It isn't a hostage 'deal,' it's extortion of Israeli souls - opinion

For more than 10 years, we have warned that appeasement and enabling genocidal terrorists to dictate conduct and equations

 LEFT TO right: Emily Damari, Romi Gonen, and Doron Steinbrecher were released from captivity last week. Anyone with a heart was moved beyond words at their return home, but for the heartless genocidal Hamas barbarians who kidnapped them, human tragedy is the strategy, the writer asserts.  (photo credit: Hamas Military Wing via Reuters)
LEFT TO right: Emily Damari, Romi Gonen, and Doron Steinbrecher were released from captivity last week. Anyone with a heart was moved beyond words at their return home, but for the heartless genocidal Hamas barbarians who kidnapped them, human tragedy is the strategy, the writer asserts.
(photo credit: Hamas Military Wing via Reuters)

Anyone with a heart was moved beyond words at the return home of Emily, Romi, and Doron. Every parent, child, sibling, and friend could almost taste their mothers’ embraces. 

The script could not have been imagined by anyone when Emily raised her three remaining fingers, signaling life, resiliency, and hope. 

The thing is that for the heartless, genocidal Hamas barbarians who stole Emily, Romi, and Doron from their beds on October 7, 2023, human tragedy is the strategy. 

For them and for the murderous Islamic regime in Iran, of which they are proxies, every parent, child, sibling, and friend is a human shield or sacrifice on the altar of genocidal intent to destroy civilization and build an alternate reality on its rubble. 

The thing is that internationally created and funded institutions and agencies in whose “civilian shelters” Emily, Romi, and Doron and other hostages were held have been hijacked and weaponized to sow fear, despair, and distrust that collapse the foundations of democracies. 

"Human rights industry"

The thing is that the “human rights” industry that was entrusted to protect the hostages is inverted to “justify” mutilation, burning people alive, rape, murder, and their abduction – as “resistance.”

 DORON STEINBRECHER is surrounded by Hamas terrorists as she is handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross upon her release from captivity, in Gaza City. Hamas has done it again; it is toying with the hostages, their families, Israel, and the world, says the writer. (credit: REUTERS)Enlrage image
DORON STEINBRECHER is surrounded by Hamas terrorists as she is handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross upon her release from captivity, in Gaza City. Hamas has done it again; it is toying with the hostages, their families, Israel, and the world, says the writer. (credit: REUTERS)

Their release was not the result of “negotiations” that enable making “a deal.” It is the result of multitiered extortion, resulting from decades of appeasement and cemented in 16 months of false moral equivalence – by Western countries, international institutions, terror-supporting campus mobs, and legacy media spewing lies provided by genocidal proxies and their supporting regimes; extortion that will be compounded with every passing day and “stage” of “the deal,” feeding the beast and emboldening genocidal proxies of murderous regimes to continue dictating equations and conduct in this and other contexts.

For more than 10 years, we have warned that appeasement and enabling genocidal terrorists to dictate conduct and equations, even as they trample law and morality, out of the false hope that they’ll “play nice,” will only whet the appetite of terror proxies and their supporting regimes. 

In an unbelievable turn of events, proving once again that reality far exceeds the imagination, even as we waited to see Romi, Doron, and Emily embraced by their no less heroic mothers, we buried deceased soldier Oron Shaul, held by the same genocidal Hamas barbarians for 10.5 years in standing violation of law and morality – enabled by international silence, indifference, false moral equivalency, and impunity from the very organizations, institutions, and countries mandated and entrusted to hold them accountable and uphold foundational principles equally and consistently. 

Standing by Oron’s grave, I understood the meaning of the term “case and cause,” which I have pled for 10.5 years – in the UN, in the State Department, in the Knesset, and every Friday, in Israel’s Gaza border area at the Black Arrow Memorial, desecrated following the October 7 massacre.


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His was indeed a case – which, alongside deceased soldier Hadar Goldin, killed and abducted by Hamas shortly after a 2014 internationally brokered “humanitarian ceasefire” took effect; alongside Avera Mengistu and Hisham a-Sayed, who, unwell, wandered into Gaza in 2014, was our 10.5-year cause – that predicted, and should have prevented, the emboldening of genocidal barbarians with silence, false moral equivalence, and impunity. It was an international failure that fueled the confidence of genocidal proxies and their supporting regimes in Iran, Qatar, and Turkey that rockets, missiles, murder, rape, and the abduction of hundreds on October 7 would be met by continued international silence, false moral equivalency, and impunity, enabling the extortion of Israel.

That we are in the midst of an extortion fiasco and not “a deal” is made clear by the tsunami of antisemitism around the world that continues to rage in Australia, Canada, Germany, and the US, after the alleged sought-after “ceasefire.” 

The explosion of unhinged antisemitism, the world’s oldest hatred, should sound sirens for all who cherish humanity and freedom. 

That this lethal hate, which has mutated by latching on to the organizing idea of each era – religion, science, and the secular “religion” of human rights – was unleashed in response to the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust should have been met with urgency and clarity. 

Instead, the inability to unequivocally condemn regressive barbarism in the name of “progress” signaled “legitimacy” for a multifront war openly intent on committing the genocide of Jews and annihilating Israel, the Jew among the nations. 

The modern strain of “just anti-Zionism” – which denies Israel’s right to exist within any borders – was revealed in its full lethality, not only in open exhilaration and support for the October 7 massacre but in the responses to it. Responses of silence or denial – “we believe you unless you are a Jew” – that began on the day of the massacre, even as barbaric savages perpetrating the atrocities gleefully live streamed their crimes; of justification of “rape as armed resistance” by leading “feminist scholars,” politicians, and UN officials; of attacking Jews, Zionists, and supporters of Israel’s right to exist, including in houses of worship, childcare centers, businesses, streets, and homes across the West.

The multidimensional unmasking revealed the ancient mechanism that enabled the genocide in Auschwitz but did not die there, instead mutating and driving a decades-long war for global public opinion that hijacked and weaponized institutions, organizations, and principles of international law and human rights. 

The mechanism of demonization, delegitimization, and double/invented standards toward the Jewess in the family of nations – from the UN resolution equating Zionism with racism (1975), to the comparison of Israel to an apartheid state (2001), to the accusation of Israel committing genocide (2023), the “how” – that fuels and enables the recurrence of atrocities, again and again, has been exposed, and cannot afford to be unseen or forgotten.

The outrage of US ambassador to the UN Patrick Moynihan, in 1975, who understood that if “Zionism is racism,” and Nazism is racism, then it won’t be long before “Zionism is Nazism,” struck with full force. 

Fifty years later, the understanding that an ancient mutation of hatred would produce a new, resilient, and lethal strain has materialized in a new-old demand to shed the next hated pound of flesh – this time, the Zionist identity. 

Zionism is a progressive national liberation movement, anchored in thousands of years of yearning, prayer, and the hope to return to Zion, as an integral part of Jewish identity.

 Four female Israeli soldiers, who had been held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, are handed over by Hamas terrorists to members of the Red Cross as part of a ceasefire and hostage deal between Hamas and Israel, in this screen grab from a video. (credit: REUTERS/via Reuters TV)Enlrage image
Four female Israeli soldiers, who had been held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, are handed over by Hamas terrorists to members of the Red Cross as part of a ceasefire and hostage deal between Hamas and Israel, in this screen grab from a video. (credit: REUTERS/via Reuters TV)
The movement has been armed for a relentless war that demands both the Zionist individual and collective to shed it, systematically and consistently turning the Jew in the family of nations into a non grata state, and all who support it into a paradigm of evil.

Recognizing that that is precisely how antisemitism works, the 76-year-young Israel must internalize that it is an equal member in the family of nations, and do what Dreyfus could not – rise from the dock of the accused. 

This demands utilizing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, including its 11 examples, which enables the identification and combating of all existing strains of an ever-mutating hate that is the most reliable sign of a major threat to humanity and freedom.

BUT THAT is not enough. With the recognition that what enabled the release of Romi, Doron, and Emily is not at all “a deal” but extortion, this can and must be remedied by what should have been the immediate and unconditional demand made by the US in the lead, international institutions, and human rights warriors on day one – the demand to let them all go. 

It is the most basic demand in the face of extortion, a demand that uses all existing leverage to ensure Hamas releases all hostages or “there’ll be all hell to pay” – for Hamas, and for all those who enable it through silence, false moral equivalency, impunity, and outright support.

In what is a raging war of barbarism on civilization, this existential moment requires clarity, action, and courage, from all committed to life and liberty, to rise and reclaim all that has been hijacked and weaponized. 

Resolving the outstanding “case and cause” of all remaining 94 human beings held for extortion, in a standing violation of law and morality, in the hell built beneath Gaza and the “humanitarian shelters” built with US tax dollars, is the first step to remembering our shared founding principles, reclaiming our story and identity, and renewing our shared covenant anchored in the book, the Torah, desecrated on October 7, and reiterated in our declarations of independence and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Doing so will renew our prospective shared commitment to “Never Again” – to anyone – remembering the past so we can identify the threats of the present, in order to prevent the recurrence of atrocities we witnessed on October 7. 

The writer is Israel’s special envoy for combating antisemitism and a former member of Knesset.