There is a devastated father who cries but surprisingly says: “I am relieved.” His name is Thomas Hand, he is Irish, but he has lived on Kibbutz Be’eri with his daughter Emily for 30 years. Eight years. When Hamas terrorists attacked a farming community in southern Israel on Saturday, Emily spent the night with a friend. For two days, Hand didn’t know where she was: “When they told me she was dead, I screamed ‘Yes.’ This is the best news of the possibilities I knew of.” Emily could have been one of the Hamas hostages in Gaza. Then it’s better dead than hostage. A paradox that only becomes logical in the brutality of a war like the current one.
According to a Washington Post analysis, militiamen brought at least 64 prisoners into the Gaza Strip on Saturday morning, including 49 civilians, including nine children. In total, the American newspaper has visual evidence that Hamas has captured at least 106 people. The Israeli authorities say there are between 100 and 150 hostages. Hamas says 130. They are the children of the rave, whose escape we saw on video, the children, the soldiers, the elderly. Now the families are demanding: “Do everything you can to free them.”
These hostages could include dozens of “missing” foreigners. In addition to the three Italians – the couple and Nir Forti, the thirty-year-old who would have taken part in the music festival – there is talk of 17 French people, including four children, at least 14 Americans, and more than ten English people. two Canadians, 14 Thais, three Filipinos, one Chinese, three Brazilians, two Paraguayans, two Tanzanian students. Other countries have not yet communicated exact figures. While Joe Biden ordered his team to work with Jerusalem on the “hostage crisis” and sent US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Israel, French families called on President Macron to behave “as if they were children kidnapped in Paris”.
Hamas is playing its game over the heads of the hostages. Where did they hide them in an area like Gaza? The densely populated area and its network of tunnels complicate rescue operations and force Israel to ask itself: How do we behave? How do we respond to foreign families and countries? Anyone familiar with the film has no doubt: the prisoners are found in the underground tunnels or in the basements of the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
While Egypt and Turkey are reportedly negotiating with Hamas over the release of the hostages – the terrorists remember that every bombing in Gaza kills a prisoner – Israeli Energy Minister Israel Katz writes on X: “There are none in Gaza Electrical switch.” must be turned on, no fire hydrants will be opened and no tankers will enter until the “abductees” are free.”