If I had the expressive eyebrows of Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy, there is no doubt that recent headlines would have raised them. As it was, just my blood pressure rose as I read the newspapers in the morning.
A front-page story on February 15, for instance, stated: “The White House urged ‘everyone, including Israel,’ to do everything possible to reach a deal for the release of the hostages amid reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not approve of sending a delegation back to Cairo for further negotiations.”
It was one of several stories hinting that the US administration was worried that Israel was not doing everything it could to bring the hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza back home. It’s a theme that also has been prevalent in the Hebrew press. It is likely part of the message promoted by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, whose head consultant, Ronen Tzur, stepped down this week amid the concerns that he was using the forum for political purposes – a continuation of his previous campaigns against Netanyahu and the government’s judicial reform that tore the country apart before October 7.
The American signals suggest that the administration has been listening more closely to opposition voices than the government. This in itself is disturbing. Just as Israel needs to maintain bipartisan ties in the US and work with whichever president is democratically elected, so too must the US president and administration work with Israel’s democratically elected government, however distasteful they find them.
Israel does not need lectures from foreign governments about the importance of getting the hostages released. Every normal human being wants to see them returned – especially in Israel. The heartbreaking footage published this week of Shiri Bibas, barefoot and covered by a blanket, struggling to hold her baby and four-year-old as she is herded by terrorists through Khan Yunis on October 7 was another reminder of how much we can care about someone we have never met. The question is the price of a deal and the danger it presents to Israeli security and citizens in the future.
The mass release of Palestinian terrorists a la the 2011 Gilad Schalit deal clearly poses a threat: The mega-atrocity of October 7 was masterminded by Hamas’s Yahye Sinwar, among those released in that deal. Hamas attempts to tie a hostage release to enabling its presence on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is even more jarring. It’s not by chance that Hamas called the October 7 invasion “The al-Aqsa Flood.”
Accusations against the PM are political spin
It is not Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who is holding the hostages captive. Similarly, suggestions that Netanyahu is deliberately trying to prolong the war in Gaza and drag out a hostage release for his own political purposes – to deflect attention from his legal woes and postpone elections – are political spin. Netanyahu is certainly a seasoned politician who knows a thing or two about elections and the importance of their timing – defeating Hamas and bringing as many hostages home alive can only help him.
The fate of the hostages; the threat of Hamas’s continued control in Gaza; the dangers of Hezbollah in Lebanon; and the open threats from Iran acting through its terrorist proxies, including the Houthis, are issues that cut across the political spectrum in Israel. There’s no Left and Right when there’s an existential threat to Israel. Opposition leader Yair Lapid and Netanyahu’s rivals, such as Benny Gantz, who heads the National Unity party, also undoubtedly want Israel to win the war and welcome home the hostages, even if it were to provide a temporary boost for Bibi in the polls.
I have to remind myself that the terrorist organizations are the enemy and not the UN, but it is becoming increasingly hard to distinguish between who is working for whom, in certain cases.
Last week, Martin Griffiths, the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told Sky News: “Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, as you know, it is a political movement. But, I think it is very, very difficult to dislodge these groups without a negotiated solution; which includes their aspirations…”
My blood pressure shot up and I spluttered my morning coffee over the newspaper. In an effort at damage control, Griffiths later wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “Just to clarify: Hamas is not on the list of groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United Nations Security Council,” adding, “This doesn’t make their acts of terror on 7 October any less horrific and reprehensible, as I’ve been saying all along.”
Now you understand how the UN can claim it had no knowledge of the Hamas control center, which the IDF uncovered last week, built directly under UNRWA headquarters in Gaza, using the same infrastructure. There were more shocking revelations this week – shocking, but not surprising to those who have been following the UNRWA debacle.
On Monday, video footage was released showing an UNRWA social worker loading the body of a young Israeli into a truck at Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7 and abducting the corpse to Gaza. The so-called social worker is just one of many UNRWA-affiliated officials who have been found to be involved in the atrocity in which some 1,200 were brutally slaughtered and more than 240 abducted.
This week, at another Gaza hospital, another Hamas monstrosity was revealed. Medication clearly marked with the names of Israeli hostages was discovered during the IDF operation at Nasser Hospital. The life-saving pharmaceutical aid forwarded by the families via foreign envoys did not reach the captives. It was delivered to Hamas hands in Gaza but left unopened.
The fact that it wasn’t used at all underscores another point: the humanitarian disaster, which Hamas has convinced the world of, is apparently not great enough for the terrorists to distribute medications to even its own people. Similarly, a recent KAN Radio report suggested that the hundreds of trucks with humanitarian aid waiting at the Rafah crossing are being deliberately held up to worsen the crisis in Gaza and intensify pressure on Israel.
For light relief, I can share a bad joke. Russia has extended an invitation to the PLO, Hamas, and several other terrorist groups to attend unity talks in Moscow next week with the aim of getting them to put their differences aside as part of a unilateral bid for Palestinian statehood.
You might have thought that Russia was occupied with other matters – its invasion and attacks on Ukraine, for example. But, particularly following the sudden death in prison of yet another Putin opponent – Alexei Navalny – a person has to be exceptionally brave to speak out against the president and his policies in the Russian Federation.
News of the planned unity talks was announced at the Munich Security Conference by Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh. Adding insult to injury, Shtayyeh told the conference: “One should not continue focusing on October 7.”
This is a tactic that the Palestinians – Hamas and the PLO-Fatah – do indeed have in common: carrying out a terror attack and then carrying on as if nothing happened. Another thing they share is the desire to eliminate Israel. The main difference is a matter of approach. Hamas prefers to try to destroy Israel physically through terrorism and war, while the Palestinian Authority is prepared to do it in stages, through diplomatic means. Declaring a state without agreed-on borders is a good starting point for them.
There are leaders willing to go along with this. There is pressure from Israel’s friends – the US, the UK, France, and others – to move toward unilateral declaration of Palestinian independence, a prize for the Hamas attack.
And there are sworn enemies, like Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who, on the sidelines of the African Union Summit this week compared Israel’s actions against the Hamas terrorist regime to Hitler’s genocide of Jews in the Holocaust. There was also a move – spearheaded by Algeria and South Africa – to rescind Israel’s observer status at the African Union.
It’s a worrisome trend. Israel is being belittled, dismissed, and delegitimatized for defending itself while the terrorist organizations are enjoying an international push for full recognition – not despite the October 7 atrocity, but as a result of it.
For anyone who truly wants to combat the scourge of jihadist terrorism, this should raise more than eyebrows and blood pressure. It should raise red flags.