By: Jonathan Feldstein – Israel 365 News; israel365news.com
Reports are circulating in Israel of high-level talks involving negotiations to release more of the hostages brutally kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on October 7 and held captive in Gaza since. Reports of the hostages’ conditions from the 100+ who have been released are horrifying. They have suffered physical and psychological torture, and starvation, were held in underground cages in complete darkness, and suffered violent sexual assaults including gang-raping women. Speculation is that many are dead, as some of the hostages’ bodies have been found, littered across Gaza as if trash rather than human beings.
When Israel launched its military operation, it had two goals: to eradicate Hamas and remove it and its leaders from any ability to ever control Gaza and its population or threaten Israel, and to free ALL the hostages. Over a week last month, Israelis were glued to the TV every night as Hamas paraded out more hostages, mostly women and children, under the voyeurism of the world media. But some 130 hostages remain in captivity: Arab and Jewish Israelis, and non-Jews of other nationalities. Still, many of the hostages are women and children, one of whom is 10 months old, doesn’t even know his name, and has spent nearly a third of his life in captivity.
While Israelis celebrated the return of all the hostages, we were impacted by the psychological warfare that Hamas inflicted. Manipulating the hostages until the last moment, armed and masked terrorists “escorted” the hostages, instructing them to wave for the camera.
The terrorists handed off the hostages to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), as if batons in a relay race, a scene rehearsed night after night. Israelis who watched the spectacle understood that Hamas was trying to appear humanitarian and that the Red Cross was inept, playing the role of useful idiot or complicit partner to Hamas’ evil. They did nothing until that point to see or assess the well-being of all the hostages, not providing needed medical care, or anything else that is not only their mandate but their responsibility.
cont’d…
https://www.israel365news.com/381003/the-shame-of-the-red-cross/