Ep. 85: If hostages are being abused, their captors shouldn’t be rewarded
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Hello and welcome to Jonathan Tobin Daily. I'm JNS Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Tobin. Thanks for joining me for another discussion on the most pressing issues in the Jewish world. Please like, subscribe, and give us good reviews when you listen to the show. Now let's get started. It's been more than 16 months since Israel was invaded and its citizens, including men, women, and children, were subjected to mass murder, torture, rape, and kidnapping.

But while anyone who visits the Jewish state can readily see that life goes on there, the national trauma continues. On no day was that made clearer than on Saturday, February 8th, when three Israeli men, who had been held in the Gaza Strip by Hamas for 491 days, were released. Or Levi, 34 years old, Elie Sharabi, 52 years old, and Ohad Ben-Ami, 56 years old,

emerged from captivity in an especially egregious ceremony staged by Hamas. They were forced at gunpoint to make short speeches thanking the terror group that killed their friends and family members and kept them hostage for 16 months. They were then handed to a complicit International Red Cross that transported them to Israeli forces.

While the world has now seen previous hostage release ceremonies, accompanied by armed and masked Hamas terrorists, in addition to mobs of jeering Palestinians, what made this so hard to watch was the condition of the three men. All of them looked emaciated and gaunt, much like images of Nazi death camp survivors. Their plight demonstrated that male Israeli prisoners may well have been treated as badly or even worse than female ones.

It also reminded Israelis and Jews around the world who were watching of the direct connection between the Holocaust and the intentions of Hamas and other Palestinians toward the Jewish people. The brazen thuggery on display was shocking. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke from most observers who don't share the genocidal views of Hamas towards Jews that the people responsible for this brutal show were monsters.

Among Israelis, anger and horror at the latest attempt by Hamas to demonstrate that they are the victors of the war they started on October 7th, 2023, seems universal. But the question remains, what should the response of both Israel's government and the civilized world be to these vile terrorists? That's an issue that obsesses Israelis and one Americans cannot ignore.

Far from being remote to U.S. interests, the administration of President Donald Trump is quickly realizing that its stand on the future of Hamas is going to be crucial as to whether it can successfully conduct a foreign policy that defends American interests.

In the view of the approximately 1,000 demonstrators who turned out for the weekly pro-hostage, anti-Netanyahu Saturday night rally in front of Tel Aviv's Museum of Art, now called Hostages Square, the answer was clear. Family members who spoke believed that the only thing to do is to give Hamas whatever it wants in order to obtain the release of all the remaining 76 captives, many of whom may already be dead.

Indeed, they blame Netanyahu, as they have since the start of the war, for not immediately giving in to terrorist demands, often speaking as if he was the one who took them captive, and that he alone is the reason why they are still in dire straits. They are not focused on the implications of a hostage negotiation that would lead to Hamas remaining in power in Gaza, and able to make good on its vows to perpetrate more October 7th-style massacres of Israelis.

nor do they seem to care that Hamas has made it equally clear that it never had any intention of agreeing to a sweeping deal that would see all living hostages and the bodies of those that they have slain exchanged at any price. The terror group is always going to hold back some individuals to retain leverage over Israel. No one should blame the families for thinking that way, even if their suffering has been hijacked by Netanyahu's political opponents to bolster efforts to oust him from office.

It's understandable. Imagine if it were our loved ones. Most people would trade their country's best interest, or that of the entire world for that matter, if it meant a child, spouse, parent, or sibling being ransomed. The harrowing images of the newly released hostages only exacerbate their agony.

Yet Trump, who has involved himself in this question by pushing for the current ceasefire hostage release deal, and Netanyahu must balance their compassion for the families with the security and best interests of their respective nations. By essentially endorsing terms that the administration of his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, had been seeking to impose on Israel in the negotiations with Hamas,

Trump had seemed to put himself on the side of those who were prepared to let Hamas emerge triumphant from the war. Though the deal spoke of Hamas being disarmed and replaced by some other entity that would govern Gaza, any agreement that forces Israel to completely withdraw means that the Strip will remain in the hands of the terrorists. What happened this weekend made it obvious that Hamas has no intention of giving up power.

In Arabic and Hebrew, as well as what appeared to be a mangled English translation, the terrorists were proclaiming that they were the Al-Aqsa flood, a reference to jihad to capture Jerusalem and all of Israel. It also said that they were the next day, a reference to the oft-asked question about who would run Gaza after the war ends.

As such, it also stood as a riposte to Trump, whose plan for removing not just Hamas, but the Palestinian population from Gaza in order for it to be rebuilt seemed to threaten doom for the terrorist group and its dreams of eradicating Israel. An article about the release published by the New York Times seemed to insist that despite all of Israel's efforts to wipe them out during the war, the ceremony was a declaration to the world that Hamas had won.

Hamas could draw comfort from the liberal outlet's conclusion, as it could from much of the coverage in the international media covering the hostage release. Story after story seemed to analogize the plight of the Israeli captives with that of the 550 Palestinian terrorists who had been released in the last month as part of the deal, many of whom were serving life sentences for the murder of Israelis, many of them civilians.

These murderers were given a hero's welcome in Ramallah, the headquarters of the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority, which has rewarded them via its pay-for-slay program with generous salaries and pensions as a reward for their criminal acts.

Whatever their opinions about how to move forward on Hamas, and despite their heroism and resilience during the course of the war, Israelis are exhibiting all the classic signs of post-traumatic distress disorder as this agonizing drama continues to unfold.

As any visitor to the country can see, people go about their ordinary day-to-day tasks as if there was no war going on, with commerce and the arts thriving. But they've seen their fellow citizens subjected to barbarous atrocities on October 7th. The reserves mobilized and hundreds of soldiers, whose lives are as precious as that of the hostages, killed battling Hamas and Hezbollah with thousands more wounded.

They've been terrorized by the thousands of rocket and missile attacks on their homes by Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran. They are also aware that much of the world has regarded their suffering and danger with little or no sympathy, with most concern focused on the condition of the Palestinians, who applauded the October 7th bloodthirsty murder of 1,200 people, as well as support both Hamas and its goals.

They know that their efforts to defend themselves against Hamas have been libelously described as genocide by an international anti-Zionist movement of people who believe that one Jewish state on the planet is simply one too many. That's a lot to process. It's also mixed in with the Jewish state's volatile domestic politics.

Those arguments hinge more on opinions about Netanyahu than the across-the-board policy consensus that rejects the creation of a Palestinian state. Still, that is the solution preferred by the international community, even though the Palestinians have made it clear that they don't want one if it means peace alongside Israel.

But while Israelis struggle with the impossible decision between trying to save the lives of the hostages and ensuring that Hamas can't go on murdering, raping, and kidnapping Jews, this is also an American problem. Trump wants to bring peace to the region and above all guarantee that Iran and its terrorist network that started the October 7th war cannot possess the ability to threaten a vital part of the globe.

He is no expert on the Middle East, which has enabled him to throw off misguided preconceptions about the need to weaken Israel to appease Islamists who will never accept peace. The 2020 Abraham Accords, which achieved normalization between Israel and four Arab and Muslim nations, was an accomplishment made possible by his rejection of the conventional wisdom peddled by the foreign policy establishment. Now, however, he faces a choice that he probably would rather avoid.

It is one thing to take credit for a ceasefire hostage deal release deal that enabled him to play the peacemaker and gave him some good imagery in time for his second inauguration last month. But Hamas's brutality and its determination to hold on to both power in Gaza, coupled with its war goals of Israel's destruction and Jewish genocide, has forced him into a difficult decision.

He can insist on the continuation of the ceasefire and allow the negotiations with Hamas about the second and third phases of the deal to drag on. That will not bring peace or the release of all the hostages, while also making Israel's emotional suffering worse. It's what former Vice President Kamala Harris would be doing if she had won the presidential election last November rather than Trump.

The Biden-Harris priority was to end the war at all costs, even if that meant granting a victory to Hamas, which would have elevated it into a position of dominance among Palestinians as well as threaten moderate Arab regimes in the region as much as its sponsor in Tehran.

Or Trump can do as he appeared to intimate this past week in his meetings with Netanyahu, stating that Israel had the backing of the United States to do whatever is necessary to finally eradicate Hamas and ensure that it will never again hold power in Gaza. He correctly perceives it to be his job to guard America's interests first.

But unlike many of his critics on the left, Trump appears instinctively to realize that the only way to do this is to back Israel against Islamists who hate the United States and the West as much as they do the Jewish state. Hamas continues to show the world exactly what it stands for.

If the appearance of the last three released hostages dredges up memories of those Jews liberated 80 years ago from concentration camps, which the world just marked on January 27th as part of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it is no accident or misunderstanding. Their monstrous behavior and desire for another Holocaust is no secret, and the proper response to such behavior is not appeasement but resolute resistance.

That was as true eight decades ago as it is today. We should all pray for the safety of the remaining hostages and hope that they will be saved. I understand why some Israelis are so horrified by the imagery of the Hamas propaganda that they worry more about the hostages than whether actions undertaken by Netanyahu or Trump to help them will lead to more terrorism, death, and bloodshed for both sides. And yet...

The Prime Minister must think of the safety of the rest of Israel and those who might suffer if he gives in to pressure. And Trump, too, must ponder what a triumphant Hamas in Iran will mean for America in the coming years as Islamist terror escalates and spreads. Regardless of our fears or attitudes towards either leader, that is not a world in which any of us should wish to live.

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