The Long Awaited Hostage Transfer Watching Live.

By Phyllis Chesler

First, Hamas delayed the hostage release, delayed disclosing the names of who was being released. More psychological torture? Does this delay rise to the level of breaking the “cease fire”?

Second, as Hamas is sending the first three female hostages back to Israel, they are out there in force, fully masked and armed. They are still terrorizing the hostages on their way out to freedom.

Third, none of the Gazan men and boys who are mobbing and blocking and slowing down the Red Cross ambulance which is holding the three Israeli female hostages on their back to Israel, look emaciated. No one seems to have been starved or genocidally exterminated. They are all holding up their cellphone cameras. The streets are chaotic.

Fourth, Still, the IDF is planning for every eventuality even as the Israeli government is collecting and transferring Gazan Arab terrorists from Israeli jails. Men with a great deal of blood on their hands; men who will commit mass murders again and again; men who will be living in Yehuda and Shomron, East Jerusalem, and possibly in Gaza. What is wrong with this picture?

Fifth, let’s take careful note of how well fed, housed, educated, and medically serviced these barbarian terrorists have been in Israeli hands.

Sixth, Israelis are, even now, in the streets, demonstrating both for and againt this deal.

Seventh–the Red Cross never once visited the Israeli hostages. I have nothing to say about such an egregious omission.

Eighth, I cannot begin to imagine the torture these three women must have suffered nor can anyone predict what they will need to recover “well enough” to rejoin their former lives.

By the way, the IDF had to rescue Shaul Oren’s corpse, there since 2014, a corpse that Hamas had refused to hand over.

More to come.

First published in Phyllis’ Newsletter

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