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Order Jamie Glazov’s new book, ‘United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny, Terror, and Hamas’: HERE.
I didn’t expect to be so overcome with so many emotions upon hearing the news of the identification and repatriation of the remains of the last Israeli hostage kidnapped by Hamas in Gaza, Ran Gvili. In the past several weeks since the second to last hostage was found and returned, a Thai citizen, Ran’s fate and heroism were discussed daily across Israeli media. I feel like I knew him. Perhaps it was fitting that he was the last hostage to be rescued.
Ran Gvili was a 24-year-old police officer, on leave when the Hamas attack and massacre began on October 7, 2023. Ran was recovering from a broken shoulder, but put on his uniform and took his weapon and went out to engage the terrorists who had infiltrated Israel. He ran into the fire, like a true hero not just a bystander, saving many. Unfortunately, he was mortally wounded and Hamas kidnapped his body into Gaza.
It’s said he was the first to go in, and the last to come home.
I didn’t understand the range of emotions yesterday, first as I heard the news from a friend, Ann Marie, in a Zoom meeting, and then in making a video myself, removing the yellow bracelet that I had worn in solidarity every day for more than two years.
I was overcome with joy, that the recovery of the hostages is now a closed chapter in recent Israeli history. I was overcome with grief that even though we knew he was dead, that he was dead. I was overcome because it is now a closed chapter, and Israel has achieved the goal of releasing all the 251 hostages. But it’s also overwhelming knowing that the war is not over, far from it, and that my youngest grandchildren who played with the bright yellow bracelet on my wrist will still have to fight this fight because the objective of eviscerating Hamas is not even close to being done.
Barring a miracle, my grandsons who played with the rubber bracelet not knowing what it represented will end up having to fight the terrorists whose worship to their god of hate and death knows no bounds and transcends their generations.
Ran’s remains were reportedly found intact, buried in a Moslem cemetery in northern Gaza, in his uniform. Uncovering his body also uncovered the lie that Hamas didn’t know where he was, and their inhuman cruelty.
An extensive military operation was launched with hundreds or more soldiers involved, as well as military rabbis, and a team of dentists to identify his remains. His body was draped in an Israeli flag, and soldiers cried as they sang a song affirming their faith, affirming our faith, and the Israeli anthem while saluting the fallen hero. His body was escorted by a convoy of police vehicles, to be brought to his family that was not able to begin closure.
The family spoke of Ran’s bravery, and that they had more pride than grief. Ran’s father, Itzik, spoke personally in the presence of police officers and soldiers accompanying Ran Gvili on his final journey. Speaking to his son, Itzik said, “You dummy, you had every chance to stay at home,” smiling. “But you said, ‘Dad.’ What did you tell me? ‘I won’t leave my friends to fight alone.’” Itzik continued, “You should see the respect that you’re getting here, everyone who brought you. The whole police force is with you, the whole army is with you, the whole nation is with you.”
As the father’s hand touched his son’s coffin, he said, “I’m proud of you, my son.” Then he bent down and kissed the coffin.
Also overwhelming for Israel is that it’s the first time since 2014 that there are no Israeli hostages in Gaza. But that doesn’t mean Hamas won’t keep trying. In Gaza, where they still control much of the territory, and in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) where they have cells and operatives who are waiting to pounce. They’ve done it before. Israeli hostages are currency in their evil Islamic cult of death.
There are still three Israeli soldiers missing from the 1982 Lebanon War, and former Israeli spy, Eli Cohen, who was hanged in Damascus more than 60 years ago. All Israelis await their homecoming as well.
While there are no remaining Israeli hostages, there are millions of Palestinian Arabs who are hostage to Hamas. But their suffering is of their own doing. They elected Hamas, and allowed themselves to participate in the brainwashing by its radical Moslem Brotherhood ideology rather than raise generations that aspired to coexistence, if not peace.
Just as Israel found and repatriated Ran Gvili’s body alone, despite bold statements and aspirations, Israel will be alone to disarm Hamas as “Phase 2” of the 2025 ceasefire begins to be implemented, a cornerstone of which is the disarming of Hamas which they have said they are not going to allow.
The “Board of Peace” offers little actual hope. It is mostly smoke and mirrors. Democratic countries are not on board. While they talk about making a deal and rebuilding Gaza, Israel will pay the price.
I supplied thousands of the yellow rubber bracelets to people who donated to our Israel Emergency Campaign. I gave some away, including to a friend who wore three. From exposure to the sun, the words faded, but he never took them off. Yesterday he sent me a picture of him taking them off and cutting them in half while on a business trip. Israelis are removing their yellow ribbon posters, pins, magnets and more, allowing us to move to the next chapter and begin some healing from the 28 months of trauma.
Will my grandchildren even know that the bracelets existed or what they represented? Will they understand the countless acts of bravery and miracles that Israel experienced amid the terror and trauma? If I haven’t purged all the bracelets and one shows up in a drawer after I am not around, will they wonder what it’s about? Or will this just be part of the legacy that they inherit in an endless war that none of us want or asked for?
I feel like my next writing ought to be my apology to them, that we didn’t finish the job. But the job must be completed. Not through appeasement but through victory. Yet for now, there is a measure of closure and comfort to Ran’s family and loved ones, to his extended community, to Israel broadly. We owe him our thanks, and to the dedication of hundreds of thousands of soldiers who understood their mission was to bring every last hostage home.
Now, many of them who put themselves back into reserves spending hundreds of days away from their own families can rest, and Ran can finally rest in peace.
You’re not alone in these emotions or the unexpected power of them. Among the cascade of thoughts and feelings I experienced was outrage and disgust that Israel was not allowed to finish the job, that so many Israeli soldiers have been killed and so many more maimed for what? That Witkoff and his sidekick, Kushner, could rush in to fix everything neat and tidy according to their ignorant and corrupt views of the Middle East? I can’t even begin to imagine what those soldiers and/or their families are thinking these days. What has Israel gained? Setting Hamas back a bit only for them to remain in power that will inevitably continue to grow?
There is no more validity or value in “negotiating peace” with Hamas, ISIS, Al Qaeda, the PA, or in fact with the “Palestinians” of Gaza who by at least 80% loudly cheered the 10/7 Massacre (many of whom actually held Israeli hostages in their own, private homes!), and who proudly raise their own children to be suicide bombers, than there would have been for Eisenhower to “negotiate” with Heinrich Himmler when Himmler, in cowardly panic, offered to “negotiate” with the Allies in the last days of April 1945.
There’s nothing to negotiate, except, perhaps, whether the terrorists would prefer the noose, the firing squad, or a public hanging from a construction crane, as the ayatollahs of Iran do. Or, okay, maybe a painless lethal injection after they’ve received their Last Meal Request, just to be merciful.
THAT’S the only choice I’d “negotiate” with them.
To leave any of them in power, or even alive, would be like an oncologist cutting out only half of a malignant tumor and leaving the rest of it to grow back and metastasize.
I don’t know if the photo up top if from the funeral or not, but if so, it’s very sad to see Bar Kuperstein still looking so dreadfully thin.
What is a body?
A temporary abode for the eternal soul.
What sets the Jewish soul apart?
Time and place
Mind and Heart
God
Torah
A nation
And its Promised Land.
Do you suppose that time stands still
Waiting for an answer we have yet to know?
Questions may come
And questions go
Wandering in a void
Of pain and sorrow –
But what was
What is
What will be?
Emphatically
Am
Yisrael
Chai.
Well, Hamas is finally out of excuses now. IDF, are you listening?
Agreed.
The IDF should hunt down and execute every Hamas leader, Hamas supporter, Hamas enabler, etc.
And when chickenshit leftists scream “genocide” over taking those trash out, Israel can ask “you mean that genocide in Iran? You had been strangely silent until now.”
(In other words, IDF should tell their detractors to go eat shit.)
The severe malicious cruelty of the Muslim terrorists of Hamas in their treatment of their Jewish captives they had kidnapped is further exposed in the newspaper THE EPOCH TIMES Feb 12, A11, which revealed that the recently freed hostages suffered from hunger as they had been fed only two pieces of pita bread a day. Further to make things even more cruel, while starving the female hostages were forced to cook meals Hamas captors but forbidden to any of the food they had cooked. Those Muslim terrorists of Hamas who did and still do those brutal cruel despicable things should not go unpunished.
Some of the kidnapped victims had been in had been isolated in small dark underground tunnel rooms with no human contact , at all, all the time that they were held as prisoners of Hamas.
One young woman when just freed still had a bullet in her leg. She received no medical treatment for that injury she had after being shot of a Hamas terrorist.
The list could go on about many horrific brutal ways in which the terrorists of Hamas treated the people they had ruthlessly kidnapped.
The point is Hamas is pure evil and likewise the Muslim terrorist are completely and totally evil . This is because the violent brutal cruel false religion that is Islam had infected their hearts and minds.
.
This exposes Islam to be a demonic religion of horrendous wickedness.
Those Muslims terrorists of Hamas should not be allowed to go free with impunity. They need to and should be punished.
Hamas is evil. Likewise, those brutal bestial vile and heinous Muslim terrorists of Hamas are totally wicked, with all the sadistic viciousness of their Islamic demonic influenced minds and hearts.
Those savage Muslim terrorists of Hamas with their heinous and vile sex assaults and abuse and outright rapes of the defenseless helpless girls and young women who are the hostages that they had kidnapped is a dissipate horrendous evil and reveals that horrific wicked character of the Hamas Muslim terrorists.
It’s very good news that the last kidnapped hostages had come home. Yet it should 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 and should be punished.
Those Muslims terrorists of Hamas who committed all those brutal cruel atrocities need to be punished. They should not be allowed to get 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.
It should be remembered that prisoner exchange is absurdly, it’s too lopsided the large number of Arab /Muslim terrorists released compared to the number of Israeli’s peaceful Israeli citizens who Hamas had kidnapped October 7, 2023 was invasion is out of proportion. There is no balance; it’s unequal, in favor of the Muslim terrorists.
Furthermore, ridiculous and wrong that so many dangerous unrepentant Muslim terrorists will be freed, to engage is further engage in actions of murderous and destructive Islamic terrorism.
The major reason why those despicable Muslim terrorists of Hamas cruelly treated the hostages who they had kidnapped and held captive in so many unconscionably vicious vile and heinous ways is revealed in the Bible. Which informs its reader that there are some men who are so very callous heartless and malicious because they have had “their conscience seared with a hot iron.” First Timothy 4 ;2. [K.J.V.]
For those brutal and evil Muslims of Hamas , that “hot iron.” is Islam.