Tag Archives: October 7 hostages

Know The Facts Before You Support A Cause

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Our college campuses are full of people stating and protesting for a Palestinian state. Somehow they miss the subtlety of the fact that Gaza was turned over to the Arabs in 2005, removing all Jewish settlers from the area. Gaza, in fact, became a Palestinian state in 2005. Their actions before and during October 7th indicate that they are not yet ready to become a peaceful state.

AI provides some highlights in the history of Gaza:

To understand when Gaza began firing rockets at Israel, consider the following key events:

First Major Incidents (2001): Rocket fire from Gaza into Israel began in the early 2000s, notably escalating in 2001.

Second Intifada (2000-2005): The Second Intifada saw increased violence, including rocket attacks as a form of resistance.

Hamas Takeover (2007): After Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, rocket attacks intensified significantly.

Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009): A major military conflict that highlighted the ongoing rocket fire from Gaza into Israel.

Frequent Escalations (2010s): Throughout the 2010s, there were numerous escalations with periodic rocket fire, especially during conflicts in 2012 and 2014.

Recent Conflicts (2021): The May 2021 conflict saw a significant increase in rocket fire from Gaza, marking one of the most intense escalations in recent years.

These are the actions of the people who want their own country. Would America tolerate a country like that on its own border?

On Thursday, Legal Insurrection reported the following:

The 19-year-old Israeli hostage, Noa Marciano, was murdered by a doctor in Gaza’s Shifa hospital, her father Avi Marciano disclosed in a social media post.

Noa, who Palestinian terrorists abducted from a kibbutz on October 7, 2023, was taken to Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital after sustaining minor ‘non-life-threatening’ injuries. Weeks after her abduction, and with Israeli troops advancing in the area, a Palestinian doctor “injected air into her vein,” Noa’s father said.

…Noa’s murder by Shifa’s medical staff was recorded on camera, showing a doctor injecting air into her veins while she pleaded for mercy. Avi Marciano “learned of his daughter’s death in Hamas captivity through a video of her last moments shared with him on Telegram,” the Jerusalem Post reported Thursday. The “footage of a medical professional lethally injecting air into her veins after she was taken to Shifa Hospital in Gaza,” the newspaper added.

Noa, a resident of the central Israeli city of Modi’in, held the rank of Corporal and served as an observation soldier in Israel’s Border Defense Force’s 414 Unit.

Days after Noa’s murder, the Israeli military managed to recover her body in a raid on the Hamas-controlled hospital. Her father’s revelations are consistent with the Israeli military’s assessment made last summer. In early July 2024, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that the Shifa hospital “was used by Hamas for murder(ing)” her.

The people who murdered her need to be arrested and tried for murder. No culture where this behavior is acceptable should be allowed to become a country!

They Are Home!

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All of the living hostages who were taken on October 7, 2023, were returned to Israel today. I can’t imagine what their families are feeling.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Israel reclaimed its 20 living hostages early Monday after they spent more than two years in Hamas captivity, a triumphant moment that marked the first stage of President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan.

Video footage showed some of the hostages speaking to their families from video calls in Gaza before being turned over to the Israel Defense Forces. The first seven were released to the IDF around 2 a.m. Eastern Time, with the remaining 13 living hostages joining them roughly two hours later. All of the living hostages arrived on Israeli soil by 5 a.m. Monday.

The article includes some beautiful pictures of family reunions.

The article notes:

The hostage release is part of a ceasefire deal that also requires Hamas to return the remains of deceased hostages, though it’s unclear exactly when that will happen. Israel released around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners as part of the deal’s initial phase and withdrew its military forces from around half the territory of Gaza.

Trump will leave Israel to attend a summit on the deal scheduled to take place in Egypt on Monday. It is there that world leaders are expected to discuss the peace plan’s subsequent stages, including Hamas’s disarmament and the formal end of the war. Questions remain on those details, but Trump expressed confidence that the ceasefire will hold.

“The war is over,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening. “We have a lot of verbal guarantees, and I don’t think they’re going to want to disappoint me.”

If I were Hamas, I would understand that as a threat.

The article concludes:

Trump made good on his promise to help bring the hostages home by issuing several strict deadlines to Hamas while fully backing Israel’s war operations in Gaza. The pressure campaign worked, squeezing the terror group and eroding its support among Arab nations, particularly the Hamas-friendly Qatar.

Israel’s government approved the deal at Netanyahu’s urging last week, and in discussions with negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the Jewish state ensured that its military will remain in parts of Gaza to prevent terrorism and stop Hamas from rearming. The IDF will retain control of the territory along Gaza’s border with Egypt—a central pipeline for weapons—and other areas that include Hamas strongholds like Gaza City and Khan Younis, according to the Times of Israel.

Witkoff and Kushner addressed hundreds of thousands of Israelis at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv on Saturday evening. They praised the “heroism” of the IDF and the “exceptional” state of Israel. The crowd broke out in chants of “Thank you Kushner! Thank you Trump!”

This isn’t the end; it is only the beginning.

Why Now?

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Why is Hamas finally willing to make peace? Are they really willing to make peace? Keep in mind that Hamas has only agreed to Part 1 of the Peace Plan. Also remember that Hamas has never been an orphan before.

Let’s look at the past two years. Under the Biden administration, Israel was pretty much prevented from taking serious action against its enemies. When President Trump took office in January, he made it very clear that he supported Israel fully in dealing with its terrorist enemies. Since January, Israel has had America’s support to deal with the constant rocket attacks and terrorist attacks within its borders.

The Abraham accords under the first Trump administration were the beginning. They represented a peaceful initiative to isolate Hamas. The attacks on Iran, Lebanon and Yemen further cut off much of Hamas’ support, both diplomatically and logistically. The attack on Hamas leadership in Qatar made it clear that there would be no safe haven for Hamas. It also put the Middle East on alert as to the dangers of sheltering the leadership of Hamas.

By the time Israel invaded Gaza, Hamas was an orphan with no place to hide. That is the reason Hamas is finally negotiating peace.

This is not a perfect agreement. If it is carried out, the price of getting twenty or so live hostages freed from Hamas is the release of more than 1,000 known Hamas terrorists. It will be interesting to see if the terrorists are allowed back into Gaza. That will be a clue as to what happens next.

It will be very interesting to see if the peace process continues after the hostages are released and the requirements of Phase 1 are implemented. Part of Phase 1 calls for the Israeli Defense Forces to withdraw from much of Gaza. Will that be a clue for Hamas to resume fighting?

If you sense a lack of trust of Hamas on my part, you are correct. There are two principles of Islam that we need to keep in mind when dealing with Hamas–hudna and taqiyya. Hudna is the act of calling a truce so that you can rearm and then breaking the truce when you feel that you are strong enough to win the war. Taqiyya is generally described as lying for the sake of Islam. Hamas is Islamic and is well aware of both of these principles.

A Sad And Reluctant Conclusion

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We cannot in any way make excuses for the behavior of the Arabs who claim to be Palestinians during the return of the bodies of the hostages they murdered. Remember, no one cared about a Palestinian state until Yasser Arafat (who was Egyptian) decided to use it as an excuse for terrorism. The behavior of the people who claim to be Palestinian is an affront to civilization.

On Thursday, Jonathan Tobin posted an article at The Jewish News Syndicate about the continuing behavior of these Arabs who claim that all they want is their own state (and to kill Jews).

The article notes:

Avoiding generalizations about groups of people is almost always wise. In doing so, we avoid the snares that can lead to prejudicial conclusions that cause us to forget that even those who differ from us in many ways have a common humanity. When people refer to opponents of any kind by saying that “they” (whoever the “they” might be) ”are all alike” and therefore bad, we know they are usually telling us far more about themselves than anything else.

And yet, as much as we might wish it not to be so, there are occasions when groups do exhibit loathsome behavior that are a clear illustration of their beliefs and values.

Over the last month, the Palestinian Arabs have done just that during ceremonies as part of the release of hostages they took on Oct. 7, 2023. Their celebrations of that orgy of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction reached a new low this week when they turned over the remains of four murdered hostages: Oded Lifshitz, 83 when he was taken; Shiri Bibas, 32; and her little sons, Ariel, age 4; and Kfir, only 9 months old when kidnapped. However, testing later showed that the body that was supposed to be Shiri was, in fact, not her. That was just one more act of cruelty to add to so many others committed by the Palestinians.

The article concludes:

Faced with total defeat and with their country in ruins, the Germans did change and put their Nazi past behind them, even if not all of those responsible for the Holocaust were held accountable. The Palestinians, however, will never change until the civilized world stops coddling them and making excuses for their culture of death, hate and intransigent dedication to perpetual war on the Jews.

After the latest examples of their collective depravity—the slaughter of an old man, a young mother and her two babies—they should be made to see that a failure to transform their national culture will be punished with policies that will have permanent consequences for their national life and ambitions. The alternative is to doom both Israelis and Palestinians to another century of pointless conflict and more sick exhibitions of hate such as the one that Hamas staged to celebrate the deaths of innocents.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is a very honest assessment of where we are.

This Makes My Blood Boil

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On Thursday, Hot Air posted an article about Hamas’ release of the bodies of four hostages. The fact that Israel is backed into a corner and is releasing live terrorists for dead hostages is bad enough, but Hamas used to occasion as propaganda. It was disgusting.

The article quotes The U.K. Daily Mail:

Hamas has been condemned for parading the coffins of hostages in Gaza, with the United Nations rights chief saying the ‘abhorrent’ treatment of the October 7 attack victims ‘flies in the face of international law.’

Israelis are mourning the youngest hostages – baby Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother Ariel – as well as their mother Shiri and elderly captive Oded Lifshitz, whose bodies are believed to have been inside the caskets.

The four coffins were displayed to crowds in front of disturbing propaganda posters before being handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) by armed Hamas fighters. 

I admire Israel’s restraint. If it were up to me, Gaza would be a radioactive parking lot by now.

The article at Hot Air includes multiple pictures of the transfer of the bodies of the hostages.

The article at Hot Air includes the following screenshot from X:

I agree.

UPDATE:

The woman’s body that was returned is not the mother of the two murdered children.

 

Another Reason To Stop Funding And Leave The United Nations

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The role of the United Nations in the Middle East is questionable at best. The fact that Hamas and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency had many of the same members should have been a wake-up call. Now, there is new news coming out of Gaza that confirms the corruption of the United Nations.

On Wednesday, The Gateway Pundit reported:

On Sunday, three Israeli hostages, Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher, were released and handed over to the Red Cross.

The young women have now been reunited with their families.

However, disturbing details of their ordeal have surfaced, including that the three women were held for at least part of their 471 days in captivity within United Nations shelters.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs shared on X, “Former hostages Romi, Emily, and Doron were held in United Nations shelters in Gaza, which were meant for civilians. The UN refuses to condemn Hamas for hiding hostages in civilian spaces.”

The revelation underscores President Trump’s decision to suspend funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as part of a decision to suspend any foreign assistance for 90 days pending reviews.

In August 2024, The Gateway Pundit reported that UNRWA admitted that nine of its staff members may have been involved in the heinous Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

This admission is not just a minor oversight; it highlights a disturbing pattern of complicity and negligence within an organization that claims to uphold humanitarian values.

Hostage-taking is considered a war crime. The United Nations has participated in a number of war crimes in Israel and Gaza. The fact that UNRWA employees took part in the October 7th attacks and the fact that hostages were held in United Nations shelters should be enough to remove America from the United Nations and remove the United Nations from America. Depending on the condition of the building, the United Nations headquarters could be converted into really nice luxury condominiums. The tax revenue would help balance the budget in New York City and might even make the congestion tax unnecessary! The view of the river is beautiful.