“No one has an idea” of how many hostages in Gaza are alive, a Hamas official said.
Daniel Greenfield | Front Page | June 14, 2024
While Israel has an extensive list of hostages, Hamas has never made such a list or provided one. It occasionally released selected hostage videos or claimed that one or another hostage was deceased. Truthfully or not. The actual list of hostages, most people have concluded, is a lot smaller.
Every terrible ceasefire proposal on Israel’s side still requires Hamas to produce a list o hostages. And Hamas generally replies by offering to trade terrorists for hostages or their bodies.
And every time it’s asked about the hostages, Hamas claims not to know.
“No one has an idea” of how many of the remaining 120 hostages in Gaza are still alive, Hamas official Osama Hamdan, currently based in Lebanon, admitted in an interview with CNN on Thursday.
“I don’t have any idea about that,” he told CNN from a Beirut office. “No one has an idea about this.”
Hamas knows but it prefers strategic ambiguity because the hostages are the only possible lever that can save it. The Biden administration and elements of the Israeli Left are obsessed with saving Hamas. But the only stated reason that elements of the Israeli political system would agree to suspend the war would be to save the hostages. Without hostages, there is only the cold brute reality of Oct 7.
Ending the war to save 100+ hostages and ending the war to save 31, 19 or 8 hostages plays differently.
The real question is how many Israelis have to die or be taken hostage next time around. That’s why making the war about the hostages was always a mistake.
You don’t fight a war to get back hostages, you fight it to keep hostages from being taken.
The existence of the hostages allowed Hamas and its useful idiots, including in Jerusalem, to play a game in which once again anything is acceptable in exchange for getting them back.
Hamas has already said that it will carry out Oct 7 over and over again.
The real question is not how many Hamas terrorists can be released per hostage, but how many Oct 7s can be perpetrated per hostage.
How true, Daniel Greenfield.
The Palis, as combatants in a war, are supposed to provide access to the Red Cross and/or similar associations. This they have refused to do. The very first condition for any kind of cease-fire must be this access, followed by a list of all hostages and their status.
Just think of the screaming at the UNSC if Israel were to deny this access.
Returning hostages or prisoners under any other condition as reported would encourage just as much screaming. We have to accept that we “live in a middle eastern country” and PLAY BY THE MIDDLE-EASTERN RULES.
@tov: that is the first good response I have seen. However, even our most hawkish politicians will never go along with this idea. Unfortunately, this is the only language the so-called Palis understand, so any kind of agreement with them will fail due to “humanitarian” grounds.
I always say, exchange the prisoners in the same shape as the,” released or deceased” hostages are! The enemies only understand force and fear. Give it to them as they deserve no less! Remember who STARTED it! Ps. No more dead Israelis for breathing prisoners, OK!
Isreal should have set a public accountability number – for every Israeli killed in this war, 1000 Palestinians will die.
They could start by draining the jails of Palestinians they now hold and disappear them.
Time to break out the pig’s blood and spray it in Gaza a a precursor to every bombing raid.
And Blinkin? He is an idiot of epic proportions.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/391550
Hamas killed 1200 and took 200+ hostages aiming to retrieve its 7k to 9000 prisoners in Israeli jails – which it sees as hostages and not as committers of security offences.
Over 40 000 Gazans: both Hamas troopers and civilians have been killed for the sake of retrieving 9000 which is a lot of own goal just in fatalities.
Also most of the population has been “dehoused” as Bomber Harris put it during WW II Allied Bomber Offensive over Germany and the population are NOT happy, and those wh have paid for mosques and hospitals are also not impressed and not in a hurry to replace them.
Do not be surprised if Sinwar and co eventually meet an assassin – good Arabic word and technique – it’s the custom of the country.
Well put.