GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 252

No One Knows

Gantz Unhinged

The former war cabinet member, Benny Gantz apparently feels free to speak his mind now that he’s not part of the decision making process as we hear in a report from The Times Of Israel:

Israel should agree to withdraw the military from the Gaza Strip and cease its war against Hamas for as long as is necessary to secure the release of hostages held there, National Unity party chair Benny Gantz said Thursday.

Gantz spoke about a kidnapped family:

Gantz, who bolted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition last week over its handling of the war, also appeared to hint in interviews with channels 12, 13 and Kan that an infant and toddler kidnapped on October 7 had been killed in captivity, along with their young parents.

Before being asked directly about that family, Gantz seems to think that getting the hostages home should be done even if it takes years to do it:

“I want the hostages to return home,” Gantz said when asked by Channel 12 if the Hamas’s demand of a permanent ceasefire was a price he would be willing to pay. “If there is a change in the fighting and our hostages are returned, and we do what needs to be done in the Gaza Strip in a year, or in two years, that’s not an issue.”

“I want the hostages home, I want to have strong security, and then we can continue what needs to be continued.”

He believes that Hamas has no pressure to release anyone now:

The longer that Israel has “waited and waited” for a hostage deal, the more the cost has risen,” Gantz told Channel 13. “Sinwar sits in the tunnels and doesn’t really care about his people, and the pressure on Israel only increases.”

Getting back to the family, Gantz offered up new information:

He told Kan “I believe so,” when asked if Israel knows the fate of Shiri and Yarden Bibas and their two small children Ariel and Kfir, who were 4 years old and 9 months old respectively when kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during Hamas’s murderous rampage.

The public will know their fates “when things are ripe” for it, he said.

The affected family spoke up about those comments:

Following the segment, representatives of the Bibas family criticized Gantz, and Kan, for “irresponsible” statements, which caught the family off guard.

“Tonight we witnessed the irresponsibility of a politician and the media who chose to publish a story without considering the family sitting at home that has to deal with it, without any prior preparation or the ability to stop it,” they said.

“The family is in continuous contact with intelligence parties, and we still wholeheartedly believe that we will hear good news.”

The Hostages Must Be The Priority

Although Gantz’s admonition to focus solely on the hostages will play well with their families, it plays right into the hands of Hamas who captured them exactly for this reason. Going back to the same article we read more from Gantz on this topic:

Throughout the interview with Channel 12, the former war cabinet minister stressed that the war in Gaza — which has stretched on for more than eight months following the October 7 massacre carried out by Hamas in southern Israel — should no longer be Israel’s most urgent priority.

If any fighting still needs to be done, Gantz thinks it should be against Hezbollah in the north. In the south he maintains that the focus is on the captives:

Instead, he explained that the government’s and the military’s attention should turn to the hostages, of whom 116 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, and to the north, where the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group has launched near-daily attacks on northern Israel since October 8.

“The security situation in the south has already reached a decisive state, there is no place where the IDF wants to operate and cannot operate in the south,” Gantz said. “What we have in the south is a moral, supreme obligation, to return our hostages.”

“Let nobody be confused, a complete victory over three battalions is not the State of Israel’s real problem,” he said, dismissing Netanyahu’s repeated claim that Israel will achieve “total victory” in the Gaza Strip.

Ironically Gantz said that unity is paramount right after he left the unity of the war cabinet:

A real victory will be unity in Israeli society, even in the face of hard decisions, Gantz said. “The rebuilding of the communities that were destroyed in the north and the south would be a real victory.”

Gantz sees Hezbollah as the real threat militarily now:

“From a military point of view, efforts should be concentrated to the north,” he said.” Either through an agreement or through escalation if necessary, but we need to get organized.”

The interviews aired as fires blazed across northern Israel as a result of heavy rocket and drone fire from Lebanon throughout Thursday. The Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group has stepped up attacks since Wednesday following a strike that killed a senior commander, launching hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel. The attacks, after eight months of slowly increasing hostilities, have brought the sides to the brink of war.

“Nobody wants to see Lebanon burn, not even Hezbollah,” he told Channel 12, “but that’s what will happen if it doesn’t stop what it is doing.”

It needs to be pointed out that while he and Gadi Eisenkot were able to influence decisions on the inside of the government, Gantz isn’t just wanting to do more not on it now. He clearly wants to replace Netanyahu and all but said so in the interview:

Gantz, who demanded Netanyahu call elections in his resignation speech on June 6, said they should happen, “as soon as possible, three months from today.”

“I will be prime minister,” Gantz declared. “I want to be prime minister because I understand what Israel needs and where it needs to go.”

No One Knows

We learn from an article from i24news.tv that even Hamas doesn’t know how many hostages are still alive:

In an interview with CNN released on Friday, Hamas spokesperson and political bureau member Osama Hamdan said that he did not know about how many of 120 hostages in Gaza are still alive. "No one has any idea about that," he stated, adding that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operation to free four hostages on Saturday resulted in deaths of three others, including an American citizen.

Hamden then went on to say that Israel needs to agree to a complete end to the fighting is they want to get the hostages back:

Hamdan told CNN that any deal to release the hostages must include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.

And as we already know the current deal needs to be changed if Hamas will accept it:

He said that the latest proposal on the table backed by the United States did not meet Hamas' requirements as the group seeks "a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, and let the Palestinians to determine their future by themselves, the reconstruction, the [lifting] of the siege, and we are ready to talk about a fair deal about the prisoners exchange."

Hamden went on to try and clear things up about the deal and why Hamas even attacked in the first place:

“The Israelis want the ceasefire only for six weeks and then they want to go back to the fight, which I think the Americans, till now, they did not convince the Israelis to accept [a permanent ceasefire],” stated the Hamas spokesperson, highlighting that the U.S. needs to convince Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire as part of the deal.

When asked repeatedly by CNN whether Hamas regretted its decision to attack Israel on October 7, Hamdan said that it was “a reaction against the occupation.”

He pointed out that Israel is to blame for everything happening in the war and refuted the assertion that Sinwar actually believes that the deaths of Gazans are a necessary part of winning the war:

“The one who is in charge or responsible for that is [the Israeli] occupation. If you resist the occupation, (they) will kill you, if you did not resist the occupation, [they] also will kill you and deport you out of your country. So what we are supposed to do, just to wait?,” he answered.

Hamdan also dismissed as fake reports that Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas chief in Gaza, suggested the Palestinian civilian losses were “necessary sacrifices.”

To be certain, Hamas is deflecting criticism because they did in fact start this war, they took hostages and treated them poorly and they are the ones who siphoned off funds from their people to build the tunnels they fight from. Hamden even blamed the poor treatment of the hostages on Israel because of their own people striking out after seeing their people slaughtered. They are good at manipulating the media and we need to pray that the truth will get out and hopefully flip the narrative. In this case that truth will set people free from these false narratives.