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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.”]
Dr Hagai Ben-Artzi is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother-in-law. And he is deeply critical of the deal Netanyahu has agreed to with Hamas, believing that the exchange of nearly 2000 Palestinian prisoners, 250 of whom are convicted murderers serving life sentences, for 20 Israeli hostages, will only lead in the future to hundreds or thousands of Israeli victims of those prisoners being freed today.
More on Ben-Artzi’s scathing remarks can be found here: “Dr. Hagai Ben-Artzi: We are signing off on the next massacre and kidnappings,” by Uzi Baruch, Israel National News, October 9, 2025:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother-in-law, Dr. Hagai Ben-Artzi, spoke in the Arutz Sheva – Israel National News studio Thursday, offering scathing criticism and dire warnings regarding Israel’s agreement with Hamas.
When asked if he also feels a sense of joy at the news, Ben-Artzi replied: “There is always joy. I rejoiced when the three soldiers were freed in the Jibril Deal, and I rejoiced when Gilad Shalit returned. But at the time, even back then and even more so today, I knew that with our own hands we were signing the next kidnapping, the next massacre, and the next murders.”
Ben-Artzi noted that when he opposed the Shalit deal in 2011 and was labeled a “spoilsport,” he never imagined that its price would ultimately be “around two thousand dead and murdered, and thousands more wounded. And even now, we cannot fathom the scale of the next disaster we are signing onto at this very moment. We don’t yet see the faces or the names, the towns and the homes — but for me, it’s already real. For forty years already, I’ve fought against the moral abomination of releasing terrorists.”…
How many Israelis will be murdered in the future by the prisoners who are to be freed on Sunday? One thousand? Two thousand? Many more, one can be sure, than the 20 Israeli hostages who will be freed.
“[US] President [Donald] gave us the right solution immediately after taking office – ‘conquer and we’ll start a process of emigration.’ But because of our hostage psychosis, we wanted another ten or twenty hostages freed and lost the chance for a strategic solution. The only solution is removing the refugees. If they are not removed, they’ll march on Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Be’er Sheva, because in 1948 they were expelled from there. Now that they’re in tents, they have nowhere to return to — and what will the State of Israel do when faced with them?”
He also cited Supreme Court rulings that prohibit firing on civilians—something, he said, that would prevent Israel from responding to a mass civilian march from Gaza….
But the Israeli Supreme Court did not prohibit non-lethal methods of crowd control, including tear gas, tasers, rubber bullets, and smoke bombs. What the Supreme Court had in mind were domestic protesters holding demonstrations. A mass march by millions of Arabs from outside Israel, hoping to storm into Israel to physically claim their “right of return” is something else; it’s a quasi-military act, and should those non-lethal weapons be insufficient to stop the marchers, only then should the IDF use live fire, including live fire directed at their lower legs, in order to inhibit their moving, should tear gas, rubber bullets, tasers, and smoke bombs not be enough.
Ben-Artzi was virtually alone among prominent Israelis in opposing the 2011 trade of 1,014 imprisoned terrorists for a single Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. But his Cassandra-like warnings then proved prescient: many of those freed went on to kill more than a thousand Israelis. And just one of them, Yahya Sinwar, was the mastermind of the Hamas atrocities carried out on October 7, 2023. He recognizes the deep relief felt by the hostage families, and all Israelis, upon learning that all 20 of the hostages not murdered by Hamas in captivity would be coming home. But he also knows the terrible future price that Israelis will pay for this trade of hundreds of murderers for 20 innocent civilians. Ben-Artzi wants Israelis to know the real price of this Phase One of the deal. And once they realize its cost, they should be far less enthusiastic about agreeing to Phase Two of the agreement, which Hamas has already been demanding be modified so that the terror group can keep some, though not all, of its weapons.
Sadly for the last 50+ years Israeli leadership made Israel a vassal state of America. This deal is not Bibi’s deal it is Trump’s deal. Bibi is being forced to accept it. He had no choice. Instead looking at it from the glass half empty to half full perspective. First all living hostages are back home. Which is good. Second HAMAS will never agree to the second phase of the agreement. We already see they broke the ceasefire.
Anyone remember how Clinton pressured Ehud Barak to give everything Arafat wanted? And more. Still Arafat rejected it. HAMAS like all other Jihadis don’t want peace. They want to dominate the entire world and Israel in on their way achieving their goal..
Until the west including America stop capitulating to Islamo Fascists Jihadis will continue on the path they are in.
no matter which way one looks at this it is really mostly on Israel. there is no reason for the country to allow itself at 80 years to have retained such dependence on the US. i am certain this contributor is aware of the very credible claims of extensive israeli influence in the. halls of our congress and financial institutions to the chagrin of many american citizens which is fueling to a large extent anti semitism. There are many calls for transparency in the lobbyists and many further claim it has distorted our body politic. This so called deal is incredible any fool can see it solves nothing other than allowing hamas breathing space to reconfigure and rearm. Clearly trump to his shame strong armed netanyahu who whatever his other faults is completely correct on the issue of gaza. I feel as disturbed as I did with ariel sharon’s actions and am wondering what exactly trump is going to do about the absolute violations of the terms of ceasefire. Within 3 days reports were that 52 people were publicly executed and perhaps the long term plan is to allow all these factions to eliminate as many of their opponents and then respond when leadership and fighters have been culled. If trump actually believes the international opposition to israel will evaporate if hamas fails to comply i believe he is being very foolish. There will always be a way to villainize the victims in the eyes of most the world. It would be very useful for our world leaders to have an accurate operating understanding of islam and their objectives
“it is really mostly on Israel. there is no reason for the country to allow itself at 80 years to have retained such dependence on the US.”
Yes, it is all on Israel to do the dirty work of dealing with the hajji Muslim terrorists in Iran who are howling death to America –
which WE enriched and then empowered while they were killing our troops. Their job to deal with them and the same and other terrorist organizations they use to attack Israel and not just us on 9/11 and elsewhere.
Almost all of the dirty work of actually taking them on face to face and shooting them into the dirt must be all on Israel… oh, we’ll drop a few bombs once in a while to let them know we’re serious. Maybe a president will fire a few rockets at some of them once in a while. But it’s Israel’s job to protect us from those Middle Eastern hajjis who threaten to destroy us while at the same time attempting unsuccessfully to destroy Israel.
And really, how is it that a postage stamp of a country that has been surrounded on all sides by enemy nations constantly attacking them for 60 years hasn’t developed the same industrial capacity that we have?
Israel has exactly the same population as New York City and they STILL don’t have a fully self sufficient military with a navy, air force, and Army?
How can that be???? What’s holding them back???
And then there’s that dangerous Israeli influence they’ve bought with our politicians!
I remember how Israel bought the cooperation and support of Obama/Biden, and then did the same again with Biden/Harris. They dug deeper than that to co-opt the support of Senator Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
And of course we can all see that the House’s Anti-Semitic Socialist Sisterhood have been and still are in the Israeli’s deep back pockets: Ilhan Omar, Rhashida Tlaib, AOC, etc. Everywhere we look since Oct. 7th, we can all see that influence in government, on our campuses, in our Woke corporate world, etc. that Israel has purchased.
I mean… that Israeli purchase of politicians and other spheres of influence is so OBVIOUS!
There is a LOT of American commerce and foreign policy that is done in the Middle East that we farm out to Israel to do. While they share many of their advancements in defense technology with us, having their own version of Silicon Valley that isn’t polluted with Woke.
Deeper thought than trite “everybody knows” would serve you better.
The author is quite amusing is his reverence for a “supreme” court ruling. These justices are people like everyone else. When they are wrong they should be ignored. The only way to save Israel is by the spilling of blood, just like any other war in the history of man. As President Andrew Jackson said, “let’s see him enforce it.”
The Supreme Court in Israel has far more power the the Supreme Court in America. Ever since Menachem Begin was prime minister, the left increasingly coopted the judiciary in Israel in reaction to losing power. In the nineties, the Supreme Court asserted power that it never had. It controls the actions of ministers and generals. For example, shooting Gazans trying to approach and breach the border fence is regulated. Even if bulldozers approached they were to be regarded as agricultural tools where there was no agriculture.
As much as I admire Bibi, the 100 to 1 hostage/prisoner swap is the ‘albatross’ around his neck that I pray he would stop immediately. From day one, as ‘Captain of the sinking ship, he should have refused any prisoner swap for hostages and applied the Marine Law of ‘women and children first, volunteers second, volunteers third and then he says who lives or dies, which would be the hostages. This war would have been over in 6 months, thousands of IDF lives saved Hamas totally eliminated.
It’s never to late to start.
That’s a great theory. Now just convince the Israeli population that Netanyahu depends on for their support to remain in office of that.
Then eliminate all the time up until now that the American White House has refused to allow Israel to wage full scale war on these terrorists – also contributing to how long it has taken Israel to get to this point.
Israel’s voting population and values of it’s citizens are not Americans values and our values of our citizens.
Not to mention we have been equally happy to make lopsided prisoner trades ourselves if we want to criticize Israel.
I’m think of a dope smoking female basketball player for a terrorist arms merchant responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, including American deaths.
It would have caused elections to not save the 20.
There was so much US and far left (deep state, if you will) manipulation of hostages families’ grief -some not all- that the return of 20 men seemed more important than the survival of 10 million Israelis-some 8 million of them Jews. That’s about half of all Jews on earth. Their lives are now at stake. And the rest of the Jews in the world are more vulnerable too. As we read about every day. The trade ratio is a sign of weakness.
I loved seeing the return of those young men when they were hugged by their mothers and brothers and girlfriends. Those beautiful twin bothers and man who had been photographed digging his own grave. What joy!
But it unleashed terrorists to plan and execute the next10/7.
If Israel and the USA can destroy Iranian nuclear weapon sites and execute
Soleimani with precision and defeat attacks from Egypt, Syria and Jordan
in the Six Day War and other wonders against all odds,
then Israel can track and defeat 250 terrorists released in exchange for
blessed Israeli hostages.
God bless Israel for valuing the lives of Jewish people while the rest
of the corrupt world holds life as cheap and disposable.
God bless Israel and deliver them from evil.
Nothing more obviously makes somebody an expert analyst of a leader’s foreign or domestic policy than the ultimate title “I’m His Brother In Law!”. Great stuff there!
What I see instead is that agreeing to this deal deprives Hamas of those Israeli hostages to hide behind and use to leverage opposition to Israel’s continued destroying of Hamas at home. All Hamas has left to hide behind now is the other Arabs in Gaza.
It also deprives Hamas of something more important: the support of Muslim countries that have now joined Trump in demanding Hamas stand down and disarm. Those same countries are no longer going to continue funding and/or arming Hamas.
Those Muslim countries aren’t going to stare Trump in the face and defend Hamas in the UN the next time the UN sticks its nose in it.
They are not completely, but almost entirely, now on their own if and probably when they attempt their next terrorist attacks. They want to bet that Trump won’t tell Israel: “Okay, go ahead and exterminate them, we won’t stand in your way any longer, we gave them a chance.”?
The release of the 2,000 convicted criminal/terrorists certainly offends many including myself.
But then on the other hand I remember they are no longer safe and secure, comfortable in Israeli prisons financed by Israeli taxpayers, able to communicate and plan. They are now known and convicted Hamas terrorists and supporters, with the Israelis having their biometrics and no longer having the administrative burden of keeping them comfortably imprisoned in security.
Instead, they are now free range terrorists somewhere back in Gaza ripe for harvesting, no longer a bargaining chip for Hamas to grab hostages to demand their return.
Offensive as it is to release them, they are mostly going to be off the playing field in one way or the other while Israel hopes that this deal in its’ totality will build towards a more durable and long lived peace.
The part that gets less discussion is that Trump has wrapped all this up in trade deals, sanctions, lifting of sanctions, etc to offer all these surrounding Muslim nations and Qatar a deal they cannot refuse just because they want to continue supporting Hamas and hajji terrorism.
We will see where this all goes and whether the Abrahamic Accords spread further into the Muslim countries in the next three years.
We don’t know what kind of deal Trump and Netanyahu have between them. Thus far, they have shown the world, including all of America, that Hamas is essentially lying barbarians, which would make it far easier for the US to back up Israel and wipe out Hamas when they attempt another atrocity.