The 'Peacemaker-in-Chief'

"This was the granddaddy of them all. And frankly, I thought this was probably going to be the toughest, and maybe in many ways, it was."

"The prayers of millions have finally been answered. At long last, we have peace in the Middle East." 

"I've been involved in a lot of success. I have never seen anything like what's going on today." 

"Today, for the first time anyone can remember, we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to put the old feuds and bitter hatreds behind us -- and to declare that our future will not be ruled by the fights of generations past." 

"Israel, with our  help, has won all that they can by force of arms. You've won. I mean, you've won. Now it's time to translate these victories against terrorists on the battlefield into the ultimate prize of peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East." 

"The total focus of Gazans must be on restoring the fundamentals of stability safety dignity, and economic development so they can finally have the better life that their children really do deserve after all these decades of  horror."

"I intend to be a partner in this effort." 

U.S. President Donald Trump 

U.S. President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he arrives at Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv, on Monday. (Evan Vucci/The Associated Press)

 

The final release of the remaining Israeli hostages from Hamas hands in Gaza is indisputably a diplomatic tour de force, and no one can take that credit away from Donald Trump, the self-lauded master of the deal. From the unitary height of his position as the most powerful, influential man on this planet he exerted the weight he wields to convince all those involved in this ageless saga of suspicion and hatred, sectarian and tribal, to agree that terrorism cannot be permitted to destabilize an entire region, the tremblors of which may threaten the very peace of the entire globe.

 

That accomplished, the equally large challenge of future prospects in that tiny segment of the Middle East was addressed on the surface with the attendance of world leaders from Europe and the Middle East attending the global summit on the future of Gaza, in Sharm el Shiekh. In the absence of  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who declined to attend on a Jewish holiday, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Emir Shiekh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani of Qatar, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pledged their commitment to a future Gaza. 

 

Twenty living Israeli hostages, young men to middle-aged men, captured by Hamas terrorists marauding through southern Israel on October 7, 2023, from kibbutzim and from the Nova Music Festival, were finally freed from the shackles of captivity after two years of starvation, shackles, privation and torture. The exchange price for their release was steep, the freeing of 1,700 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, among whom were murderers of Israelis. The disparity in numbers represents the usual fare paid by Israel for the release from captivity of their nationals from the hands of Palestinian terrorists. Experience has proven that the vast bulk of Palestinians released from Israeli prisons return to the very lethal predations that saw them imprisoned to begin with.

 

Nimrod Cohen, an Israeli hostage released from the Gaza Strip holds an Israeli flag after coming off a helicopter at the Ichilov Hospital, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

 

Now the issues at hand relate to the future of Gaza, to the vital  necessity of having Hamas disarm and surrender their weaponry, which they adamantly refuse to do, much less to vacate the Strip where they have over their years of governing it, transformed the land underground to a labyrinthine maze of tunnels for haven/escape from retaliatory attacks by the IDF following rocket strikes into Israel. Tunnels under hospitals, schools, private homes, apartment blocks, and mosques, where command posts, headquarters, weapons depots, communication stations and more were located. And more recently, subterranean dungeons for Israeli hostages.

 

There are pledges from Middle East nations and Western nations to help fund civic infrastructure, from the West, along with the ME nations to send peacekeepers to Gaza. No one has any solution how best to force Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to depart Gaza, to disarm, to disown their death charters for the destruction of Israel, for the deadly elimination of Jews everywhere. For his part, President Trump is 'confident' that the ceasefire he personally oversaw would be permanent. Skepticism abounds, however, among those with the experience of decades of conflict. 

 

It took no time at all for the realization to sink in that although the living hostages were restored to Israel and to their own lives as free men with a future ahead of them, Hamas failed in its signed obligation to transfer the 28 bodies of those whom they had murdered while in their custody; one woman and the rest Israeli men with the misfortune not to have been able to endure the hardships and psychological deadening of their inhumane incarcerations. The agreement was for the wholesale restoration of all Israelis, alive and dead. That old adage 'time will tell', certainly will. 

 

A crowd gathers around a bus carrying Palestinian prisoners who were released from an Israeli prison as part of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, upon his arrival in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

 

 

 

Bringing Them All Home

"It's urgent and every day that goes on is just more and more suffering and more and more possible death and psychological devastation."

"[He and others with whom he was initially held - including women and children - had been forced to adjust to life in the tunnels]. We were gasping for our breath."

"[There was constant abuse]: "I witnessed a young woman who was being tortured by the terrorist. I mean literal torture, not just in the figurative sense."

US-Israeli hostage Keith Siegel  

"I'm here because of Trump. I'm here only because of him. I think he's the only one who can stop this war again. He has to convince Netanyahu, he has to convince Hamas, I think he can do it."

"They [his two children, Ariel and Kfir,] were murdered in cold blood, bare hands."

"They [his Hamas captors] used to tell me: 'Ah, it doesn't matter, you'll get a new wife, you'll get new kids, better wife, better kids'."

"You don't know when it's going to happen and when it happens, you're afraid for your life. The whole earth would move like an earthquake, but underground."

Former hostage Yarden Bibas

The 24 hostages presumed to be alive who are still held by Hamas: Top row, from left: Elkana Bohbot, Matan Angrest, Edan Alexander, Avinatan Or, Yosef-Haim Ohana, Alon Ohel. Second row, from left: Evyatar David, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, Bipin Joshi, Rom Braslavski, Ziv Berman, Gali Berman. Third row, from left: Omri Miran, Eitan Mor, Segev Kalfon, Nimrod Cohen, Maxim Herkin, Eitan Horn. Bottom row, from left: Matan Zangauker, Bar Kupershtein, David Cunio, Ariel Cunio, Tamir Nimrodi, Pinta Nattapong. (Hostages Families Forum)

"Out of 59, you had 24 that were living, and now I understand that it's not even that number."

"Edan Alexander's parents are here today. He is the last known living American hostage."

"We don't know how he's doing, really. We think we know, and hopefully positive." 

U.S. President Donald Trump

 

"To date, we have returned 196 of our hostages, 147 alive."

"There are [currently] 24 alive. Up to 24 living, 59 in total. We want to bring back the living and the deceased as well. It's a very important goal."

"In the war, there is the ultimate goal, and that ultimate goal is the victory over our enemies, and that we will achieve." 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israelis attend a rally calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv on March 1, 2025. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

President Trump stated during a National Day of Prayer event held at the White House on Thursday that he had just recently become aware that fewer than 24 Israeli hostages remain alive in captivity in Gaza, held by Hamas. Parents of U.S.-Israeli Eden Alexander still captive by Hamas had attended the event. The president was referring to the figure released by Israeli authorities and widely shared in recent months. 

These are men of all ages who had been taken hostage on October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel on a barbaric rampage of murder, killing over 1,200 men, women and children.

Of the over 200 children, women and men taken hostage on that fateful day, a relative handful remain alive, living in the most inhumane conditions imaginable. Tortured, shackled, starving, in fading health and psychological distress, reaching a state of disequilibrium they may never, if and when released, recover from. 

Their 'home' for the past year and a half has been deep in airless, dank tunnels dug deep throughout Gaza. If their minds are still in working order, they pass the endless hours of torment, dreaming of returning home.

Relatives and supporters of those held hostage in the Gaza Strip during a rally calling on the government for a deal that would bring all the remaining captives back, outside the prime minister residence in Jerusalem on March 2, 2025. (Menahem KAHANA / AFP)

They are not forgotten. Their families, their friends and colleagues, all of Israel yearns for their return. Those who have died while in captivity will be forever remembered. They represent a national sacrifice too dear to fade into memory. Their names and the pain they endured will remain as a reminder to Israelis and Jews everywhere of the impossible sacrifice imposed on a civilian population whose state and whose military can never be disengaged from protecting their citizens from unceasing hatred and violence from neighbours whose dearest wish is to see them all dead.

Classified information relayed to Israeli cabinet ministers as reported by the Kan News public broadcaster in Israel casts into doubt the number of those still living. Loathe to surrender hope entirely, during the annual International Bible Contest in Jerusalem on Independence Day Thursday, Israel's prime minister reiterated his government's intention to have all its citizens, whether alive or dead, returned to their homes.

The ultimate goals for the war now continuing in the Gaza Strip is eradication of Hamas as a military threat and political adversarial body, and to ensure that all of the hostages return home. The Palestinian enclave must, above all, be prevented from re-emerging as a future and ongoing threat to the State of Israel and her people whose right to existence, to live in peace with their neighbours is a basic human right not denied any other nation, any other people whatever their origins.

People protest against the Israeli government and call for the immediate release of the Gaza hostages, Tel Aviv, March 22, 2025. (Gili Yaari /Flash90)

Israel's Relentless Drive to Destroy Hamas

"It is time for the countries of the world to take seriously our unwavering commitment to bring back all our hostages home and defeat the enemy."

"Nothing will stop us from fighting to free our hostages, who have been held in brutal Hamas captivity for 527 days."

"We will show no mercy against our enemies while our hostages languish in Hamas terror tunnels."

Danny Danon, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations

Israeli troops in southern Gaza. Pic: IDF handout

Extensive strikes have been conducted against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military on Monday, negating a ceasefire that had exacerbated the pain of Israel's hostage families in the terrorists' hollow gestures of complying with the rules of hostage return while mocking the process as a generous gesture on the part of the Palestinian terrorists. The 'ceasefire' that had given Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other such groups the opportunity to recruit, rearm and reaffirm their ironclad intention to continue planning and executing attacks on Israel for which the October 7, 2023 invasion and savagery remains their model.

 

In essence, the 'ceasefire' had ended itself when Israeli intelligence analyzed the intention of Hamas leaders to carry on with their death mission for Israel, leading to the inescapable conclusion that the only fitting response to the situation would be a return to Israel's original goal of wiping out the entirety of the Hamas organization; fighters, leaders, weapons stocks, organizational capability. The essentially vital target, the removal of the Hamas leadership.

 

To that end, it was confirmed by the Israel Defense Forces that "the Hamas prime minister and a senior government figure in the Gaza Strip", Essam al-Dalis was among a number of senior terrorists eliminated in the early stages of the campaign. As is usual for the IDF, a vital warning had been issued Tuesday urging residents of Gaza within specific areas to immediately evacuate, as the Israeli forces' operations intensified. 

Civilians were called  upon by IDF spokesperson Avichay Adrace, to relocate to designated shelters located in western Gaza City and Khan Yunis to avoid becoming casualties of the attacks. Citing local Gaza health officials, the Associated Press reported that over 400 Palestinians had been killed in the overnight airstrikes. No one can actually be assured of the veracity of any such claims made by either Hamas or any of its operating arms. Hamas, in any event, reporting on casualties makes no differentiation between civilians and its terrorist operatives.

 

Pic: IDF handout

"[An Israeli official] claimed that in recent days during the ceasefire Hamas has been preparing to carry out new attacks against Israel and has taken steps to rearm."

"The official said the IDF kept the operational plan top secret and within a relatively small circle in order to surprise Hamas."

Axios Report

 

"[The IDF is] attacking targets of the Hamas terrorist organization throughout the Gaza Strip in order to achieve the objectives of the war as they have been determined by the political echelon including the release of all of our hostages, the living and the deceased."

"Israel will, from now on, act against Hamas with increasing military strength."

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Office statement

The attack coincided with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Somewhat similar to Egypt and Syria attacking Israel in 1973 on Yom Kippur, the Judaic holy Day of Atonement. There is an interpretation that this could signal a full resumption of the war, incited by Hamas when terrorists invaded southern Israel on October 7, 2023, thousands of terrorists primed to enact a scene straight out of Hell, complete with mass rape, mutilation, torching of family homes with the residents huddled for safety in their 'safe rooms', where the mostly civilian population of southern Israel's farming kibbutzim were targeted for annihilation.

 

Hamas terrorists stand in formation ahead of a hostage release in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Feb. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Hamas's plans included the hostage-taking of families, the elderly, infants, teens, women, foreign farm workers and Israeli soldiers. Even the dead were considered useful pawns as hostages, bundled off with the terrified living hostages to the extensive tunnel systems of Gaza, to be confined in dark, dank underground cells without natural light, breathing foetid air, and experiencing a lack of adequate food and water and medical supplies. The remaining two dozen hostages believed to still be alive, remain in terrorist hands.

 

"We are shocked, angry and terrified by the deliberate dismantling of the process to return our loved ones from the terrible captivity of Hamas", mourned the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. And one can only commiserate with their anguish, hoping against hope that their loved ones will somehow be returned to them. Hamas enjoys its sadistic cat-and-mouse games with vulnerable and helpless captives.

 

While the United States and Israel have been stepping up attacks across the region this week, the retaliatory campaign against Hamas is being carried out with a view to bringing Israel's goal of eradicating the terrorist group entirely, closer to accomplishment as an end-game goal. In concert with the U.S. launching strikes against Yemen's Houthis spurred on by Iran, Israel has targeted Iran's terrorist proxies in Lebanon and Syria.

 

Israeli soldiers patrol a street in northern Gaza on Wednesday. The Israeli military launched a new ground offensive in Gaza, a day after Israel 'broke a ceasefire' with a punishing series of airstrikes. Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

"[U.S. President Donald Trump] has made it clear: Hamas, the Houthis, Iran, all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel but also the United States of America will see a price to pay."

"All hell will break loose."

"[All of] the terrorists in the Middle East [should take Trump] very seriously when he says he is not afraid to stand for law-abiding people ... and our friend and ally Israel."

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt

Israelis in Deep Mourning, Palestinians in Joyous Celebration

"We share in the deep sorrow of the Lifshitz family. Today, 503 days after the October 7 massacre, we have determined that Oded Lifshitz was murdered in captivity over a year ago."

"[Lifshitz was] murdered in captivity by the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization."

Dr. Chen Kugel, head,  National Center of Forensic Medicine, Israel

 

"503 agonizing days of uncertainty have come to an end."

"Now we can mourn the husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather who has been missing from us since October 7."

"Our family’s healing process will begin now and will not end until the last hostage is returned."

Lifshitz family statement

Hamas on Thursday put on a macabre handover ceremony in central Gaza to return the bodies of four Israeli hostages taken on October 7, 2023.   CNN

"Please, world], continue doing everything possible [to ensure all hostages return home]."

"Sadly, my family hasn’t returned to me yet. They are still there. My light is still there, and as long as they’re there, everything here is dark."

"Thanks to you, I was brought back - help me bring the light back to my life."

Yarden Bibas, husband of Shiri Bibas, father of Ariel 4, and Kfir Bibas, 10 months

 

A Hamas terrorist stands on a stage in Khan Younis, Gaza, next to the coffins of four Israeli hostages.

Eyad Baba/AFP/Getty Images

Four coffins, four Israeli hostages held by Hamas terrorists in Gaza, finally returned to their families in Israel for burial. Four souls murdered by Palestinian terrorists; each of those deaths represent a 'victory' to those soulless ghouls for whom the handover was an occasion of pomp and ceremony whose cynicism and cruelty plumbed the depths of human depravity. All the more so the sadism involved in returning not the body of the mother of the two little boys, but that of a Palestinian Gazan woman in her stead. An 'error' rectified the following day with smirking cruelty.

 

The caskets were carried by Hamas members through an organized crowd of Palestinian civilians from Gaza; men, women and children in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza City. The transfer was livestreamed by The Associated Press, CNBC, CNN, with hordes of Palestinians celebrating, loud music enlivening the event.  The American news networks there to witness and to convey in living technicolour the victory parade of murdered infants, their mother, an elderly peacemaker who made a specialty of catering to the needs of his Palestinian neighbours from his kibbutz in southern Israel.

 

A stage had been built by Hamas to showcase the event as a triumph. The backdrop held a caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, showing him as a bloodsucking vampire, an antisemitic trope that Hitler would have approved of. The Bibas family is shown below, flooded in red, symbolic of their deaths. Demonstrative of the way they died, cruelly. The infants by strangulation, their bodies mangled to leave the impression that an Israeli airstrike had caused their deaths. 

In some of the featured videos of this sinister event, Palestinian children were shown dancing on the stage. "I have no words. Palestinian children in Gaza celebrating after the Bibas babies' and their mother's along with Oded Lipschitz's coffins were presented on the same stage. Oded used to drive Palestinian children to hospitals in Israel for treatment", wrote Israeli writer Hen Mazzig. 

"Their bodies were handed over to the Red Cross today after Hamas paraded them in Gaza in a shocking display of cruelty and propaganda."

"Hamas's treatment of these victims in death is as abhorrent as their treatment in life. The terror group labelled each casket with 'Date of arrest: October 7' -- a blatant distortion of the truth."

"These innocent civilians were not arrested; they were violently kidnapped from their homes during Hamas's brutal attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and murdered in captivity."

World Jewish Congress

For the earlier release of other, living hostages, freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in a lopsided ratio of four hostages for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, some of whom were handed life sentences for the murder of Israelis, the celebratory protocol was somewhat different. The women were crowded by masked, uniformed terrorists holding their rifles, crushed close to the vehicles that would carry them to freedom by the press of Palestinian civilians taking joy and pride in the event.

 

The former hostages paraded through jeering crowds, forced to smile for photographs with their captors. For the occasion of the release of the four dead Israelis, unlike the previous events where, despite the disgusting spectacle of terrorist cheerleading, Israelis welcoming the hostages home were buoyant and joyful. On this occasion,  however, a solemn hush descended, widespread grief and suffering seen on the faces of those paying their respect to the homecoming of two little boys, their mother and an 83-year-old hostage. 

"Our hearts -- the hearts of n entire nation -- lie in tatters."

"On behalf of the State of Israel, I bow my head and ask for forgiveness."

"Forgiveness for not protecting you on that terrible day."

"Forgiveness for not bringing you home safely."

Israeli President Isaac Herzog

Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas are shown in this photo.

The Savagery Behind the Handover of Murdered Israeli Infants

Hamas terrorists gather at the site of the handing over of the bodies of four Israeli hostages including the Bibas family, who have become symbols of the hostage crisis that has gripped the region since the Gaza war broke out. (Eyad Baba/AFP)

"[The Bibas family's story is] very, very tragic. It's hard to look at their pictures and not cry for their fate and feel emotional."

"You can see what wonderful people they are, and how sweet the little children are."

"I'm trying to express hope, the optimism that they would be released."

Israeli artist/activist Zeev Engelmayer 

"[Yarden] believes that the claim that Shiri and the children were killed is Hamas's speculation, and if  he believes it -- who are we to say otherwise?"

"We draw strength from him, from his faith."

Jimmy Miller, cousin of Shiri Bibas 

A year or more ago, Hamas informed the IDF that Shiri Bibas and her four-year-old son Ariel, and Kfir, 9 months, were killed in an Israeli Defense Forces airstrike in Khan Younis. Intelligence agents, citing no evidence, refused to give the report authentication, and hopes were high that the three would eventually be returned to Israel through a prisoner exchange. The infants' father, Yarden, had been  kidnapped separately from his family. During his imprisonment he was subjected to psychological torture, informed that his family was dead, his reaction filmed in a video for media distribution.

 

The coffins containing the bodies of, from right to left, Shiri Bibas, her two children, Ariel and Kfir, and Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 when he was abducted, are displayed on a stage before being handed over to the Red Cross by Hamas in Khan Younis on Thursday. (Abdel Kareem Hana/AP)

 

Despite which, or perhaps because of which, their  relatives and supporters held out hope that they would all survive their captivity. "They are breaking into our house ... it feels like the end", the children's father wrote to his sister during the attack on their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Videos that the terrorists themselves had taken with body cams as they hunted down Israeli civilians, raping, torturing, killing, torching homes with entire families inside, showed Hamas operatives and Palestinian civilians moving house to house slaughtering young and old.

 

In nearby Kibbutz Be'eri, the killing was methodical, consuming hours of butchery. The video of Kfir and Ariel Bibas held by their frightened, traumatized mother, surrounded by men in civilian clothing as they were being taken hostage to Gaza has been familiar to an international audience. It is an iconic picture of a terrified woman and two infants on their journey to an untimely death. There were other mothers and their children who were more promptly and efficiently killed 500 days ago. Their particulars are unknown to a large general public, the Bibas family is recognized through the proliferation of their visages in pleas to bring the hostages home.

 

A drone view shows Palestinians and militants gathering around Red Cross vehicles on Thursday, the day Hamas hands over the bodies of deceased hostages Oded Lifshitz, Shiri Bibas and her two children, Kfir and Ariel Bibas, in the Gaza Strip. (Stringer/Reuters)

Finally, they were to return home. Not as they were, in the blush of youth and health and a promising future. But in three coffins, one adult-sized, and two whose dimensions tore at the heartstrings of Israelis and Jews everywhere, along with their non-Jewish supporters. Yarden Bibas, freed from captivity only weeks earlier, held out hope against hope that they might somehow have survived the intentions of their brutal captors and he would be reunited with them. They are now reunited, not as he wished and imagined, but as their fate dictated.

 

His two tiny sons will be mourned as tradition demands for their grievous loss. Yet, where is his wife? The body that was returned in a coffin purporting to hold Shiri Bibas was not that of his wife, but that of a stranger whose identity is unknown. A woman who was not an Israeli hostage, a corpse of mystery. More mysteriously sinister is the absence of the Bibas babies' mother, the question hovering ghostlike and fearful, where is she, what happened to her, could she still be among the living?

 

Past masters at sadistic savagery, savouring the pain they impose on those they hate, Hamas has a tradition of exacting anguish, delectating and delighting over the prolongation of deep-seated, maddening anguish, viewing it as a victory over the hated. That inhumanity, from the thousands of terrorists who flooded southern Israel to inflict suffering and death on innocent civilians who had in fact commiserated with the Palestinian civilians living in Gaza, arranging to drive them to medical and hospital services in Israel failed to resonate with the world at large. Nor did the sight of thousands of Gazans surrounding the coffin handovers in celebration of a 'victory'.

 

In a march organized by Within Our Lifetime and co-sponsored by Samidoun, according to Within Our Lifetime, pro-Palestinian protesters rallied in midtown Manhattan on Dec. 25. Selcuk Acar / Anadolu via Getty Images

Out of the woodworks throughout the West came tens of thousands of Palestinians and their Muslim and non-Muslim supporters who had migrated from the countries of their origins to Europe and North America, to demonstrate their solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, characterizing the raw inhumanity unleashed by Hamas and its sister terrorist groups on Israelis on October 7, as 'understandable', as 'resistance to the occupation'. And nor did the media dispute those popularized 'contextual' sympathies.

 

Mobs of pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas supporters flocked to the streets of Western cities to express their delight in the comeuppance of Israel, their solidarity with the 'oppressed' Palestinians, their contempt for a Jewish State that imposed its ancestral presence in the Middle East, as a cohort of white, privileged colonizers, dislodging Arab 'Palestinians' from their homeland, crying out for a global Intifada, citing a 'Final Solution', urging Jews everywhere in the diaspora to 'go back to Poland', the messages unmistakable.  

"We know [Hamas] is using the world attention to terrorize people. Should it be covered? It's complicated. This is reality. People died ..."

"We don't want world media to ignore this very important news."

"[Those already traumatized by these events that this week's hostage release] will not be quiet or respectful."

Professor Hagai Levine, Israeli public health physician/researcher

A protest in Australia during the first Gaza war, August 2006. Justin McManus/Fairfax Media via Getty Image

 

 

Release Our People!

"We had hoped and worked for the safe return of the four members of the family from Hamas captivity."

"I send my deepest condolences to the family. I thank the IDF and Israel Security Agency forces for their determined operation to return our hostages."

"We will continue to make every effort to bring all of our hostages home -- both the living and the dead." 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

 

"I hope that all the captives, whether alive or not, will return."

"We don’t need to keep receiving news every week about one or two captives coming back to us in coffins."

"I hope there will be peace, quiet, and tranquility for the whole world. Enough already with all this suffering for these innocent souls."

"We were told by the army that Hamza was also killed, but his body has not been recovered. At the funeral, [Ziadna’s] children ran around shouting, ‘how can it be? Our father’s name was on the list of captives; he’s supposed to come home.’ Now, that hope is gone."

"The family is angry that the government isn’t making a deal to free the captives. Unfortunately, two days [after seeing the list], we received the heartbreaking news — for the whole family, for the entire city, for the world — that they were murdered, and this was their fate."

"It’s so very sad for the entire family. We’re all in shock."

Youssef Ziadna

 

"We continue to do everything to fulfill our supreme moral obligation -- the return of all the hostages, living and dead, to Israeli soil."

"Deep condolences to the Ziyadne family upon the discovery of the bodies of Youssef and Hamza, who were kidnapped by Hamas murderers on October 7 and were rescued in a heroic operation by our heroic soldiers."

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz

Funeral of Youssef Ziadna, who was killed in Hamas captivity in Gaza, in Rahat, Israel on Jan. 9, 2025.

The bodies of two hostages, Youssef and Hamza Ziyadne, were locaed by troops with the Israel Defense Forces during military operations in the Gaza Strip, it was announced on Wednesday. Defense Minister Israel Katz and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed "deepest sorrow for the terrible news that the Ziyadne family received today". 

On that infamous day of October 7, 2023, among other Israelis taken captive by Hamas operatives and some Palestinian civilians who had joined the terrorist invasion from Gaza into southern Israel, six Arab Muslim Bedouin Israeli citizens were kidnapped, and taken into Gaza. There were four members of the Ziadna family, and two others; Fouad al-Talalka, 22, and Qaid Farhan al-Qadi 53, from the Bedouin Israeli community of Houra, kidnapped from kibbutz Magen. Qadi was returned to Israel in August, found in an IDF rescue mission in a southern Gaza tunnel.

 

Youssef's remains, confirmed by the IDF and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), were discovered in a tunnel in the Rafah area of southern Gaza. Hamza's death was not immediately confirmed, although the announcement stated that the discoveries in the tunnel raised 'serious concerns' for his life. "Our hearts ache. We wanted them to return to our family alive, but unfortunately they returned dead. Aisha and her brother Bilal were waiting to embrace them. This is a difficult and shocking disaster", said Youssef's brother, Ali Ziyadne.

53-year-old Youssef Ziyade and his children Hamza, 22, Bilal, 28, and Aisha, 17, residents of the Israeli Bedouin community of Rahat, were working in Kibbutz Holit, close to the border with Gaza, when they were abducted by Palestinian Hamas terrorists on October 7. As part of the November 2023 ceasefire agreement between Jerusalem and Hamas following 55 days of captivity, the two younger children, Bilal and Aisha were released.

 

Israeli authorities estimate there remain 98 hostages in Hamas captivity in Gaza, 94 of whom were abducted during the October 7 attacks. Negotiations to release the remainder of the hostages have been ongoing. Hamas insists that consideration will only be given to their release in exchange for their conditions, among which is the condition that it be agreed they can return to Gaza. Their negotiators claim that it is Israel that is holding up the release of the hostages.

In the latest round of negotiations, when Israel demanded a list from Hamas of the hostages being held, those that are alive and those whose corpses Israel insists must be released as well, Hamas responded that it would need a week or more to compile such a list. That was followed up by Hamas announcing that as a result of Israeli 'aggression' it cannot now find where most of the abductees are. There are, however, estimates by Israeli intelligence that no more than 20 of the hostages may still be alive. 

 

This is part of the Hamas excruciating psychological warfare; after having begun this conflict by inflicting pain and suffering on an unarmed civilian population, conducting an organized mass rape, perpetrating torture and mutilation on Israeli girls and women, incinerating entire families in their homes, slaughtering infants, the elderly, and taking farming villages in stealth early-morning invasions, looting and destroying, slaughtering 1,200 people, including foreign farm workers, it invokes Israeli 'aggression' in response to its own atrocities.

 

And to eke out as much misery and anguish as it possibly can, torturing the families of the vulnerable, starving and beaten hostages by circulating photographs and videos of those purportedly still alive, their gaunt and battered faces barely resembling the healthy youth they had once been as they plead for release from their living hell. Now Hamas coyly denies it can even place all of the hostages known to be in their hands, knowing the anguish they cause the hostages' loved ones and revelling in the divisions it causes between the hostage families and Israeli government authorities determined to destroy their ability to carry out any future atrocities against Israel.

 

Funeral of Youssef Ziadna, who was killed in Hamas captivity in Gaza, in Rahat, Israel on Jan. 9, 2025

 

 

Palestinian Terrorism Carnage

"Following my urgent request, the UN Security Council will finally convene on Wednesday for the first time since the October 7 massacre to hold an official discussion on the hostages."

"The Security Council must condemn the terrorist organization Hamas and demand the immediate release of the [Israeli] abductees."

Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon

 

"These murderers executed six of our hostages, they shot them in the back of the head."

"And now, after this, we're asked to show seriousness? We're asked to make concessions [in a ceasefire agreement geared to the release of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas]."

"No one is more committed to freeing the hostages than me."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Murdered Israeli hostages Carmel Gat and Alexander Lobanov were shown in a Hamas video published on their Telegram channel on Wednesday evening. (Photo: Screenshot)

After shooting six young Israeli men and women whom Hamas terrorist operatives captured on October 7 from the grounds that hosted the Nova Music Festival, killing them at point blank range by shooting them in the back of their heads, Hamas followed up by the threat it would release videos of the "last messages" of all six of the murdered hostages. Recordings produced shortly before their deaths. This is the psychopathic savagery of Palestinian terrorism, follow up sadistic violence with equally sadistic psychological torture. 

The more anguish and grief caused to Jews by Palestinians the more glee and satisfaction in their cause of destroying the Jewish state and its Jewish inhabitants. Each of the six hostages -- Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Ori Danino, 25, Almog Sarusi, 27, Alexander Lobanov,32, Carmel Gat, 40, and Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, were shown introducing themselves to a camera in a video shown on Telegram, while a line on the screen in Hebrew, English and Arabic reads: "Hours and we will show their last messages".

Palestinians are masters of malevolence, using their creative sadistic streak to indulge in the pleasure of striking terror in the hearts of their targets while creating narratives and scenarios of stark lethal horrors to cause the greatest pain conceivable, in the order of mutilating girls and women while raping them before murdering them. And in the instance of the six murdered Israelis, torturing them for over 300 days of abysmal confinement, starvation, abuse, then forcing them to enact a death-facing tableau before they're murdered.

All of which represents the psychological warfare they excel at while nursing their imagined state of 'victimhood' at the hands of the Jewish state. The Hamas 'armed wing' put the government of Israel on notice that they are operating under new instructions in the hostage situation; that the hostage-keepers, should they become aware that Israeli forces are approaching their location in Gaza, are to take lethal action to prevent Israeli troops from managing to rescue any of the hostages. The message to Israel is that only Hamas can control the live release of the hostages.

 

A combination picture shows hostages Ori Danino, Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, and Almog Sarusi, who were kidnapped by Hamas during the October 7 attacks, and whose bodies have been found underground in the Rafah area of the Gaza Strip.   Bring Them Home Now via Reuters

These new instructions, revealed a spokesperson for the al-Qassam Brigades which claims control of the hostages, dictate the instructions, while stating it is not they who are responsible for the deaths of the hostages, but Israel itself which has demonstrated the effrontery of rescues such as that in June when Israeli forces freed four hostages through a raid that in turn saw the death of dozens of Palestinians. Hamas leaders clearly feel they have the upper hand, earned with their abduction of Israelis of all ages. Knowing how dear their lives are to Israel, in contrast to the Hamas condition of expendibility of Palestinian lives for their 'cause'.

Israel's commitment to its goal of destroying the Hamas capability of mounting attacks on Israel and Israelis is non-negotiable; a recent strike dispatched a Hamas operative who had appeared in a widely viewed video from the October 7 attack, the terrorist shown drinking cola in front of two children wounded in a grenade strike that killed their father. He was identified by the IDF as Ahmed Fozi Wadia, commander of a commando battalion, member of a paragliding unit.

He had flown into the community of Netiv HaAsara on a paraglider prior to launching the attack on Israeli civilians in the targeted farming community. IAF aircraft struck a compound in Gaza City where Hamas operatives were engaged, and where eight met their deaths, Wadia included. 

Ahmed Fozi Wadia was seen drinking cola while standing over wounded children during the October 7 attack. Photo by Israel Defence Forces via X

A Slumbering World -- Oblivious to Threatening Conquest

"Following my urgent request, the UN Security Council will finally convene on Wednesday for the first time since the October 7 massacre, to hold an official discussion on the hostages."

"It is a disgrace that it has taken the Council 11 months and the brutal execution of six hostages by Hamas terrorists to finally convene this discussion."

Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon

"How we prayed to hug you, to see your smile."

"We hoped to see  you happy, surrounded by family and friends but  you were abandoned, day by day."

Nira Sarusi, mother of 27-year-old Almog, executed by Hamas

 

"We prayed. We wanted to believe this was not true."

"This is not how I imagined your end. I wanted you back alive."

"I apologize that we were not able to save you."

Mother of murdered 24-year-old Eden Yerushalmi

Hamas released a video of slain hostage Eden Yerushalmi before her death, giving a message directed at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (credit: Screenshot/Hamas Telegram)

The great moral test of our times and the failure of national leaders of the Western democracies to fully wish to understand just who and what is threatening democracy is leading to a decay in civilizational norms. Not only are great numbers of Muslim faithful leaving their countries of origin to settle in North America and throughout Europe; with them is a growing corps of Islamists who inculcate in the Islamic diaspora their necessity to uproot democracy and replace it with Islamic Sharia, replete with Islamic laws and justice.

 

Since Islam is a religion of militant violent usurpation, one that is justified by the Koran and the hadiths to scorn all other religions that the Muslim faithful are duty- and faith-bound destined to overtake and in the process replace with Islam, jihad proceeds with the stealth of physical occupation in great numbers of the faithful infiltrating non-Muslim nations and with their strength of numbers influencing governments to give undue respect to the very ideology and politics of the religion whose paramount function is conquest, as it has been from its very inception.

 

The proxy militias of the Muslim world's greatest exponent of Islamist conquest are well schooled in the other type of jihad; violence in a death creed of domination and terror. The Islamic Republic of Iran has patterned its proxies to reflect Iran's aspiration of world conquest for their brand of Islam. Hamas, Hezbollah and Yemen's Houthis have dominated their own populations and reach out to expunge other religions in favour of their own. Their first target is the nation of Jews.

 

Indigenous to the Middle East and far exceeding the Arab populations surrounding them in authentic origins while vastly pre-dating Islam, Judaic ancestral heritage is indisputably original to the territory in which Israel has re-established itself as a Jewish state. In Islam, it is forbidden that any geographic area once consecrated to Islam through conflict and settlement be permitted to revert to its origins. 

 

Arab nations of the Middle East discovered through a series of wars imposed upon Israel, that it would not be dislodged from the patrimony of its heritage.

While they now are resigned to Israel's permanency and prepared to adjust their hostility accordingly replacing it with a cool cordiality, Islamist terrorist groups never will be prepared to lay away their hatred and their arms along with their barbaric death-cult fixation on the presence of Jews secure in their place of origin. There is simply no method by which reason and reality can replace the psychopathic fixation on destroying Israel and murdering Jews in the minds of those groups of Muslims whose hatred of Jews has been so well entrenched as to rule their lives.

 

A terrorist group that celebrates its death-cult psychosis as one through which pride and honour is achieved is committed to death and destruction; those of their own people, alongside those of the Jewish state, as a worthwhile sacrifice to achieve their ultimate goal. Their belief in the sacred concept of martyrdom for their cause of obliteration of the presence of Jews to be replaced by Muslims for whom Islam is the dominating force in their lives and throughout the world cannot be breached by appeals to the concept of human rights.

 

"On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched a devastating terrorist attack on Israel, killing almost 1,200 Israelis and seizing around 243 hostages. The scale of the attack was off the charts for a small state – the greatest one-day loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust – and the nature of the killings, which included the deliberate killing of children and old people, as well as mass sexual violence, seared itself into Israel’s consciousness.?

"In the months that followed, Israel waged a destructive campaign in Gaza, killing more than 34,000 people, including many children, in an attempt to destroy the terrorist group, putting all Palestinians in Gaza at grave risk of disease and starvation. The campaign continues, albeit at a slower pace than in its initial months."

Daniel Byman,  Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies

And so, Hamas, that singular exponent of terror-central, following the sadistic savagery of its operatives committing mass murder of Israeli civilians, mutilation of girls and women in a frenzy of rape and desecration of humanity, abducted Jewish children, the elderly and infirm, girls and women, IDF soldiers, foreign farm workers from farming villages on the border between Israel and Gaza, to inflict on their helpless pawns the horrors of brutality no sane mind could conceive.

 

Embarking on a mission of psychological terror, the Hamas leadership led their operatives on a crazed campaign of inflicting anguish, pain and fear on the hostages, and conveying their plight through videos to their grieving families. Using those families' desperate fears for the recovery of their loved ones to manipulate them into defying their government which committed itself to the total annihilation of the terrorist threat against the state and its people. 

Haunting video posted on Telegram on Monday shows the six doomed Israeli hostages speaking before their murders. X

 

The excruciating infliction of suspense, the withholding of hope, the final contemptible punishment-by-death as a warning that other hostages would be just as expendable, has succeeded in its mission to turn the population of Israel against its government authorities through the split imperative of saving the hostages as opposed to the full commitment of destroying Palestinian terrorist enclaves, their leadership, their followers, their terrorist infrastructure, their weaponry.

And the backdrop of this deadly turmoil is a theocratic nation fully indulged in loyalty to a religion of conquest with the leadership of Iran determined to succeed in its mission of destruction and Islamic conquest, well on its way to producing nuclear arms not only to threaten Israel's existence, but to ensure that its Sunni-Muslim-Arab neighbours accede to Shiite-Muslim Persian dominance.

 

The United Nations has long since been toothless, irrespective of its proud boast of being a global purveyor of peace. Its obvious bias against Israel and alliance with negative powers within its membership have negated its original purpose. Of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, two -- China and Russia -- both engaged in their own visions of world conquest, emasculate the powers of reason and justice. 

 

Members of the UN Security Council vote on a proposal to demand that Israel and Hamas allow aid access to the Gaza Strip, December 22, 2023.

(photo credit: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado)

Strategic Failure, Future Prospects

"The Iranian plan was a barrage to destroy Israel within a week."

"[Infighting and mass demonstrations in Israel] destroyed the image of Israel as a powerful country [to its neighbours]."

"It inflated the Jihad glands in the bodies of our neighbours. They went out in the streets to celebrate. 'No fighters, no pilots'!"

"It encouraged them to start the war."

"The tantrum over civilians killed is for the foreign media. It's good PR."

"A Palestinian state with all of the clans together would fail because it's the same disease as Syria."

"In terms of Palestinians, if you tell me their last name I'll tell  you where they live, because they live in compounds, or you might say a community."

"The word in ancient Arabic for clan and neighbourhood are homonyms. If you moved across the street to another clan, it would be like you were exiled. Clans don't intermarry."

Dr. Mordechai Kedar, Israeli Middle East Scholar

“The Iranian plan was a barrage to destroy Israel within a week.” Middle East scholar Dr. Mordechai Kedar speaks at an event in Toronto, on June 25, 2024. Photo by Dave Gordon for the National Post

 

Dr. Kedar is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, an expert on Islamist groups and Middle East affairs, vice-president of Newsrael's Middle East affairs news site. His academic studies and experiences equip him with special insider views of the Middle East, Israel and Palestinians equal to none. He served in the Israel Defense Forces intelligence for 25 years, specializing in Arab political discourse and media and Islamic groups. His specialty in the media is providing analyses and commentary on affairs in the Middle East.

And his interpretation of recent events is that Hamas leaders took an initiative whose purpose and shock value  undermined a scheme by the Islamic Republic of Iran to mount a mass attack against Israel from Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Gaza that would result in tens of thousands of missiles lobbed into the Jewish State, with combat units from Syria, Yemen, Iraq sending missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles while Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad did their part, firing missiles in such numbers as to completely overwhelm Israel's Iron Dome.

Destruction in the Jewish state was meant to be complete and irrevocable; roads, electricity, communications systems, army bases, airports completely destroyed in a doomsday scenario that was planned but aborted, thanks to Hamas's precipitate action that unravelled the larger, more methodical and existentially devastating plans of their Islamist Shiite patron. The long-planned Hamas invasion proved irresistible to the terrorist group, evidently unwilling to await the order from Iran for a coordinated attack.

They were inspired by the boycott of training by 200 Israeli F-15 pilots protesting proposed judicial reforms in March of 2023. Infighting and mass demonstrations that "destroyed the image of Israel as a powerful country" with an indefatigable, precision-trained and primed-for-victory military. That fissure in Israeli society signalled weakness to Hamas leaders, eager to take advantage of what they saw as an opportunity to unilaterally destroy Israeli morale, resolve and effectiveness.

 

Video grab of an armed Hamas terrorist walks around the Supernova music festival, near Kibbutz Reim in southern Israel, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo by AFP via Getty Images

The Nova Music Festival was an event that hosted hordes of young Israelis, a ripe platform for a mass slaughter and group rape scenario, proving irresistible to the leadership which planned to unleash the command performance for which Hamas operatives had undergone training rehearsals for months to fulfill at last the guiding principle of their charter to destroy Israel and murder its Jewish population. The impending agreement between  Israel and Saudi Arabia for 'normalization' impelled Hamas in its decision, as well.

Dr. Kedar envisioned a domino effect of peace agreements where Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Tunisia, Mali, Chad and Niger would have been amenable to joining the Abrahamic Accords for what such an alliance would promise to their economic development and relations with the United States: "Mainly because of the American goodies".

 

A parade for the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s militant arm, is held in Gaza. Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

 

Such accommodation with Israel by Muslim states would have the effect of sidelining the cause of the Palestinians and as such would have been completely untenable, hastening the Hamas decision-making. Aside from which there was the anticipation that hundreds of Israelis taken hostage would be exchanged for infinitely greater numbers of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. The aftermath of the October 7 atrocities appear to have been of little immediate concern in the lead-up to the Hamas invasion of southern Israel.

The Qur'an, Dr. Kedar reminded his Toronto audience -- attending the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation Toronto Zionist Council and Canadians for Israel's Legal Rights -- teaches the faithful of the praiseworthiness of dying for Israel. Dr. Kedar has arrived at what he feels is a solution to the conundrum -- what to do with the Palestinian Territories following the completion of the war. His proposal is that Gaza and the Palestinian Authority be split along clan lines; each to be administered by their own communities.

Clans are embedded into Arab culture and conflict between clans is endemic to the culture. "It fits the culture of the Middle East, because it fits the clan mentality", he states, as geographic splits by clan communities would have the effect of averting conflicts between other clans and by extension, Israel. Failing Arab states such as Syria, Libya, Lebanon Iraq, and Iran host various clans who clamour for their equal rights. Successful states such as Qatar, the Emirates, Kuwait, have economic stability,  safety, law and order. And they are operated by clans. 

"Every clan sees the other clan as the enemy because they are 'not from us'." Prejudice and discrimination is regionally rampant. Gaza has been split into five administrative districts for the past eight decades. Without much clan overlap, Dr. Kedar's vision is to allow Gazan clans to operate their own affairs. "This could very well work with no Hamas, which no one wants. Otherwise a Palestinian state could very well turn into another Hamastan."

 

Mordechai Kedar on the Return of Terrorism in the West Bank