Hamas Kills 6 Hostages, Blame Netanyahu
Israeli forces recovered their bodies.
AP (“Israel recovers the bodies of 6 hostages in Gaza, including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin“):
Israel on Sunday said it had recovered the bodies of six hostages in Gaza, including a young Israeli-American man who became one of the most well-known captives held by Hamas as his parents met with world leaders and pressed for his release.
The military said all six had been killed shortly before the arrival of Israeli forces. Their recovery sparked calls for mass protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom many Israelis blame for failing to bring them back alive in a deal with Hamas to end the 10-month-old war. Negotiations over such a deal have dragged on for months.
Netanyahu said Israel would hold Hamas accountable for killing the hostages in “cold blood,” and blamed the militant group for the stalled negotiations, saying “whoever murders hostages doesn’t want a deal.”
Militants seized Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, and four of the other hostages at a music festival in southern Israel during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, which triggered the war.
The native of Berkeley, California, lost part of his left arm to a grenade in the attack. In April, a Hamas-issued video showed him alive but with his left hand missing, sparking new protests in Israel urging the government to do more to secure the hostages’ release.
The army identified the other dead hostages as Ori Danino, 25; Eden Yerushalmi, 24; Almog Sarusi, 27; and Alexander Lobanov, 33; who were also taken from the music festival. The sixth, Carmel Gat, 40, was abducted from the nearby farming community of Be’eri.
It said the bodies were recovered from a tunnel in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, around a kilometer (half a mile) from where another hostage, Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52, was rescued alive last week.
Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a military spokesperson, said the army believed there were hostages in the area but had no specific intelligence. He said Israeli forces found the bodies several dozen meters (yards) underground as “ongoing combat” was underway, but that there was no firefight in the tunnel itself.
He said there was no doubt that Hamas had killed them.
Hamas has offered to release the hostages in return for an end to the war, the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile militants.
Izzat al-Rishq, a senior Hamas official, said the hostages would still be alive if Israel had accepted a U.S.- backed cease-fire proposal that Hamas said it had agreed to back in July.
This is a sad but almost inevitable development. These people were captured ten months ago by a band of murderous thugs. Their safe return was mostly a pipe dream.
The notion that the Israeli government, not the terrorists, are to blame is literally the stuff of comedy.
FRANCIS: We’re gettin’ in through the underground heating system here, up through into the main audience chamber here, and Pilate’s wife’s bedroom is here. Having grabbed his wife, we inform Pilate that she is in our custody and forthwith issue our demands. Any questions?
COMMANDO XERXES: What exactly are the demands?
REG: We’re giving Pilate two days to dismantle the entire apparatus of the Roman Imperialist State, and if he doesn’t agree immediately, we execute her.
MATTHIAS: Cut her head off?
FRANCIS: Cut all her bits off. Send ’em back on the hour every hour. Show them we’re not to be trifled with.
REG: Also, we’re demanding a ten foot mahogany statue of the Emperor Julius Caesar with his dock hangin’ out.
P.F.J.: laughing
LORETTA: What? They’ll never agree to that, Reg.
REG: That’s just a bar– a bargaining counter. And of course, we point out that they bear full responsibility when we chop her up, and that we shall not submit to blackmail!
COMMANDOS: No blackmail!
Hamas terrorists murdered these hostages. Quite obviously, it is they who bear full responsibility.
Could Netanyahu have secured their return in exchange for ending the war effort? Maybe. But his negotiating partners committed the largest terrorist attack in Israeli history and the largest on a per capita basis in the modern era. On what basis can one negotiate in good faith with them? There is no politically saleable outcome in which Yahya Sinwar and architects of the October 7 massacre remain at large.
Yes, but so is blaming Hamas, or the Palestinians in general, for tens of thousands of deaths in Gaza.
Murderous thugs they may be, but Hamas is the government leaders of Gaza elected in what Jimmy Carter declared as a fair and lawful election and still widely supported by the people of Gaza. All evidence is that the government functionaries in Gaza are loyal supporters of the Hamas terrorists and take their orders from Hamas leaders directly responsible for the October 7th genocide attack.
The notion an extremist government led by dishonest, self-obsessed rightwing thug Netanyahu is negotiating in good faith is the stuff of comedy.
He should have been in prison two decades ago for inciting Rabin’s murder. It is embarrassing he has ended up as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister instead of rotting in a jail cell.
And speaking of good faith negotiations, if we do not believe the hostages can be brought home alive, maybe we should stop lying to their families’ faces and the Israeli public on that:
If the safe return of the hostages is a pipe dream, why include their release in ceasefire negotiations? For lulz? Before we lecture on good faith, Israel and its backers should tell the truth: the hostages and their loved ones are on their own, because their government is abandoning them to die (again, as the kibbutzim were already abandoned and sentenced to death by Netanyahu’s incompetent failed “leadership” before and on 7 Oct, including his boneheaded decision to prop-up Hamas).
Let’s hope the US doesn’t join our worst ally in setting fire to “No Man Left Behind.”
Yes, it’s called a difficult decision. Israel is nowhere near getting rid of Hamas. They’ve destroyed Gaza, turned it into rubble. They’ve murdered and tortured its doctors and civil servants, and created a polio epidemic. And yet Hamas keeps on fighting and seems far from being defeated.
Violent reactionaries get very excited about leaders making the difficult decisions over killing people and going too far, and committing war crimes. Well, compromise with someone who wants to kill you is another one.
Two terrorist organizations of varying legitimacy victimize the population around them and Americans are wringing their hands to take sides and find someone to blame.
It seems worth noting that that there appear to be a number of Israeli citizens who blame Netanyahu as well, even as noted in quoted material above.
As I understand it, there is a greater willingness in Israeli society with using negotiations to return hostages, even if means having to cut deals with Hamas.
@JKB: The lens through which you view the world is so very, very small.
@Steven L. Taylor:
So? What difference does it make whether there are Palestinian or Israeli citizens willing to reach a deal? They don’t control anything. Is the Hamas leadership more barbaric and inhumane in the methods they are using to drive the “other” from the land so they can take it over? Yes, sure. The barbaric and inhumane methods the Israelis use are of a lesser degree of barbarity and inhumanity than those of Hamas. Their respective goals, however, are identical. But this lesser evil is not a reason for the US tying itself to Israel.
There are no meaningful efforts towards a solution on either side. We should stop acting like there is.
@JKB: “Murderous thugs they may be, but Hamas is the government leaders of Gaza elected in what Jimmy Carter declared as a fair and lawful election”
I forget — were they elected to a 28-year term?
What on earth do you people think will change if Boogey Man Bibi goes away? Nothing will change. You must know that. But he is certainly a POS who absolutely belongs in prison, and if it makes you feel righteous to rail against him, rail away. But the solution remains. . . oh, right, there is no solution. Although it’s fun to pretend a ‘two state solution’ is a real thing.
Neither side is negotiating in good faith because both sides are happy to fight to the last Gazan. Hamas plays Hitler in his bunker and the Israelis play the Russians closing in.
I will say however that pausing the war to let Gazan kids be vaccinated against polio is a novel approach to genocide. But then I guess the whole genocide project is going badly.
What? Neither the UN nor the media noticed? And Hamas did not correct the record? No way!
11 months in and Israel has genocided almost a full 2% of the population. They suck at genocide.
Hamas kidnapped these people and killed them. They clearly hold responsibility for those deaths. That should be clear. However it has also been clear that getting the hostages back has not been the highest priority for Netanyahu. This is somewhat out of character for a nation that traded a thousand prisoners, including some of the architects of 10/7, for one captive Israeli soldier.
To a large extent I think that change was merited but at some point I am not sure it holds. It has always been hard to believe that Israel was going to find and kill every Hamas member. At some point they have to know the rate of return is low and they need to stop the active war. Why not do that and also get back whatever hostages remain? Seems like they should be close to that point.
Steve
@Kathy:
I do blame Hamas as co-conspirators. This is exactly the reaction they wanted provoke. They’re on a “mission from God” and the other Palestinians are but sacrificial pawns on the chessboard*. Be sure that this does not diminish Netanyahu’s abhorrent responses. He didn’t have to play Hama’s game.
*This is a central tragedy of the Palestinians… Screwed by leaders with other interests than the long-term benefit of the people.
@MarkedMan: I am not sure what any of that has to do with my comment, TBH.
@Steven L. Taylor: I thought you were making a “moral high ground” case for the Israeli side because of what some members of the public feel about their hostages, and was pointing out that these feelings among people with no power won’t make any difference on the ground. If that wasn’t the case you were making then I retract my comment, but am also not sure why you were bringing it up?
@MarkedMan: “They don’t control anything.”
Good point!
@Michael Reynolds: What percentage did they make homeless?
I’ll stand by for your “not the same at all.”
Who can be surprised?
I believe that Hamas wanted to provoke a war in Gaza, even so I do not believe that Hamas anticipated that Netanyahu would go as far as he did – that is, destroy all of Gaza and kill over 40,000 civilians in the effort to hunt down and destroy Hamas.
Perhaps this was always going to happen, as one of many tragic scenarios that could happen, when in 2007 Hamas seized control of Gaza from their rival party Fatah. This feels like a world without end. Netanyahu and Hamas have brought us to this point.
There will not be peace until Israel faces a high enough price that war and oppression isn’t worth it. They’ve been the aggressor for decades, and we have been supporting them.
(Note the word “faces” — I’d rather they not have to pay that price, but just see it as enough of a possibility that they address it)
While Israeli settlements on the West Bank were expanding, and while the blockade of Gaza was continuing, the United States kept giving Israel weapons, and voting against security council resolutions. Israel learned that oppression doesn’t hurt them, or at least that oppression doesn’t hurt them more than they are willing to pay.
We should not be funding Israel, or selling them weapons (even “defensive” weapons) until they are on a path that can plausibly lead towards a peaceful and equitable solution that protects the 1/3rd of the population that they forsake. Two states, one state, I don’t care.
If Israeli citizens can go back to their middle class lives and completely ignore the horrors of life in Gaza and the West Bank, they will never have an incentive to reach for that solution. If that Iron Dome stops all missiles, then the Israelis can ignore the people firing them. We shouldn’t be helping them maintain that status quo — not for any high grounded moral reasons (although there are also those), but simply because we don’t need to get dragged into this shit every few years.
@Michael Reynolds:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/women-and-children-of-gaza-are-being-killed-less-frequently-as-wars-toll-rises-ap-analysis-finds
“The ministry said publicly on April 30 that 34,622 had died in the war. The AP analysis was based on the 22,961 individuals fully identified at the time by the Health Ministry with names, genders, ages, and Israeli-issued identification numbers.
The ministry says 9,940 of the dead – 29 percent of its April 30 total – were not listed in the data because they remain “unidentified.” These include bodies not claimed by families, decomposed beyond recognition or whose records were lost in Israeli raids on hospitals.
An additional 1,699 records in the ministry’s April data were incomplete and 22 were duplicates; they were excluded from AP’s analysis.
Among those fully identified, the records show a steady decline in the overall proportion of women and children who have been killed: from 64 percent in late October, to 62 percent as of early January, to 57 percent by the end of March, to 54 percent by the end of April.”
“The number of Hamas militants killed in the fighting is also unclear. Hamas has closely guarded this information, though Khalil al-Hayya, a top Hamas official, told the AP in late April that the group had lost no more than 20 percent of its fighters. That would amount to roughly 6,000 fighters based on Israeli pre-war estimates.
The Israeli military has not challenged the overall death toll released by the Palestinian ministry. But it says the number of dead militants is much higher at roughly 15,000 – or over 40 percent of all the dead. It has provided no evidence to support the claim, and declined to comment for this story.”
Also, I assume it’s fair to point out that 25-30% of the victims of Oct 7 were security personnel?