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[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
Gregg Roman considers the hostage release, and the huge price Israel has paid for their freedom, here: “Israel’s Hostages Come Home, But At What Price?,” by Gregg Roman, Middle East Forum, October 8, 2025:
Every person of conscience celebrates President Trump’s announcement [Speak for yourself — Ed.]. After more than two years of agony, Israeli families will finally embrace their loved ones. Children will see their fathers, parents will hold their children, and spouses will be reunited. This is a moment of pure joy that resonates across the free world. Those who have prayed for this day, demanded this day, now see it arrive.
To the families who have camped outside the Prime Minister’s residence, who have marched every Saturday night, who have lived in suspended animation since October 7—their nightmare is ending. Their strength has moved mountains. The entire Israeli nation stands with them as they prepare to welcome their loved ones home. No one, absolutely no one, questions the imperative of bringing them back.
And yet, even as the world celebrates, we must ask: at what price? And more critically: what comes next?
The arithmetic of this exchange should give everyone pause. Israel will release over 1,700 Palestinian prisoners, including 250 serving life sentences for the most heinous acts of terrorism. These aren’t stone-throwers or protesters. These are the architects of the Park Hotel Passover massacre, the planners of the Sbarro pizzeria bombing, the orchestrators of attacks that turned school buses into crime scenes. Each has blood on their hands and expertise in their heads.
Hamas is trading 48 hostages—20 living and 28 dead—for 1,700 experienced operatives—a massive force multiplication that transforms tactical defeat into strategic victory. Every released prisoner returns to Gaza or the West Bank as a hero, a symbol of resistance, armed with years of additional training and burning with renewed purpose.
History provides a grim preview of what comes next. Yahya Sinwar, the architect of October 7, spent 22 years in Israeli prison studying Hebrew, analyzing Israeli society, planning his revenge. Released in the 2011 Shalit deal among 1,026 other prisoners, he used his freedom to orchestrate the deadliest day in Israel’s history. Today, Israel is releasing another generation of potential Sinwars.
The framework speaks optimistically of Hamas agreeing to disarm, to leave Gaza, to accept peaceful coexistence. But Hamas has committed to none of this. They’ve agreed only to Phase 1—the hostage exchange that strengthens their position. Points 2-20 of Trump’s plan remain aspirational, contingent on Hamas’s voluntary compliance with demands no genocidal movement has ever accepted without military defeat….
Hamas has made clear it will not disarm completely. It wants to remain a fighting force. Nor has it agreed to have its leaders in Gaza removed from the Strip. It clearly wants to remain in a condition to claim that it has emerged victorious from the war — with victory being defined as having thousands of its combatants still standing despite the massive IDF effort to destroy them. Hamas, though battered, has not yet been completely defeated, and still has 15,000-20,000 combatants, in Gaza, their numbers being swelled by new recruits to the terror group. These refusals are so far being glossed over in all the understandable jubilation over the release of the hostages.
History teaches that ideological movements committed to genocide don’t negotiate themselves out of existence. The Allies didn’t offer Nazi Germany a twenty-point peace plan hoping the SS would voluntarily disarm. They demanded unconditional surrender, destroyed Nazi military capability, and rebuilt from scratch. Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel’s annihilation and whose leaders promise to repeat October 7 “again and again,” requires the same treatment.
So yes, let the world celebrate these hostages’ return. Let Israel embrace them, heal with them, and honor their survival. But no one should mistake this tactical success for strategic victory. Israel is purchasing today’s relief with tomorrow’s security, saving current hostages while creating conditions for future ones.
Of those 250 convicted murderers that Israel is now freeing, how many will promptly return to plotting the murders of more Israelis, the way that Yahya Sinwar did after being freed in 2011, becoming the mastermind of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023? How many of the 1,700 others the IDF took into custody during this war who are also being freed, had been, or will now become, after being freed, Hamas terrorists? The Shalit exchange of 2011, in which more than a thousand terrorists were exchanged for one soldier, and among those 1,000 were many who went on to murder hundreds of Israelis, provides a cautionary example.
The families waiting at border crossings deserve their reunions. But other families—not yet formed, children not yet born—deserve more than becoming the next generation’s hostages. They deserve the permanent peace that comes only through Hamas’s complete defeat….
If Hamas balks at disarming, as it is required to do under Phase 2 of the deal, Israel should declare that constitutes a material breach of the peace agreement and renew its fight against the terror group in Gaza, including retaking territory it had puled back from as part of Phase 1. If that angers President Trump, so be it.
When his Camel Jocky Dies he is going to find out who Allah really is
In prisoner exchanges, or in this case prisoners for hostages
exchange, it’s always so lopsided in favor of the Muslim terrorists.
Why is that? Is it because the Muslims simply refuse to rescue
their people unless it is extremely advantageous for them to do so
whereas the Israelis are willing to rescue their people even if it’s
a disadvantage to them.
Sounds like the Muslims – with their ideology of subjugating or
killing everyone else and their honor killings and their killing of
apostates, not to mention how they exchange prisoners – are
cold blooded with each other too.
“In prisoner exchanges, or in this case prisoners for hostages
exchange, it’s always so lopsided in favor of the Muslim terrorists.
Why is that? ”
I would venture a guess….there are many many more murderous Jew Hating Muslims who get caught on the battlefield than Jews. And the IDF appear to be way better fighters with better equipment.
Israel’s IMI had better start producing weapons big time….tanks and fighters of their own and not rely on the U.S. and Great Britain. The U.K. has already been captured by the Jihadis. What happens when the American Left wins back Congress and/or the Presidency. It will be worse than when Biden was the fake president.
This may be so, but I would rather the Israelis kill them in battle than keeping them lock up, it will be a just end to Hamas and everyone knows they will not honor this peace proposal, so Israel gits the hostages and Israel has free range to fire when Hamas breaks the peace!!!
Maybe Israel needs to intimate to Hamas and their ilk that the next terrorist attack on any Jew, whether Israeli or Diaspora, or on any Israeli Arab, Druze or Christian, will trigger the introduction of a Bill bringing in the death penalty for terrorism.
Logically, if concern for the hostages caused some conservatism by the IDF, then not having to worry about them will make it a lit easier to put huge bombs in every tunnel, and collapse the whole damn city, if it comes to that.
But if all the regional Arab nations put immediate and strong pressure on Hamas to comply, they may. These people preach ideology but like all violent nut jobs MONEY is their main concern. Paying them off will shut most of them up.
They are as committed to Allah as Hans Gruber was to global revolution.
Yasser Arafat died a billionaire. No one should forget that, or ignore the implications.
What you said is true.
Why you would get three down votes for making sense should be embarrassing for those who did it.
I did have to look up Hans Gruber.
I’ve seen Die Hard more times than I am going to admit. I’ve actually seen all of them. I’m not proud of that, but there are worse things I could do.
Both sides have kind of lost their mind. But the PEOPLE of Israel, from what I read, are applauding this heartily.
The people doubting Hamas’ sincerity are not wrong, but this sort of keyboard warrior “we need to get rid of the Hamas threat” are delusional. The only plan to do that on the table, that I know of, is the more or less literal destruction of the whole of Gaza, which would not be without global lasting and negative repercussions to Israel. This is obvious.
In my view, this peace is perceived by regional Arab States as in THEIR interest. They have whack jobs of their own to contend with, and they certainly don’t need a second mass exodus of Palestinian refugees.
That prisoner exchange is to lopsided and also to dangerous .Isreal receiving the few serving Israelis who the Muslim terrorists had kidnapped and not yet murmured for thousands of menacing malicious Hamas Muslims terrorists is an action by the Israeli government of desperation and folly.
Desperation in that Israel does need to have those peaceful surviving Israeli’s captives freed. Very understandably so.
Folly it is to release so many , unrepentant Muslim terrorists to further engage in future murderous and destructive jihad attacks,
That “peace deal” overlooks the fact that those Muslims terrorists of Hamas who committed all those brutal cruel atrocities are getting away with complete and total impunity for the many horrific evil actions they committed. As mass murderers and kidnapping then the horrendous criminal affronts, they performed on the people who they had kidnapped and held hostage. Awful things as sexual assault and outright rapes. as well torture and starvation of their hostages. Those wicked and vicious Hamas terrorists even kept the people who they had kidnapped locked in small dark dirty hot isolated rooms.
After World War II, many Nazi’s had to give ab account for the evil things they did and were punished for their war crimes. The same war crimes trials and punishments need to be done to those Muslim terrorists of Hamas.
i think if rest of the backers of hamas FEAR what will happen to them if this happens again, they will start tribunals to wipe out hamas for ALL time.
Hamas has just started to release Israeli hostages. Now Blinkin is trying to give credit to Biden for the initial steps, and that Trump basically piggybacked off what Biden did.
The exchange of hostages to prisoner exchange is, of course, lopsided. Trump has called in leaders in the Middle East who will assist in holding Hamas accountable. This is a remarkable achievement that only Trump could win. The man is amazing. I just don’t see how this could be spun in a negative way, but leave it to a handful here to downplay it.
Let me be perfectly clear Trump is the only person who could have pulled this peace deal off. Let’s just hope Netanyahu doesn’t break the ceasefire with a false flag. Netanyahu must not risk alienating Israel’s only faithful ally in the world. Without Trump’s enthusiastic support, the next shoe to fall will be Congress threatening to cut off the funds Israel needs to defend itself in a still-hostile region. It’s time Netanyahu abandons any illusion that he can force Trump’s hand by unilaterally taking military action against Muslim states in the Middle East.
It is ,indeed, very good news that they are coming home. Yet not be forgotten that those few hostages who have been earlier, freed, a number of months ago, are now “a shadow of their former selves” is both sad and tragic as well as understandable.
The other kidnapped hostages who should be released because of that so called “peace deal” will probably be just a traumatized ,if not more so, because the longer time they had to endure the extreme crudely and sex abuse by those vicious malicious vile and heinous savages that are the Muslim terrorists of Hamas. Considering the sever inhuman horrendously brutal abusive treatment those Muslim terrorists have inflected on their captives is an affront to all that is good decent and right. Those terrorists of Hamas should not be allowed to go free with impunity.
They need to be punished.
As a parent, I can only imagine the joy and profound relief at the return of the living, Israeli hostages for each of their families.
However, in true duplicitous performance, Hamas and the greater Muslim community are celebrating in Gaza and throughout the Muslim world with chants of Allahu Akbar.
While the western world is glorifying this as both the sequestering and defeat of “terrorism” and Hamas, somebody should read the fine print in this deal. It is a disaster. These incarcerated, murderous terrorists are being released back into Gaza, Judea-Samaria and Jerusalem. They are now closer to their ultimate goal of the control of Jerusalem in order to fulfill their claim of the Al Asqa mosque being the “faraway mosque” spoken of in their Islamic literature. Historically impossible since it wasn’t until 1400 years after G-d’s revelation to us at Mt.Sinai, that their false prophet claimed his supposed revelation from Gabriel. Factually, the Jewish nation had long resided in Jerusalem especially while the Israelites lived under their two anointed kings, Kings David and his son King Solomon.
The sheer mathematics of this equation is evidence enough that Hamas, and their negotiators won.
Straddling the desires of the return of the hostages with Israel’s security needs, Trump’s negotiated resolution has now put Israel in a most aggrieved position while claiming otherwise.
I am heartbroken as the legacy of hostage taking has proved to be the most determinant factor in Israel fighting this war.
Now, Israel has Trump and his Middle East minions acting as the guard dogs of Israel’s sovereign security through a deal that has absolutely assured that more innocent Israelis will be murdered. How does one reconcile the payment for the 20 living hostages being the release of 85 murderous terrorists for each hostage?
If Israel doesn’t resolve to cease negotiating with terrorists, however much they choose to avoid it, the country will have innocent Israeli blood on its own hands and all of the governmental and societal attempts to justify it will deeply affirm the willing subjugation of Jewish lives for “peace”. That is a horror both difficult to contemplate or to accept.
In the wake of this nightmare deal for”peace”, may the sovereign G-d of Israel forgive us.
This is a statement of your belief in a willing human sacrifice, who is able to absolve people of their sins. Human sacrifice is an ABSOLUTE ABOMINATION to the G-d of Israel as is the worship of a god-man which G-d considers idolatry.
Israel indeed is held accountable by G-d but according to G-d those of the nations (non-Jews) are to follow the 7 Noahide laws. Nothing in G-d’s word in the Tanakh references your savior except through adulterated texts in your book.
I suggest you obtain the two volumes of the books Let’s Get Biblical by Rabbi Tovia Singer. Highly informative if you want to know why Jews don’t believe in Jesus.
As for Israel, what do you say about the new pope, as a worldwide representative of Christianity?
Let’s hope the Israel’s put tracking devices, in/on all these terrorist and if they do what terrorist like to do. Kill, The Israeli Army will find them.
islam must be remove from the West, period
An alternate heading; “Terrorist Prisoners Freed, and the World Celebrates”.