When the news broke yesterday of the daring rescue of four Israeli hostages, I felt as though members of my family had been freed. I cried when I saw Noa’s father touch her as though he could not believe she was really alive, and when I heard that her dying mother (the same age as me) would see her daughter and know that she was free. I cried when I saw Almog’s mother and grandfather hold him tight, and I cried again when I read that his father had died hours before the good news came.
I felt joy and pride and relief, and sorrow too – for the families of the hostages who are still held, including Noa’s boyfriend, for the families of the hostages already killed by Hamas in captivity, for those killed on October 7 by the brutal terrorists who started this conflict.
And yes, of course, it was awful to see the suffering of innocent children killed in the market place, whether by Israeli fire or Hamas RPGs. Their deaths were a terrible example of what can happen if you hold hostages in a crowded area full of civilians. So many thousands of people would still be alive if Hamas had never launched their attack on October 7 and started this terrible war.
But look at some responses to the news, and you might think that Israel had planned the whole thing in order to kill as many Palestinians as possible, while Hamas quietly released the hostages as a noble, humanitarian act.
