, where Hamas's allies in what is known as Iran's axis of resistance suffered a string of setbacks. The all-out regional war on Israel that was dreamed of by Hamas's Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of Oct. 7, turned into a fiasco.

"Hamas lost a lot of fighters and equipment and infrastructure, but what forced it to the negotiating table was the changed regional situation, plus the arrival of Trump," said Ofer Fridman, a former Israeli officer and war-studies scholar at King's College London.

Seth Mandel: What the Pardon Controversies and the Israeli Hostage Deals Have in Common

In 2013, the Israeli High Court of Justice rejected a petition by family members of terror victims seeking to halt a Palestinian prisoner release. The families also argued that, just as in criminal clemency cases, the victims should have an opportunity to register their opposition before the court. In probably the most significant part of the decision, the court said that families of victims don’t retain the same rights if the clemency being granted is through a political deal and not through the normal legal process.

It is crucial to understand how much this concept—that political decisions override the government’s legal obligations—irritates the public. Some of that sentiment seems to be building in the U.S. as well in the wake of bipartisan misuse of the pardon power.

There is one other consideration in Israel’s case that helps explain why Katz might have tied his administrative-detention change to the ceasefire deal. As one Israeli academic warned in 2018: “there is a correlation between people who demonstrated their desire to punish terrorist Palestinians more harshly in [a recent public opinion] survey and the people who showed mistrust in Israeli institutions and their capability to deal with terrorism. It is possible that Israelis do not trust their justice system and government to keep perpetrators behind bars.”

Repeated attempts to severely limit the government’s power to make such deals have failed, and the death penalty is not coming back into use. Similarly, in the U.S. the pardon power is constitutionally explicit and broad, and therefore difficult to limit. But mistrust of the legal system in a democracy will have its own corrosive effect if politicians neglect to maintain the political legitimacy they need to make these decisions.

Israeli intel indicates Hamas held hostages at new Gaza hospital as UN health agency criticized for inaction

With the first three Israeli hostages freed in the cease-fire for hostages deal, Fox News Digital has exclusively learned that several terrorists captured by Israeli forces last month confessed that Israeli captives were held at different times at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) recently completed a major raid on the hospital, arresting some 240 terrorists. The director of the hospital, Hussam Abu Safiya, the Israelis claim, had gathered intelligence showing that he not only allowed Hamas to infiltrate the hospital, but actively collaborated with the terror group.

Another captured terrorist, Anas Muhammad Faiz al-Sharif, who worked at the hospital as a cleaning supervisor and joined the Nukhba forces of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades in 2021, told Israeli interrogators that the northern Gaza facility was viewed as "a safe haven for them because the [Israeli] military cannot directly target it."

He revealed that inside the hospital, terrorists distributed grenades and mortars, along with equipment for ambushing IDF troops and tanks.

Fox News Digital asked a World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman if, based on the IDF's new allegations about holding hostages at Adwan Hospital, they would condemn Hamas' use of hospitals for military use.

In a statement, the spokesman said, "The International Humanitarian Law is very clear. Healthcare workers and healthcare facilities are off limits. They must not be attacked. They must not be used for military purposes. They must be protected at all times. The point is both to protect civilians, as well as to protect the health systems and infrastructure that communities depend on for life-giving care and continuity of services.

"Failure to protect and respect healthcare devastates twice. First, in the initial harm, and then again for the months or years it takes to rebuild the health systems."

The statement concluded without condemning or singling out Hamas. "The protection of healthcare also includes the prohibition against combatants using health facilities for military purposes. IHL is also clear that even if healthcare facilities are being used for military purposes, there are stringent conditions which apply to taking action against them, including a duty to warn and to wait after warning and even then, disproportionate attacks are strictly prohibited."

Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former Trump National Security Council official, claimed, "Several international organizations operating in Gaza likely had direct knowledge of Hamas using hospitals as terror headquarters and only publicly protested Israel’s attempt to clear the terrorists. The Red Cross, UNRWA, World Health Organization - they were all collaborators." Ambulances carrying patients from Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahya, northern Gaza Strip since services stopped within 24 hours due to lack of fuel, arrive at Shifa Hospital, accompanied by UN teams, in Gaza City, Gaza, on Oct. 12, 2024.

Annexing the West Bank is a "most serious violation" - but only when done by Jews

Yesterday, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres told a Security Council meeting on the Middle East that any annexation of part or all of Judea and Samaria "would constitute a most serious violation of international law."

For international law to have any meaning, it must be applied equally to all. Luckily, we have a case where a country did indeed annex the exact same territory, in 1950, when Jordan illegally annexed what they call the West Bank.

Who condemned it? Only the Arab League, which was concerned that Jordan was about to implement a plan to make itself the leader of a Greater Syria that would encompass Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and "Palestine."

I looked for any UN resolutions condemning this "most serious violation of international law." There aren't any.

The world largely knew the annexation was illegal. Almost no one recognized it (outside Great Britain, Iraq and maybe Pakistan.) Most other countries and the media accepted the west bank of the Jordan as de facto Jordanian territory, if not de jure.

That includes the UN.

In November 1966, a Fatah terrorist cell exploded a mine under an Israeli jeep, killing three. Israel responded with an reprisal invasion aimed at Fatah cells in the village of Samu, near Hebron which resulted in a large battle with Jordanian forces.

Naturally the UN Security Council condemned the response but not the initial attack. However, the wording of UNSC resolution 228 is most interesting. It called Israel's action "a largescale and carefully planned military action on the territory of Jordan by the armed forces of Israel."

This indicates that the UN accepted the West Bank as being fully Jordanian territory, not occupied or illegally annexed.

There are some annexations the UN has condemned (Israel/east Jerusalem, Israel/Golan, Iraq/Kuwait, Russia/Crimea, South Africa/Namibia) and others they didn't at the time (China/Tibet, Indonesia/East Timor, India/Goa, Morocco/Western Sahara.) If annexation is a most serious violation of international law, why wouldn't the UN condemn all of them? What makes some terrible and others, like Jordan's, acceptable?

It doesn't take too much to realize that politics trumps international law, and the UN is far more political than it is a neutral arbiter of what is right and wrong.

(h/t (((JyrkiWahlstedt))) )

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Hamas is deliberately psychologically torturing Israelis during the hostage releases

Terrorism is, by definition, the attempt to instill fear and terror in a civilian population. Usually this comes from bombs, bullets, airplane hijackings, knives and car rammings, but the effect desired is always psychological, not physical.

Every single move Hamas has made with the hostages has been specifically and deliberately designed to cause the maximum pain to Israelis. In other words, the hostage releases are a continuation of October 7, not a conclusion.

The entire process over the past week has been one of torturing Israelis in general, and the families of hostages in particular:

* Refusing to confirm how many and which hostages are alive.

* Delaying giving the names of those to be released until (and beyond) the last possible moment.

* Claiming that Israeli bombs killed a female hostage right before the ceasefire.

* Delaying telling Israel whether the hostages released in every handover are alive or dead.

* The entire process of dragging out the release of hostages over weeks.

* Giving the hostages "gift bags" as if their imprisonment was merely a summer camp they enjoyed.

* Staging mobs of people when the hostages were handed to the Red Cross to make them fearful to the last second.

* Forcing Red Cross representatives to sign a form upon the hostage release calling them "prisoners" in order to make it appear that the international community agrees that they were prisoners of war, not kidnapped civilians.

* Choosing Saturday for the successive hostage releases to force Israeli Jews to violate the Sabbath (although of course this is perfectly allowed for saving lives.) Hamas changed the date back and forth, further causing anguish.

* Celebrating the release of murderers as if this was a prisoner swap.

* Celebrating the ceasefire as if it was a victory.

* Using the deal as an opportunity to make it appear that Hamas is in full control of Gaza and the war was a waste of time.

This is besides the psychological torture of the hostages themselves while in captivity. Dr. Itai Pessach, director of the Safra Children's Hospital at Sheba Medical Center, described some of this to CBS News after the first hostage release in November 2023:

"There's not a single person that came back that didn't have a significant physical injury or a medical problem. On top of that, some of them were getting [psychological] medication, to look better than they actually were."

There were also stories of hostages being branded (a common practice inflicted on Jews and other prisoners of Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust), and of being sexually abused. "Yes, we did see signs of branding," Pessach said. "We definitely saw signs of being handcuffed. We did hear and see evidence of sexual abuse in a significant part of the people we have treated. We also heard evidence – and that was one of the hardest parts – of abuse against those that [are still there], both physical and sexual."

Pessach also said hostages were subjected to psychological torture (as in being told that Israel no longer exists). "What really struck me is how prepared the Hamas terrorists were with their psychological torment," he said. "It was structured and preplanned. They're constantly saying, 'Nobody cares about you. You are here alone. You hear the bombs falling? They don't care about you. We're here to protect you.' And this really played with their minds.

"There have been some episodes where they separated two family members, and then put them back together, then separated them, then put them back together. And so, as a parent you would do anything to have your child with you, even when you are in captivity," he said.

This torture, and more like the hostage videos Hamas would release, is all part of the same war from Hamas' perspective. From the start, Hamas understood that this was a cognitive war far more than a kinetic war, and they have waged this war - and continue to wage that war - as such. Some of it is aimed at hostages themselves, some at their families, some at Israelis -all to maximize the pain of Israelis and Jews worldwide. (The other component of the Hamas' cognitive war is aimed at world public opinion, with very different messages for the liberal West and for the decidedly illiberal Arab world.)

For Hamas, the ceasefire is another phase of the war, and an unparalleled opportunity for Hamas to continue to attack Israelis in public with the media being characteristically clueless as to how they are being manipulated.

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