It has taken on the nature of a ritual. Hamas carefully stages a “release ceremony” for the captives it has been holding hostage for close to 500 days in a stunning combination of the theatrics of terrorism and political cynicism.
The ceremonies and handovers we have seen over the last few weeks have acted as one last measure of abuse and humiliation heaped on its victims who are forced to wave at their captors and the jeering crowds.
The female soldiers, for example, were paraded on stage in fake army uniforms – theatrical costumes meant to hide the fact that these young women were unarmed and wearing pajamas when they were attacked and grabbed by Hamas terrorists who invaded southern Israel on that dark Saturday morning of October 7, 2023.
Part of their ritual, in which the International Red Cross Committee participates, includes giving the hostages a “gift bag” containing a “certificate of release” and photos from their stay in Gaza – as if they’re ever likely to forget the 15 months of captivity, starvation, and torment.
The footage of hostage Keith Siegel on the stage last week showed him carrying two gift bags.
Apparently, one was for him and the other for his wife, released in a deal last year. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry; either way, it made me choke.
Keith, 65, was visibly pale and weak but proudly struggled to stand on his own two feet.
The inner strength of Siegel, 80-year-old Gadi Moses, and the other hostages who have managed to stay alive and sane throughout their satanic ordeal is extraordinary.
Ofer Calderon, 54, and Yarden Bibas, 35, were also subjected to additional taunts in the release ceremony. Calderon was dressed in a fake military uniform and both men had to sign a commitment that they would not return to IDF service.
It was another attempt at making the victims look like legitimate targets instead of family men snatched from their homes with their children and dragged into terror tunnels in Gaza.
Calderon was abducted with two of his children, who were released last year. Bibas was dragged away by terrorists who repeatedly smashed his head. His wife, Shiri, and their ginger-haired baby and toddler, were abducted by a different splinter group.
The release of Yarden, without knowledge of whether his wife and sweet sons are alive or dead, is an additional measure of torture.
The evil of terrorism has no end
There is no end to the evil of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and their partners in crime.
As former hostage Liri Albag noted on her return to Israel after 477 days of captivity and deprivation – part of the time underground in terror tunnels and part spent in civilian homes – there are no innocent Gazans.
She told her father: “Dad, there are two million terrorists there. I sat with small children, four-year-olds, who would spit on me and say: ‘Tfu on the Jews.’”
The future generation of terrorists is indoctrinated from birth and Hamas has no intention of changing its charter which literally calls for the death of Jews and destruction of Israel.
The barbarians who swept into Israel on October 7 committing an ISIS-style mega-atrocity of murder, rape, mutilation, arson, and looting have through slick PR and manipulation managed to become the victims.
The terrorists killed 1,200 and kidnapped 251. At the time of this writing, 79 remain in captivity, of whom 45 are believed to still be alive. But in the warped world of Hamas and its supporters, the terrorists are the victims and Israel and the Jewish people are the oppressors.
In the fast pace of today’s media, with little concern for nuance, context, and detail, the nature of the hostage release deal is often overlooked.
In exchange for the hostages, who should never have been abducted in the first place, Israel is releasing terrorists from prison, many of them with blood on their hands.
The stage where Hamas held the ceremony in Jabalya was decorated with slogans befitting the terrorist organization. In a Facebook post, my former colleague Ron Kampeas noted one irony: “Writing ‘Zionism will not triumph’ on a banner in Hebrew is a triumph of Zionism.”
But a slogan in English seen behind Keith Siegel during the ceremony charade read: “Nazi Zionism will not win.”
TURNING ISRAELIS into Nazis is a recurring theme, carefully inculcated along with words like “genocide” and “apartheid.” Anything to turn Israel into a pariah state. And it has worked, to a certain extent: the country is being prosecuted in both the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day marked on January 27 served as an example of another obscene absurdity. As London-based journalist Nicole Lampert wrote on Spiked online, there was no shortage of commemorations.
However, “you might have noticed one thing was missing in all these statements, so I am just going to say it: Jews. Time and again, public figures and institutions simply failed to mention the names of the actual victims of the Holocaust.”
The media's false depiction of reality
The media have been flooded with images of “poor Palestinians” returning to the ruins of what once were their homes in northern Gaza – homes destroyed by the IDF as it uncovered, in or under those very buildings, kilometers of terror tunnels, as well as weapons stores and rocket launching pads.
Gaza was not a vast open-air prison as some like to depict it. It was instead home to a vast underground prison – where it held those kidnapped from Israel.
What is lacking are the pictures of the scorched remains and rubble of the kibbutzim and moshavim where Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad carried out their attack on October 7, 2023.
My sympathy is not with the Gazans, the vast majority of whom openly identify with the terrorist atrocity and call for it to be repeated.
My heart goes out to the residents of Kfar Aza – including released hostages Yarden Bibas, Keith and Aviva Siegel, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher – whose homes no longer exist. The depleted remnants of their community have been forced to live elsewhere for now.
And there’s Arbel Yehud, 29, kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz with her boyfriend, Ariel Cunio, and other members of the Cunio family, two of whom remain in captivity. Her brother was murdered on October 7.
Arbel’s release included a particularly terrifying ritual of being paraded amid the incited mobs. Ditto 80-year-old, Nir Oz resident Gadi Moses.
His son told The Jerusalem Post that for most of his father’s 482 days in captivity, he was alone in a small room; only toward the end of Gadi’s captivity was he confined with kidnapped Thai workers.
According to his son, Gadi’s captors had claimed that their people lived in the Land of Israel before the Jews, to which Moses responded, “We had people in these places 3,000 years ago. What are you talking about?”
If you want to understand Israeli resilience, octogenarian Moses promised to help rebuild his kibbutz.
The worst-hit communities close to the border with Gaza were generally Left-leaning, secular, communities that believed in coexistence.
It is poignant and pertinent to remember that the terrorist invaders referred to all the communities as “settlements.” For the Palestinians, there is no Israel “between the river and the sea.”
President Donald Trump’s proposal that Egypt and Jordan absorb Palestinians from Gaza was met with shock and horror by the leaders of those countries.
Although both are Muslim, Arab-speaking countries (and Jordan has a Palestinian majority) and each held Gaza and the “West Bank” (respectively) from 1948 to 1967, neither wants the Palestinians.
Despite paying lip service to their Palestinian brethren, no Arab country is volunteering to take in Gazan refugees. They know the potential for Palestinian terrorism. Egypt has banned the Muslim Brotherhood (with whom Hamas is affiliated) and Jordan in the early 1970s deported Palestinians following attempts to overthrow the Hashemite monarchy. Those deported Palestinians were instrumental in sparking the civil war in Lebanon.
Whatever the practicalities of Trump’s suggestion, one thing is certain: He recognizes that mindlessly repeating the “two-state solution” mantra will not bring peace.
The Palestinians don’t want peace, they want Israel. According to official Israeli figures, 82% of terrorists released in the 2011 Gilad Schalit deal have returned to terrorism.
The hostages want to rebuild their lives and communities, the released terrorists want to continue to destroy everything Israel has built.
Hamas is not seeking a two-state solution; it wants a “Final Solution” of the Jewish state.