Israeli Hostages in Gaza : The World Urging a Ceasefire

"It seems one of the reasons they don't want to turn women over that they have been holding hostage and the reason this pause fell apart is that they do not want these women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody."

U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller

"[All the while, Hamas's leadership was working on a plan that would] change the entire equation."

"Hamas's goal is not to run Gaza and to bring it water and electricity and such."

"This battle ... did not seek to improve the situation in Gaza. This battle is to completely overthrow the situation."

Khalil al-Hayya, senior Hamas official

"[Hamas knew it would] pay a price [for its actions and was] ready to pay it."

"We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs."

"Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country because it constitutes a security, military and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nation."

"[October 7 was] just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth."

Ghazi Hamad, senior Hamas leader

Palestinian terrorists drive back to the Gaza Strip with the body of Shani Louk, a German-Israeli dual citizen who was murdered at the Supernova music festival on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Ali Mahmud)

 

A week ago, Hamas's chief representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, a member of its politburo stated: "A war of liberation is coming, not just another October 7". With all of this, obvious evidence of Islamofascists prepared to continue their attacks against Israel, looking to future opportunities once the current conflict has settled down in whichever way it will, the world still demands that Israel cease its advances toward its goal of destroying the terrorist group Hamas.

The alternative is, of course, returning the Israel Defense Forces to Israeli territory, and allowing Hamas to regroup and continue its ongoing deadly war against Israel. The great minds that are busy petitioning Israel to think of the massive destruction it is forced to engage in, with its determination to destroy the Hamas infrastructure which has enabled it to give shelter to its operatives while launching attacks against Israel and its citizens from the tunnels used as weapons depots, think no further than halting a conflict, unconcerned over the security of the state of Israel.

Mobs of shouting, disruptive, violent and threatening Palestinians and other Arab Muslims who have infiltrated the West, march in displays of raging hatred, inciting against Israel as a 'genocidal' nation destroying the lives of Palestinians, and in the process threatening the lives of local diaspora Jews, calling for a 'ceasefire', their raging ire resonating with the politicians who depend on their votes and who in turn do nothing to insist that a conflict half a world away should not be brought to the cities of Europe and North America.

 

A State Department official says the U.S. suspects one reason Hamas is refusing to release its remaining female hostages is to prevent them from revealing the horrors they experienced in captivity. (GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images)

And in view of the influence of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation of the United Nations and the penchant for both the General Assembly and the Security Council to hold Israel solely accountable for all that goes wrong in the Middle East and in particular between the Palestinians and Israel, strenuously call for restraint, proportionality and a ceasefire, finding Israel guilty on all counts of accusations as an 'apartheid', oppressive state, an 'occupying' authority. In truth a country and a nation defending its right of existence.

There was a temporary truce to enable humanitarian aid to reach the dire needs of the Palestinians, and to allow civilians with citizenship in other countries to exit Gaza. Israel was loathe to agree to it in the certain knowledge that Hamas terrorists would find opportunities to exit Gaza, and sure enough the mastermind of the October 7 atrocities, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar managed to find help in smuggling himself out of Gaza City where his house had been surrounded by IDF troops with a mission to find and arrest him.

The truce enabled Israel to forge an agreement with Hamas for the return of Israeli abductees, and over a period of almost a week Israeli hostages, mostly women and children and foreign agricultural workers were released in exchange for three times the number of Palestinians in Israeli prisons for crimes against Israel. For the last exchange representing several extensions, Hamas refused to return ten women and two children. And then Hamas "violated the framework" by resuming hostilities.

Worse, it failed to "meet its obligation to release all hostage women" and children; an estimated twenty women remain hostages in Gaza; speculation that releasing them would release to the world at large the sight and sound of women who were forced to endure brutality of a depth most sane minds could never envision. Aside from torture and sexual depravities, some may be near death, or have been murdered, as many others have been. 

Released hostages and families of hostages held in Gaza meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the war cabinet on December 5, 2023. (Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum)

Hamas's Deadly Invasion Evaluated

An Israeli armored personnel carrier heads toward the Gaza border. Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press

"The dominant view in Israel, and not just at the political level, but also within some in the security services, was that the conflict in Gaza is manageable, that we could contain it."

"The easy answer that you hear is that Hamas is an apocalyptic terrorist movement that doesn't care about human life. That's true. But they're not irrational."

"Hamas has already said ... that it wants to exchange [the Israeli hostages] for prisoners. One objective for Hamas in doing that is to boost up its ranks by freeing prisoners [jailed in Israel] in large numbers."

Thomas Juneau, political scientist, University of Ottawa

"Hamas officials have been quite open about the fact that this [normalization] would be a huge event."

"Saudi Arabia is the custodian of the two holiest sites in Islam and I think Hamas fears that if there would be normalization with Saudi Arabia, other Muslim nations, other Arab nations would follow suit."

"Not only is it [Fatah] secular as opposed to Islamist but it believes in a two-state solution and Hamas does not."

"Hamas is not fighting for there to be a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Hamas is fighting to destroy Israel ... it's against peace in general."

Matthew Levitt, professor, Georgetown University Center for Security Studies

"I can give you a hypothesis and that is, we were in a situation where there was no peace process. There was absolutely no movement whatsoever on Palestinian issues. And I think that Hamas took the decision that they had to shuffle the deck, that they had to do something or they wanted to do something, which would make the status quo untenable."

"It's not at all clear to me how [Hamas] thought the endgame would work out. They would have known that this would have brought a major Israeli military operation, that that would include ground operations."The last Israeli ground operation [in 2014] was the biggest boost in history to Hamas's popularity."

"Clearly ... it wasn't meant to be an incremental thing. It was meant to be a game changing thing. And that includes the deliberate targeting of civilians."

"Are you going to occupy all of it? You're going to fight street by street into downtown Gaza?"

"If you destroy Hamas, who will you hand [Gaza] to when you leave? Do you want to occupy it?"

Rex Brynen, Middle East expert, McGill University

Rockets fired from Gaza City are intercepted by the Israeli Iron Dome defense missile system in the early hours of October 8, 2023. EYAD BABA/AFP via Getty Images

 

The Palestinian Authority, commented Dr. Juneau from his perspective as an academic with a focus on the Middle East, is highly incompetent and corrupt. That alone has led to resentment among Palestinians which has been responsible for growing support for radical groups like Hamas. October 7th's incursion by Hamas into Israel, he stated, represents "the most significant escalation of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict in several decades", he said, quoting the Council on Foreign Relations.

"We just don't have great insight into Hamas's strategic judgement", added political scientist Rex Brynen. October marks 50 years since the Yom Kippur War when a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria led a surprise attack on Israel, which may entirely be coincidental. Since Hamas stated the October 7 attack had been planned out carefully for a year before the event.

At the same time, Israeli public opinion and support for the current government led by Benjamin Netanyahu with the 2022 coalition government including hard-right religious factions, and the government's intention to change the judicial reform process that Israel's liberal-left supports, fracturing the country, and in the opinion of onlookers from outside the country, believing it to have been in a weakened state. Opportunity perhaps beckoned, all the more so when the dissenting opinions took place at all levels, including the IDF and its reservists, some of whom refused to serve.

 

 

The ongoing normalization process between Israel and Saudi Arabia was a red flag to Islamists and Palestinians in general, realizing it left them outside the loop; the reality being that the 'Palestinian refugee' problem was being sidelined in the greater interests of achieving regional peace that would lead to greater regional prosperity and in no small part greater security, in the majority Arab Sunni region where Shiite Islamist Republic of Iran presents as a threat.

 

An issue that Dr. Juneau expressed his  skepticism over. On the other hand, they all acknowledged, Fatah, the leading party in the Palestinian Authority and the PA itself are unpopular and viewed as weak by the  general Palestinian population they govern. Even among West Bank Palestinians Hamas is admired and supported to a far greater extent than the Palestinian Authority. Then there are relations between Fatah and Hamas; the latter despising the former as a secular group to Hamas's Islamism.

Dr. Brynen expressed his opinion that the 'success' of the Hamas attack surprised even Hamas. The much higher Israeli body count and hostage taking surpassed its expectations. And the corollary to that was a far greater response from Israel than Hamas might have anticipated.

One thing all three agreed upon in their debate was that whatever the original reasons behind the unprecedented scale of the attack -- whether to bring international attention to focus on the Palestinians; to eliminate Israel for replacement by an Islamist state; to free prisoners convicted of crimes in Israel; or to help Iran -- the ultimate goal was to effect a massive change in the region's dynamics. 

 

To that degree, and to the dimensions of the attention given its deadly exploits in the outside world, they succeeded.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather during a rally for Gaza outside the Israeli Consulate General in New York on Oct. 9. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

"Where Are Your Voices?"

"We who formed Rings of Peace around your churches and mosques when terror struck your communities must ask: Where are your voices?"

"Since Hamas claims to act in the name of Islam, we especially call upon leaders within the Muslim community to speak out publicly against these inhumane acts of terror."

"Distressingly [other faith leaders have mentioned] both sides [of the conflict], woefully failing to recognize the moral distinction between those who butcher and those who are butchered."

Group of Toronto rabbis 

"I would like to see a stranger moral voice from Canadian faith leaders. I'd like to see them wholeheartedly and unconditionally and unequivocally condemn Hamas and to recognize that their intentional slaughter of people, kidnapping and torture is absolutely wrong, full stop."

"The Middle East is a complicated place. Hamas is not a complicated organization. Their goal is to murder people."

"You cannot contextualize that, you cannot minimize that."

"The experience across the country, from all the rabbis I've spoken to, has been one of loneliness."

"Almost none of our colleagues of other religions have reached out and said 'How are you?'"

"The silence is sobering and clarifying."

Rabbi Adam Cutler, Adath Israel Congregation Toronto

This memorial for Ben Mizrachi, who was killed by Hamas militants at a music festival in Israel on Oct. 8, was set up at his former school, King David High School, in Vancouver. Mizrachi is one of six Canadians known to be killed or missing following the Palestinian militant group's attack on Israeli territory. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

"Over these last few days, the world has witnessed a rapid escalation of armed conflict in the Holy Land, with reports of a growing number of wounded or dead, including innocent civilians."

"I invite the Catholic faithful in Canada to join other people of good will, here and around the world, in imploring God to move the hearts of those leaders engaged in the present conflict in order to cease acts of terror, de-escalate violence and war, and resume constructive efforts that are aimed at establishing lasting peace and concord."

Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops

 

"The aggression has resulted in escalating violence and loss of innocent civilian lives in Israel and in Palestine."

"We lament all victims and pray for comfort for the families of those who mourn loved ones."

The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada 

"The attacks on innocent Israeli civilians -- especially women and children -- are unjustifiable."

"As Muslims and as Canadians, we are horrified by images of Hamas targeting, killing and hostage-taking of civilians."

"We are terrified by the open calls for genocide by Israeli political and military leaders and the incessant bombing taking place right now that is carrying out those calls."

National Council of Canadian Muslims

Tiferet Lapidot, seen in an undated photo provided by a relative, called her parents as Hamas attacked a music festival on Oct. 8, part of a multifront assault on Israeli territory. Her family was able to track the location of her phone to Gaza after they lost contact with her, and believe the Palestinian militant group may be holding her hostage. (Submitted)

 

At no time, in no place, did Israel ever speak of any intention -- nor would the thought ever occur -- to embark on a campaign of genocide. The National Council of Canadian Muslims may have expressed its moral disgust with the actions of Hamas, acting in the name of Islam and slaughtering innocent Jewish civilians, raping, abducting children, killing men, women, children, entire families, but swerving to express fear of a country attempting to defend itself and its population from unending attacks by a terrorist group and planning to eliminate the terror group entirely cannot be construed as 'genocide'.

The Toronto rabbis appealing to the moral sense of justice in an expression of empathy and support from their colleagues of other faiths, are telling them that the world has become a lonely place and Jews are in dire need of comfort in expressed concern for their welfare and that of Jews and of Israel. An event as significant and odious as the terrorist Hamas sending its assigned terror groups into Israel for the sole purpose of terrorizing, slaughtering, mutilating, raping, burning to death, beheading babies would seem an event deserving of a rush of concern expressed by friends.

The statements that have been issued by a number of non-Jewish faith groups have lacked the commitment to fully expressing empathy, clearly naming the responsible group for profaning Islam by committing mass murder in a series of assaults defying human understanding in their barbaric brutality barely brushed the surface of compassion for the grievous loss suffered by their Jewish colleagues. An absolute failure of one faith to console another on its unspeakably dire loss of the gift of life.

 

Vivian Silver, a peace activist from Winnipeg who has lived in Israel for decades, volunteered with an organization called Road to Recovery and drove Palestinians from Gaza to Israeli hospitals. (Submitted by Yonatan Zeigen )

 

Choosing an equivocating condemnation of the vile atrocities hedged by the  unspoken but obvious expectation that Israel must exercise restraint in its response may have satisfied the barest minimum requirement of a sanctimonious statement satisfying to the moral values of the faith group issuing it, but it failed spectacularly to demonstrate communal inter-religious concerns for the sanctity of life taken by another faith group's adherents in the most base and vicious manner conceivable. Acts calling out for unequivocal condemnation.

The statement from the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops missed entirely a direct mention of the Hamas atrocities. Piously self-engaged, no more, no less. As for The World Evangelical Alliance expressing its sympathy it was for the evangelicals, not the Jews that they are "deeply distressed by the Hamas attack on Israel and the Israeli people with its overt hints of lives that will be lost in Palestine", as though this too is not of deep concern to Israel itself as it grapples with the method it can employ to respond to Hamas which uses Palestinian civilians as a protective shield.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints failed to mention Hamas, while stating that "Violence of this nature is abhorrent to us and is not in harmony with the gospel of Jesus Christ". And nor is it in harmony with any sane, intelligent, civilized mind. 

 

No comment from the Canadian Council of Imams.

 

People attend a vigil outside a Berlin synagogue following the October 7 Hamas attacks in Israel, on October 13, 2023. "The Middle East is a complicated place. Hamas is not a complicated organization. Their goal is to murder people," says Canadian Rabbi Adam Cutler. Photo by JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP via Getty Images

"Their blood, the blood of Palestinians who are unfortunately going to die in this process of self-defence, their blood is in the hands of Hamas. And that needs to ... be made clear."

"[Israel is following international rules of war, and has no choice but to attack people's homes because that is where rocket fire is coming from, not from military bases. It is the reason the IDF instructs people to vacate those homes]."

"[Protests taking place in Canada and worldwide, purportedly in support of Palestinians] can only be understood as being supportive of Hamas."

"It is one thing to go out and intentionally brutalize and murder, and it's another thing, in a defensive mode, to go against those who are trying to kill  you, and unfortunately, both those who are trying to kill you and those who are innocent might die." 

"It’s almost unbelievable to think about it, that Hamas runs around killing everyone and Israel actually says I want to let you know this building is going to be destroyed in an hour, so you might want to leave. That’s that’s the difference we’re talking about here."

Rabbi Adam Cutler

As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap

 

"Hamas understands very well that, when it comes to holding Israeli prisoners, patience is all they need."

"Over time, the Israeli public will create the pressure. All Hamas has to do is wait."

Regional diplomat

 

"[Mohammed] Deif has tried to start the second war of Israeli independence."

"The main goal is -- by steps -- to destroy Israel. This is one of the first steps -- this is just the beginning."

Eyal Rosen, colonel, Israeli Army reserves

 

"Not a single electricity switch will be flipped on, not a single faucet will be turned on, and not a single fuel truck will enter until the Israeli hostages are returned home."

Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz

 

"You may be strong enough on your own to defend yourselves, but as long as America exists you will never have to."

"We will always be there by your side."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken

Palestinians head south on Friday, after the Israeli army warned civilians to relocate from northern Gaza and Gaza City, ahead of a possible Israeli ground invasion. (Hatem Moussa/The Associated Press)

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed American support to Israel even while the Israeli military pounded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip with airstrikes, preparing to launch a potential ground invasion. Israel announced that nothing would be allowed into Gaza, no food, no energy, no water, until such time as the 150 Israeli hostages that Hamas and PIJ boast they are holding are given their freedom.

 

Palestinians are attempting to stock up on bread and groceries while available supplies are steadily dwindling. This situation is what the world at large focuses on. At the same time the Israeli civilian population is itself finding limited stocks of groceries available on supermarket shelves; deliveries have been interrupted as people involved in servicing everyday needs of a population have been called to duty as military reserves. 

While Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad slaughtered Israelis in border towns, villages and kibbutzim, viciously disrupting a nearby music festival to remorselessly kill 260 of the thousands of devoted music fans, raping, taking hostages, killing entire families in defenceless border towns, the population of Gaza whom polls have revealed massively support Hamas and its agenda, are now themselves defenceless against a massive retaliatory response from Israel.

 

Aid groups warn of disaster in Gaza as relentless and ferocious airstrikes continue. In Israel, more scenes of devastation emerge, and journalists are brought to the site of the Supernova music festival, where at least 260 people were killed. Still from video, CBC News

 

This, while the United Nations and international aid groups warn of an impending humanitarian crisis with the halting of food, water, fuel and electricity to the crowded enclave, in preventing supply entries from Egypt as well. Those that reluctantly in many instances were forced by the slickly-produced sickening videos that Hamas publicity produced and posted to social media to denounce the terrorist attacks, now turn to blame Israel for the results of Hamas's atrocities causing a crisis in Gaza.

Even while Israeli's military pulverizes Gaza from the air, returning rockets continue to cross from Gaza into Israel, thousands of rockets have been fired by Hamas. Syrian state media reported Israeli airstrikes hit their two international airports in Damascus and Aleppo, placing them out of service, unable to continue providing Hamas with military supplies courtesy of Iran. Another Iran proxy, Hezbollah, has mounted several attacks from Lebanon into Israel.

And raging Jordanian Palestinians have been flocking to their border with Israel, threatening the potential for a pincer encirclement of assaults against Israel. Peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan aside, it is only the more recent United Arab Emirates and Bahrain peace partners that have seen fit to outright condemn Hamas for its inhumane atrocities committed against the Jewish population in Israel. 

 

After Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel's south on Saturday morning, massacring hundreds, killing children in their homes, taking others hostage back to Gaza, in atrocities that included beheading soldiers and gang-raping women, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Israel would "crush" Hamas. 

 

That, precisely, is what Israeli forces are busy doing, bombing Hamas infrastructure, informing Gazans they best vacate specific areas marked for destruction, while Hamas urges its population to remain where it is and face the onslaught it has created. The greater the number of Gazan casualties, the louder Hamas will cry out to the West that Israel is a murderer of helpless Arab civilians.

Palestinians flee from northern Gaza to the south after the Israeli army issued an unprecedented evacuation warning on Friday, October 13, 2023. Hatem Moussa/AP