GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War Day 612

All About Hostages

Hostage Threats

We’re told in a report from The Jerusalem Post that one hostage held by Hamas will not come back alive:

Hamas military spokesperson Abu Obeida said that the IDF is besieging the area where Israeli hostage Matan Zanguaker is being held and that its operations are endangering his life, in an announcement on Telegram on Saturday.

Hamas is once engaging in psychological warfare in an attempt to make the IDF look like they are the ones who are hurting and killing Zanguaker:

"Urgent warning to those concerned... The occupation forces are besieging a place where the Zionist prisoner 'Matan Zangauker' is being held. We unequivocally affirm that the enemy will not be able to recover him alive. If this prisoner is killed during an attempt to free him, the occupation army will be responsible for his death, after we preserved his life for a year and eight months. He who warns is excused...," the statement read.

The IDF responded and said that no rescue attempt is currently happening which will infuriate the hostage families which Hamas loves:

The IDF said there were no current operations attempting to rescue Matan.

There is precedence for Hamas to murder hostages rather than have them rescued:

The Gazan terror group previously murdered the "Beautiful Six" in response to IDF operations near where they were being held. The bodies of hostages Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov, and Ori Danino were recovered from a tunnel in Rafah.

As now, Hamas laid the blame on Israel for their deaths and stated that such killings would happen if the IDF gets close to a hostage location:

"Netanyahu and the occupation army alone bear full responsibility for the deaths of the prisoners. They deliberately obstructed any prisoner exchange deal for their own narrow interests, and furthermore, intentionally killed dozens of prisoners through direct airstrikes," Obaida said at the time. "Let it be clear to everyone that, following the incident in Nuseirat, new instructions have been issued to the Mujahideen tasked with guarding the prisoners. These instructions outline how to handle the situation if the occupation army approaches the location where the prisoners are being held."

When Hamas mentioned the incident, they were referring to a successful IDF operation where four hostages were found and rescued:

The Nuseirat incident refers to Operation Arnon, in which four hostages were rescued from the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza, which led to the deaths of at least 100 people, according to IDF estimates, and nearly 300, according to Hamas estimates.

The rescued hostages were Noa Argamani, 26; Andrey Kozlov, 27; Almog Meir Jan, 21; and Shlomi Ziv, 40.

If one looks at this new information objectively they will see that Hamas is solely responsible for any hostage deaths since they captured them in the first place. It is sad that they aren’t blamed.

On The Other Hand

Hamas can make threats on living hostages, but the IDF continues to take out terrorists who killed their own as we read in an article from World Israel News:

The Israel Defense Forces, along with the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), on Saturday eliminated a terrorist leader who was responsible for the abduction and murder of Shiri Bibas and her two small children, Kfir and Ariel.

The IDF took out the men responsible for abducting and then murdering the young mother and her two children:

Israel’s military targeted and killed As’ad Abu Sharaiya, head of the Kataib al-Mujahideen’s military wing, and Mahmoud Muhammad Hamid Kuhail, a commander in the terrorist organization.

The terrorist group also took three other hostages whose bodies were recently recovered:

Kataib al-Mujahideen (“Holy Warriors Brigades”) was also responsible for the abduction and murder of Judy Weinstein-Haggai and Gad Haggai, as well as Thai worker Nattapong Pinta. The IDF recovered the bodies of all three in the past few days.

The two neutralized terrorists were intimately involved in the October 7th massacre:

Abu Sharaiya was one of the commanders of the invasion of Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, and recruited terrorists in Judea and Samaria to assist in carrying out the massacre.

Kuhail was responsible for holding the Bibas mother and children captive.

The killing of the terrorists also served as closure to the Bibas family as they tell us in a statement:

The Bibas family responded, “The news of the elimination of the head of the organization is another step towards closure in coping with the immense loss of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir. They will not return, but there is some comfort in knowing that the brutal killers will not harm another family. We want to thank the IDF soldiers and security personnel for their courage and dedication, risking their lives for the safety of us all.”

Israel consistently says that they will hunt down everyone responsible for the massacre in 2023 and now they are getting more specific on groups that helped:

Israeli security sources describe Kataib al-Mujahideen as a relatively small but lethal terrorist group that assists Hamas and has generally evaded monitoring by the IDF until now.

The group has attacked Israel with rockets and has coordinated terror attacks from within Israel.

As we pray for the end to this war we mustn’t be afraid to ask God to judge these evil people for what they’ve done to His chosen people. We need the view from one former hostage, Agam Goldstein-Almog from my report on Day 78 of the conflict to solidify those prayers:

She added that before the attack, “We believed that there are no bad people — only people who have it bad. But there are bad people…We will never forgive and we will never show any kind of empathy towards these people,” Agam said. “If we previously believed that there was a chance for peace, we’ve lost all faith in these people, especially after we were there and among the population.”

While we should pray that all of them become Christians before they die, we can and should pray that their plans for evil must also be stopped. Let God figure out how both of those things can happen, but we can pray for both.