By Seth Mandel
Thursday, January 30, 2025
The full range of emotions one experiences on
hostage-release days can blindside a person. One expects to be flooded with
relief, then perhaps joy, at the sight of a young Jewish woman reunited with
her family and friends after over a year in the dark dungeons of one of the
most evil forces on earth.
But when Israeli hostages are released by Hamas, Gazans
first film themselves hungrily getting in their last war crimes before the
coming drought. It is dangerous business, this getting freed by Hamas.
So the emotions begin not at relief but at horror: The
price of freedom is one last, live torture session. “Holding hostages is
illegal under international law, and it amounts to a form of torture,” said
the UN’s own torture expert upon the announcement of the cease-fire deal. Now
it can be told.
No one really wants to watch the videos of
well-dressed, well-fed, well-made-up Gazan “civilians” boasting of holding
Israeli hostages in their homes—talk about now it can be told—but we do,
because after the horror comes the relief.
Not before a bit of anger, though. Young Israeli women
and old Israeli men are paraded not in front of baying mobs but through them.
This part introduces another emotion: disgust. One expects that now that Hamas
fighters are wearing their uniforms for the first time in over a year it would
be easier to tell them apart from those around them. But somehow everyone in
these scenes blends in with one another. When it comes to crowds of people
gleefully mobbing an abused woman, what they are wearing isn’t terribly
relevant or noticeable.
Arbel Yehud, 29, and Gadi Mozes, 80, looked like they
were reenacting the Egyptian pursuit of the Israelites into the wilderness, the
captors possessed by regret that these Jews might yet live. Agam Berger, 20,
was forced to perform a choreographed stage scene for the leering Hamas men and
wild-eyed crowds beyond them.
Once through this last trial, they were handed over to
the Red Cross, who also transported five freed Thai nationals: Bannawat
Seathao, Pongsak Thenna, Sathian Suwannakham, Surasak Lamnao, and Watchara
Sriaoun.
Ah, the Red Cross! Willing participants in the psychotic
torment of hostages. Although the Red Cross was unbothered by its role in a
public torture passion play, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped
in. The Palestinian murderers and terrorists being released in return for
innocent Israeli hostages could sit on their bus a bit longer, Netanyahu
decreed, until he could get assurances that the demonic scenes in Gaza
would not be repeated.
To be clear: The process of dragging hostages through the
crowds is not just morally abominable; it is legitimately dangerous. You are
lucky to survive being freed by these psychopaths. And for the Red Cross to
stand there and accede to this is beyond disqualifying.
To watch these scenes, in other words, is to watch the
full range of human complicity in unspeakable crimes, and experience the full
range of emotions that comes with it.
When the relief finally arrives, then, it’s almost
overwhelming. The hostages finally cross from the death cult to the land of the
living, the land of their forefathers, of God. The homes waiting to host them
in Eretz Israel will feed them and protect them rather than abuse them and hold
them against their will. They are transferred from the Red Cross into the hands
of medical professionals who will treat them and heal them instead of
pretending they don’t exist. The guns and uniforms around them are now their
own.
And the drones, too. It was announced earlier today that
the terrorist who kidnapped Naama Levy, one of the hostages released this past
weekend, had been killed in a
targeted IDF strike four months ago. This information had been kept under
wraps until Levy was free, for her own safety.
Future hostage releases will probably look different from
what we saw today. They will seem humane. Let us not forget that such humanity
had to be demanded.
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