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.
