Prisoner release: One thing when it's theoretical, another when you see their victims

Can we be happy for the released hostages and hate the "deal" at the exact same time?

Really. That’s a serious question — when I say I am opposed to the so-called “deal” that is bringing home 33 hostages as a first stage, people glare at me and wonder if I have a heart at all.

So let’s have a look.

I know…. When we see these faces,

Shira Bibas and baby Kfir. Image used according to Section 4A of Israel’s Copyright Law

we just want to gather them up in our collective arms and whisk them off to safety. And we pray that they are still alive. Baby Kfir is now two years old; he just had a birthday a few days ago, celebrated in Hostage Square in his absence. Of course we would give anything to get the Bibas family and the other hostages home asap.

And of course we were excited and happy to see Doron, Emily, and Romi fall into the arms of their mothers and other family members and friends.

But…

then we see the official Israeli government list of the 734 terrorists that will be exchanged for the 33 living and dead hostages that have been selected to be part of the first stage of the ransom deal made with Hamas. Here is what entries on that list look like:

This is Rasha Hagawi, female, 41, lives in Samaria, arrested on 4July2024, found guilty of incitement and support for terror and sentenced to 8 months in prison. Sure, let this prisoner out. No skin off our teeth on that one. Ditto for many more like her, male and female, young and old.

BUT this one?

Caption reads: Raped and sexually assaulted 6 female prison guards and will be released in the deal. Image used according to Section 7A of Israel’s Copyright Law

The Facebook post I found this in has this text under the picture:

The guards who were raped "woke up in the morning to a horrible nightmare that they never believed that he would be set free. For a year, the state and state officials abandoned me, and today I feel like the State of Israel abandoned me again."

"I am afraid for my life, [Mahmoud] Atallah lives in Schem [Nablus] and all these years he has threatened to get back at us. He will do everything to hurt us. I beg the State to reconsider the decision to let him go a second and third time. If they do release him in any case, I demand that he be expelled far from the territories -- and from us. I am convinced that if he is released into Schem, he will retaliate against us. We will find ourselves vulnerable to a dangerous murderer once more."

Atallah was sentenced to a life sentence plus 15 years for killing a Palestinian Arab women he suspected of collaborating with Israel. And then he topped it off by sexually assaulting and raping female guards…

Our leaders have decided it is okay to let this one out? When the women he raped are afraid he will seek them out for revenge? And when it is so easy to sneak into Israel from the PA in Judea-Samaria?

And Sama Jaradat,

who planned the Maxim suicide bomb attack, sending Hanada Jaradat into the famous Maxim Restaurant overlooking the beach in Haifa. She murdered 21 people and injured over 50 who were just having a meal in the Jewish-Arab owned eatery.

Noya was one year old when Jaradat blew her up, probably sitting in a high chair banging a spoon on the table. No hostage deal will bring her back.

You can see this and other slides of families destroyed by terror attacks here: https://slideplayer.com/slide/1559537/#google_vignette

And for a final example for today: Mohammad Naifeh

He was behind the Kibbutz Metzer massacre of five, including Revital and her two sons, aged 4 and 5, and the murder of three women in Hermesh. In an interesting aside, back in 2018, the security services succeeded in thwarting a plan Naifeh was cooking up to kidnap an IDF soldier FROM BEHIND BARS! What do they think he will do when he is released as part of this “deal?”

But for now, just look at the two little boys and their mother that he made dead and who no hostage deal will bring back.

Revital, Matan, 5, Noam, 4. Image from Hebrew article of interview of the boys’ father, Avi Ohayon. https://www.makorrishon.co.il/nrg/online/54/ART2/353/537.html

You might want to read Jeff Jacoby’s essay on the way the attack went down and on the nature of the kibbutz that was attacked. (Hint: they were lobbying for peace and even pressed the government to change the route of the security wall going up so it would not negatively affect access to the olive groves of their Arab neighbours in the town next to the kibbutz.)

I cannot not see the victims of those terrorists we are setting free. I cannot not imagine those victims, babies among them, who will be killed because we are setting these monsters free.

I see them and I see the hostages’ faces as well.

And I still ask — what is the moral decision here? What is the right decision here? Is the answer to both these questions the same?

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