In this short video, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, chief spokesman for the IDF, shows us the conditions under which the six recently-murdered hostages were kept. (Trigger warning: blood.) For some reason I thought the hostages were being kept either in private residences or in rooms off the tunnels, not in the tunnels themselves. When you realize how many days these hostages have been sequestered by Hamas, even a few days of these conditions seem unbearable. Clearly the IDF has already done DNA analysis of the blood and will do so on hair from hairbushes.
The conditions under which Israel keeps Palestinian prisoners, including convicted terrorists, are far, far better than the conditions under which Hamas keeps its hostages. Palestinian prisoners in Israel live in sheer luxury compared to what you see below, with food they can cook themselves, fresh air, and good beds.
Remember too that there are still about 60 living hostages in Gaza. They should be released unconditionally—no deals, no bargaining. Of course Hamas won’t do it, but in my view making a deal for the hostages by releasing Palestinian terrorists is a bad business. Right now the world should be baying not for a cease-fire or a deal, but for Hamas to surrender unconditionally and release the hostages, or the IDF has the right to, and will, continue going after the enemy.
Sickening. The world should see this.
Appalling. Hamas are inhuman.
I don’t have the heart to watch.
Let Them Go.
Absolutely disgusting. And it is this organization that students on our most elite universities are camping out to support. They should see this. Even if they did, though, they’d continue their support. They should but spend one night in one of those tunnels!
I keep getting emails soliciting signatures for a petition about the latest IDF “massacre” of Gazan civilians. Days later, the news about the incident leaks out and the “massacre” is the IDF bombing a location from which rockets were fired on Israeli civilians. Don’t be fooled by these lies from eko.org. The IDF does its best (and far more than any other army in the history of warfare) to minimize civilian deaths while HAMAS does everything it can to maximize such deaths. HAMAS is committing war crimes every second of every day of the war, but somehow Israel is finding that false accusations of war crimes against the IDF coming from HAMAS and Iranian spokes-liars are being repeated as truth by most of Western media and most internet influencers.
Hamas is evil, but we knew that already. My sense of it is that Hamas made a serious mistake in killing the hostages. The fact that one of the murdered hostages was a US citizen (whose parents addressed the Democratic convention) only makes it worse. Hamas is digging its own grave and working hard at it.
I’m still surprised (well, not very surprised) that nobody on the Left demands that ALL the hostages be freed immediately and under NO conditions. Second, that the authors of the pogrom of October 7 be surrendered to the Israelis government. I agree that exchanging hostages for prisoners is not a good idea. Especially when the ration is like twenty for one on the side of the Hamas. It should be, if there’s no other way, one for one.
The question haunting me right now: which of the two major party candidates can I trust to support and defend Israel internationally and with military arms and defensive technologies. I don’t yet know how to answer that question. And, to me, the question is existential.