RELEASE HOSTAGES STOP WAR

“A ceasefire alone won’t ease the terrible pain of Israelis whose loved ones were butchered or abducted by Hamas, or the Palestinians whose families have been shattered by the subsequent war,”

The proposed American deal can  “put a stop to the ongoing bloodshed, help families reunite and allow a surge of humanitarian aid to help desperate, hungry people.” 

“bring this awful war to an end.” 

Ex-President Barak Obama, Nobel Peace Laureate

Proposal for Cease-Fire in Gaza

Phase One: Six week cease-fire; Withdrawal of Israeli forces from all populated areas of Gaza; Partial release of hostages, including women, elderly and wounded, in exchange for release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners; Palestinian civilians can return to their homes; At least 600 trucks of humanitarian aid entering Gaza daily

 

• Phase Two: Negotiated during Phase One; Release of all remaining living hostages, including male soldiers; Israeli withdrawal from Gaza; Permanent end to hostilities

• Phase Three: Remains of hostages who were killed returned to families; Major reconstruction plan for Gaza

June 3, 2024. They don't say...

How far we are from Phase Three yet : you look through the main Israeli media today, and you hear about 

Body of Murdered Israeli Presumed Held by Hamas Since Oct. 7 Found in Gaza Border Kibbutz Nir Oz 

The man's name is Dolev Yahoud, 35, a devoted paramedic always volunteering in all cases of emergency. He paid with his life for his undaunted spirit, after managing to shelter his pregnant wife and kids.Yahoud, Yehud, in Arabic, means "Jew". All the Hamas men I had to deal with in my Gaza years never spoke of "Israelis" but of "Yehudi", Jews. Did they know he even was a Jew by name, when they murdered him, on October 7 ?

He was thought to have been kidnapped, to be among the 124 missing. "They" say his body was found in Nir Oz after almost eight months - the Other They - but what's left of a body after eight months ? Nir Oz is not so vast. Why don't they tell the whole truth, as it is ? Always and only bits and scraps, cloaked in opacity.

Rest in peace, Dolev. May you forgive them all ?

June 4, 2024. Lies and deception. End of line.

This morning, they hit us with the news : "Hostages Nadav Popplewell, Amiram Cooper, Yoram Metzger, Chaim Peri, die in Hamas captivity", whereas the little info we get says it happened four months ago. The saddest day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 5, 2024. This casual attitude toward human life.

"Definitely. It feels like Israel did not do enough to release them. It was a huge mistake to stop the first deal that brought back my mother (Tamar Metzger). I don’t know why that deal was halted. It seems like it was due to various ego battles. They thought they could get a better position or something, but it turned out to be a mistake. That deal should have continued until all the hostages were released. Why stop halfway? Why take just 110 when you can get 240? Hamas isn’t going anywhere. They’re in Gaza, and you can deal with them later – or on another pretext. Our hostages are dying, they’re not going anywhere and we’re left with nothing. Even for one person, it was worth continuing the deal. I don’t understand this casual attitude toward human life. I’m sorry."

 

 

June 6, 2024. Loving Dolev, Haim, Amiram, Yoram, Nadav, and our non-implied friends iu Gaza.

Every day we look for openings, reasons. What is it that went so wrong ? What is it we did not do, that we could have done, to make things change for the better. As Yoram's son puts it, Why stop halfway in November 2023 ?

Why take just 110 when we could get 240 ?

The last time I was in Nir Oz, early May, the mood was darker than in February. It was like the men there knew their comrades, brothers, were gone. They knew, deep inside, that hope had been partly crushed. That they were being lied to.

And yet, we still expect the return of Oded Lifshitz, Alex Dancyg, Naama Levy, Noa Argamani !

 

June 8, 2024. Price of freedom.

When her name was written here, Thursday evening, along with Oded Lifshitz's, Alex Dancyg's, Naama Levy's, none of us could imagine Noa Argamani would be freed this morning, after some 250 days in captivity, from one place to the next. Two hundred meters from the apartment where she was kept prisoner, three other hostages were released in the same operation. Later came the human cost of the raid : over 200 Palestinians and 1 Israeli officer killed. Some 400 people wounded.

So far, only three hostages had been released by force, in eight months. Out of 240.

110 were released in November through negotiations.

 

June 9, 2024. Mixed emotions.

"October 7 is a new family that has been born to us" 

"We have always said that a military rescue is something that can be done, but I don't see how another 120 hostages can be rescued militarily. Overall, in these heroic rescues, seven hostages have been rescued alive." 

 Hostages' families push for hostage deal. The Jerusalem Post, June 9, 2024

 

June 10, 2024. Human life is above everything.

"What needs to be done is getting all the hostages back at any price and under any condition. That is what's most important now. Human life is above everything. I won't tell the IDF or the government what to do. They're grown up enough to know what they need to do. I'm just waiting for them to really bring everybody back. That's my only hope. And I haven't lost hope."

Louis Har  Rescued Israeli Hostage: 'Our Greatest Fear Was Israeli Planes'

June 12, 2024. Stuck in a time loop.

 "It appears that we're stuck in a time loop that repeats itself every few months"

Amos Harel, "Without Israel-Hamas Deal, Gaza Fighting Will Aimlessly Drag On, and the North Could Plunge Into Full-scale War".

June 13, 2024. War in the North. War in the South-West. War in the South-East.

Hundreds of rockets launched by God's Party (Hezbollah) in Lebanon.

The North of Israel is on fire (fifteen reported fires due to rockets from Lebanon and intercepting missiles).

Escalating attacks of merchant vessels in the Red Sea by Ansar Allah (God's Partisans), the real name of the Houthis' party in Yemen. Why is it that the media always speak of Hezbollah and the Houthis, obscuring the identity of these parties ? God's Partisans' motto : Allahu Akbar, Death to America, Death to Israel, Cursed be the Jews, Victory to Islam. Right behind, you find the Islamic Republic of Iran. Have we forgotten April 13-14, 2024 ?

 

June 21, 2024. Is ignorance bliss ? 

 How do we know what we think we know ?

On May 9 we took the decision to subscribe to the daily Haaretz. Did that mean a turning-point in our perception and analysis of situations ? Until then, we wouldn't have done it, mainly due to their political stands, that some could call obsessive - at least as far as Bibi-bashing goes. Bashing has never been our take. Never to interfere, from Outside, into internal politics, as a rule.

On May 9, 2024, there were three articles we could not read without subscribing though.
one was by Yaniv Kubovich, Disdain, Denial, Neglect, The Deep Roots of Israel's Devastating Intelligence Failure on October 7. We'd always go for deep roots.

The other was by Netta Ahituv, The Chilling Testimony of a U.S. Neurosurgeon who went to Gaza to save lives.

We are sorry there are no neurosurgeons in our ranks, nobody whose professional skills would render his/her presence in Gaza unquestionable. We badly need to know what is happening in Gaza, speaking of the people.

The third article which, we thought, would make a subscription necessary, was by Judy Maltz. Mark Rudd led antiwar students at Columbia in 1968. He says Gaza protesters are repeating his mistakes.
We would not compare both cases, the U.S. in Viet-Nam, and Israelis in Gaza, but this is not his point, and his analysis of both antiwar protests is well worth reading.

After all, the motto of this chronicle is STOP WAR. RELEASE HOSTAGES, STOP WAR.
Mind the order of the two propositions.

The old quiz of the hen and the egg. The hen of war. The egg of releases.

 

June 23, 2024. War on how many fronts ?

There was a time in Gaza, when I was on a mission to start a peaceful radio from there. Before 2003. Surreal as it may seem now. Arafat, then in Ramallah, was all for it. We had a meeting in his Gaza headquarters for that matter. The usual, people in charge. Eight to ten of them. Two major characters wore army olive pullovers and the regular Saddam moustache. They only spoke of their outrage at British strikes in Iraq. The peace radio in three languages (Arabic, Hebrew, English) was out of the question. As-long-as-the-British-aggression-would-last.

It was then I first realized "Gaza" was only a pawn in neighbours' games. In those years the masters of the game were in Baghdad.

You look at what we have today, with war looming in Lebanon,  God's Party stocking all kinds of ammunition at Beirut civilian airport, and you realize the masters of the game are in Teheran, pulling both strings of Hezbollah and Hamas/Islamic Jihad.

 

June 26, 2024. The hen of war and the egg.

Certainly, everybody wants a cease-fire. The defeated fighters of Hamas & Islamic Jihad - for defeated they are, and a vast proportion of their colossal underground network and arsenal has been destroyed; the exhausted reserve soldiers of the IDF, who long to get their ordinary life back; the US Democrats who badly need some "success" at a time when Trump is leading in the polls by some 100 pts; the European observers, who don't know which stand exactly to take as time goes by, and so on. 

The whole point seems to be : do we first stop fighting and then settle on a deal to free the hostages held in Gaza - or does a deal for the hostages come first, and then the fighting stops ? What comes first ?

When you remember that the war started with over 250 people of all ages (from a few months to mid-eighties) kidnapped and dragged into Gaza, it would seem logical to maintain that hostages have to be released first.

Accounting for our stand : RELEASE HOSTAGES, STOP WAR.

Aren't  both matters entwined ? Isn't it obvious you will not get hostages out under ongoing bombing ?

The crux remains the post-war status of the two islamist movements, the Movement of Islamic Resistance and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Interestingly, the International Criminal Court has named their three leaders war criminals, and the warrants for their arrest should be issued in the coming weeks - and everybody knows now.

Yahyah Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Al-Masri (more commonly known as Deif), and Ismail Haniyeh have become marked men in the eyes of what we may call Universal Justice. So that they can hardly claim anymore to be the "resistants" they boasted to be.

Let's take the time to read what follows :

https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state

On the basis of evidence collected and examined by my Office, I have reasonable grounds to believe that Yahya SINWAR (Head of the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) in the Gaza Strip), Mohammed Diab Ibrahim AL-MASRI, more commonly known as DEIF (Commander-in-Chief of the military wing of Hamas, known as the Al-Qassam Brigades), and Ismail HANIYEH (Head of Hamas Political Bureau) bear criminal responsibility for the following war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of Israel and the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 7 October 2023: 

 

• Extermination as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(b) of the Rome Statute;
• Murder as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(a), and as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
• Taking hostages as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(iii);
• Rape and other acts of sexual violence as crimes against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(g), and also as war crimes pursuant to article 8(2)(e)(vi) in the context of captivity;
• Torture as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(1)(f), and also as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i), in the context of captivity;
• Other inhumane acts as a crime against humanity, contrary to article 7(l)(k), in the context of captivity;
• Cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i), in the context of captivity; and
• Outrages upon personal dignity as a war crime, contrary to article 8(2)(c)(ii), in the context of captivity.

 June 27, 2024. The other side of the coin

In Israel there has been deep outrage at the fact that the other side of the decision of the ICC was as well to indict the Prime Minister and his Minister of Defence. Placing on the "same level" five men who actually have nothing in common. As if the American President and his Secretary of Defence had been indicted by the International Court for their role in the death of tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq during the mass bombings to end the rule of ISIS the Islamic State. Or as if, for that matter, the Russian President and his Chief of Staff had been indicted for their strategy of carpet bombings in Syria against ISIS, which also resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands civilians.

The difference here is that ISIS has long been known as an international terror organization, whereas Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in a number of circles in the West and the Arab world were considered as fighters for the sake of "resistance" if not heroes. Heroes no more. War criminals.

Also, the precise case is that the ICC has no authority over nations which have a proper judicial system. It can only operate concerning lands where there is no such system. Let the Israelis take care of their own internal problems, therefore. The ICC has no validity there. But it does, regarding Palestinian Territories, where no election has been held since 2006, and where there is no judiciary system to really speak of.

In Gaza, men accused of collaboration with the enemy have been seen dragged by their feet from motorbikes across the streets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the judicial system in Gaza, in case you don't know. These pictures were taken in 2012, but more swift executions have been the rule, before and after.

 

June 28, 2024. A plain matter of jurisdiction.

The case made here yesterday about the functioning system of the International Criminal Court was clear-cut. It has "no authority over nations which have a proper judicial system". Case just confirmed by the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC. "ICC warrants postponed as UK steps in". YNet News, June 28, 2024. Speaking of the warrants against PM, Gallant.

What remains, as striking enough at that level, is the specific content of the charges against Haniyeh, Sinwar, Deif.

Extermination, and murder, as a crime against humanity, and as a war crime.

Taking hostages as a war crime.

Rape and other acts of sexual violence, as crimes against humanity, and also as war crimes in the context of captivity.

Torture, as a crime against humanity, and also a war crime, in the context of captivity.

Other inhumane acts as a crime against humanity, in the context of captivity...

 

June 29, 2024. "New language" needed.

 "US proposes new language for Gaza hostage-ceasefire deal - report"     The Jerusalem Post