Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS, Feb. 9, 2025
“Trump can do as he appeared to intimate this past week in his meetings with Netanyahu—stating that Israel had the backing of the United States to do whatever is necessary to finally eradicate Hamas and ensure that it will never again hold power in Gaza.”
It’s been more than 16 months since Israel was invaded and its citizens, including men, women and children, were subjected to mass murder, torture, rape and kidnapping. But while anyone who visits the Jewish state can readily see that life goes on there, the national trauma continues.
On no day was that made clearer than on Saturday, Feb. 8, when three Israeli men, who have been held in the Gaza Strip by Hamas for 491 days, were released.
Or Levy, 34, Eli Sharabi, 52, and Ohad Ben Ami, 56, emerged from captivity in an especially egregious ceremony staged by Hamas. They were forced at gunpoint to make short speeches thanking the terror group that killed their friends and family members, and kept them hostage for 16 months. They were then handed to a complicit International Red Cross that transported them to Israeli forces.
While the world has now seen previous hostage-release “ceremonies”—accompanied by armed and masked Hamas terrorists, in addition to mobs of jeering Palestinians—what made this so hard to watch was the condition of the three men. All of them looked emaciated and gaunt, much like images of Nazi death-camp survivors. Their plight demonstrated that male Israeli prisoners may well have been treated as badly as or even worse than female ones. It also reminded Israelis and Jews around the world who were watching of the direct connection between the Holocaust, and the intentions of Hamas and other Palestinians, toward the Jewish people….. SOURCE