The news of the four Israeli hostages rescued last week in Gaza resurrected latent hopes across Israel amid weeks of increased attacks by Hezbollah along the northern border and a rising Israel Defense Force (IDF) death toll in Gaza. The testimonies of the rescued hostages were a sobering reminder of the war’s objectives. They should also serve as a reality check to delusional academic communities and world leaders who are bent on vilifying Israel, and, in absurd cases, have thrown in their support behind Hamas.
On Saturday afternoon, June 8, special forces in the IDF, Internal Security Service (ISA), and the “Yamam” National Counter-Terrorism Police Unit successfully rescued Noa Argamani (26), Almog Meir Jan (22), Andrey Kozlov (27), and Shlomi Zvi (41), who were kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7. The remarkable mission followed weeks of preparation and precise intelligence gathering by the ISA’s Hostage Task Force.
The hostages were kept in two separate locations in the central Gazan town of Nuseirat, and the rescue operations were carried out simultaneously for fear that, once the mission was underway, the hostages would be murdered.
Hamas officials called the operation a “complex war crime.” They alleged that the IDF used the U.S. humanitarian pier to stage their entry into Nuseirat through aid trucks and massacred civilians before finding the hostages. According to one Gazan account, “A truck arrived carrying humanitarian aid and clothing, and suddenly 10 [IDF] soldiers got out and shot at me […] The artillery shelling started, and I saw dozens of citizens on the ground, including people with their heads cut off. The truck came from the American port that the occupation established in the Gaza Sea.”
The Hamas Ministry of Health, known for feeding biased war statistics and casualty numbers to major international media networks, reported that 274 Gazan civilians were killed and 700 injured. Al-Jazeera, which Israel has recently blocked from the country for false reporting and collaboration with Hamas, called the operation “a complete bloodbath.” One Hamas spokesman announced: “We killed a number of Israeli prisoners in response to what happened today” while Hezbollah expanded its missile reach into northern Israel because the “IDF violated the rules of confrontation” in Nuseirat.
On the other hand, the reports and videos released by the IDF tell a different chain of events. Uniformed special forces units covertly entered Nuseirat under aerial and artillery support, breached the buildings where the hostages were kept, and eliminated the armed guards who attempted to murder the hostages once the purpose of their mission became clear. With the hostages secured, the units departed on foot to awaiting vehicles while under heavy machine-gun and rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) fire from Hamas militants in the nearby “busy marketplace” and hiding within alleyways. One vehicle broke down and reserve ground units and helicopters were called in to support the rescue. Hamas attempted to down the helicopters by firing several surface-to-air missiles.
In less than an hour, the hostages and rescuers were in helicopters on their way out of Gaza. The commander of the “Yamam” Counter-Terrorism Police Unit, Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora (36), was severely injured during the evacuation and later succumbed to his wounds.
Contradictory reports from Arab and Israeli sources are to be expected, but the details unveil a handful of absurdities. Calling a civilian rescue mission “illegal” and accusing Israel of exploiting the mission to “massacre” Gazan civilians — alleged by many governing officials — shows just how far the European Union, United Nations, and the international public have been swayed by Hamas propaganda.
For example, Ben Saul, a law professor and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism, stated on X that Israel’s rescue mission “may have been illegally launched in anticipation that civilian casualties would be excessive.” Saul went on to say that Israel engaged in the “war crime of perfidy—disguising some forces as protected civilians.”
Such assessments intentionally overlook the perfidious nature of Hamas militants who dress in civilian clothes and launch attacks from civilian centers so that Israeli counterattacks can be blamed for the collateral damage, as was the case in Nuseirat. According to IDF reports, Hamas militants “fired indiscriminately” during the rescue evacuation resulting in civilian casualties.
Like many Palestinian towns, Nuseirat retains its 1967 designation as a Palestinian “refugee camp” even after years of municipal development. In her testimony, the hostage Noa Argamani described being held captive in the home of a “wealthy family” (she was lucky). The other three hostages were kept in a mid-rise apartment building at the home of Abdullah al-Jamal, a spokesman for the Hamas Ministry of Labor and journalist for the US-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit publication Palestinian Chronicle. As stated above, the rescue units came under heavy fire from Hamas combatants in the nearby “busy marketplace.”
Wealthy families, journalists for U.S. nonprofit organizations, and bustling marketplaces don’t exactly match the image most conjure up when thinking of a “refugee camp.” These details also contradict recent media reports of a blockaded Gazan population on the brink of famine and starvation.
Most importantly, the news of rescued hostages should bring the purpose of the war back into focus. Many across university campuses and in governing positions seem to have forgotten how the war started after Oct. 7, the key objectives, and who are the real good guys and bad guys. The rescue mission in Nuseirat was a far cry from a premeditated massacre, as many claim, and was in fact motivated by the fundamental Judeo-Christian principle and the American value of “No one left behind.”
When Dinah, the daughter of the Patriarch Jacob, was raped and abducted by the Shechemites as recorded in Genesis 34, Jacob’s sons mobilized, outsmarted their enemy, and rescued their kin. One can only hope that Jacob’s descendants will continue the mission until all of Israel’s raped and abducted children are returned home.
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