Noa is now one of dozens of hostages left alive or dead somewhere in Gaza, while her mother, battling terminal cancer, begs Hamas to release her daughter.
Noah was on the minds of the millions of Jews and others who gathered for Passover this week. Passover is an annual celebratory meal, and this year the theme is especially one of liberation and escape. At many Seders, participants left empty seats to remember the plight of hostages, and Noah’s suffering was a prime example.
As the war between Israel and Gaza continues for more than 200 days and hostage negotiations have stalled, one thing everyone can do for the POWs is to remember them.
On October 7, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and various anonymous groups detained 253 people, including soldiers and (mostly) civilians. Among them were many non-Israelis and dual nationals. The terrorist group negotiated the release of 105 civilians during a four-day cessation of fighting in late November. They had let four others go before that. Israeli forces rescued three people and recovered the bodies of 12 hostages. These include three people killed by the military itself in a tragic blunder.
Of the remaining 129 people, Israel announced that 34 people had died. Rumors and unofficial reports suggest that number is significantly higher. Unsurprisingly, Hamas claims that 50 hostages were killed in the Israeli airstrike. Negotiations over a hostage exchange between Israel and Palestinian prisoners collapsed in part because Hamas failed to provide a list of 40 surviving civilians that would meet the terms of the U.S.-proposed agreement.
U.S. officials recently blamed Hamas for the failed talks. Five of those detained are U.S. citizens.
But just as the death toll in the Gaza Strip reflects the grief of Palestinians, statistics cannot do justice to the suffering of hostages and their families.
But what is becoming clear is the great suffering of the remaining hostages. They ranged in age from nine months old in the case of infant Kfir Bivas to 85 years old in the case of Shlomo Mansour, a survivor of the Nazi massacre of 180 Jews in 1941. It reached. He influenced the Baghdad mob. They have been denied medical treatment and have been subjected to physical, psychological and, as the United Nations report acknowledges, sexual abuse.
“Not one person has come back without serious physical injuries or medical problems,” Israeli doctor Itai Pesach told CBS News after examining the freed hostages in November.
In a meeting with the Israeli cabinet on December 5, one of the freed hostages said that her husband, who was still in captivity at the time, went crazy and “beat himself every day” until he bled.
As for Noah, the last evidence that she was still alive was a video released on January 14th. In it, she stares into a Hamas camera and says she survived an Israeli airstrike that left her trapped under rubble. She said that two hostages she was holding were killed by Israeli fire. she.
Israel has acknowledged that one of them, Yossi Shalabi, 53, was killed in the Israeli attack. But the sister of the second man, Itai Svirski, 38, said Hamas killed him as he tried to flee during the Israeli attack.
She accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of seeking the destruction of Hamas at the expense of freeing the hostages, and said many who took to the streets to protest that his efforts to pursue a deal were insufficient. Israelis echoed this accusation. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that Hamas will not be dealt with unless there is military pressure.
Perhaps the most objective way to look at this increasingly heated debate among Israelis is that Hamas definitely intended to provoke it.
Ehya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, is well aware of Israel’s desire to destroy Hamas’s forces. He also knows about Israel’s social contract. His citizens serve in the Israel Defense Forces or live in dangerous border areas, and he understands that if they fall into enemy hands, the government will move heaven and earth to free them. Sinwar, who was convicted of killing both Israelis and Palestinians, was one of 1,027 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel in 2011 in exchange for one soldier, Gilad Shalit, held in Gaza. Ta.
As Shinwar knows, the terrorists have taken the vast majority of hostages from kibbutzim near Gaza, a liberal stronghold where suspicions of Netanyahu are deep and mutual.
The fact is that in Israel there is widespread support for the objectives of the declaration of war: to destroy Hamas and free the hostages. However, pursuing them simultaneously poses political and military tactical dilemmas.
To the Sinwar, imprisoned somewhere underground, perhaps with Israeli captives nearby, these unfortunate souls represent the most effective human shield imaginable.
Anyone who downplays or justifies what Sinwar’s men did on October 7th on college campuses and elsewhere in the United States should watch Noah Al-Ghamani’s video and think again.
