Family members of Israelis held hostage in the Gaza Strip have stormed a parliamentary meeting in Jerusalem to demand that Israel’s government does more to return their loved ones, as fighting in Khan Younis reached unprecedented levels.

About 20 relatives of people seized as captives by the Palestinian militant group in the 7 October attack disrupted a Knesset finance committee meeting on Monday, chanting: “Release them now, now, now!”

One woman, who has three family members taken by Hamas, cried: “Just one I’d like to get back alive, one out of three.” Other protesters held up signs reading: “You will not sit here while they die there.”

On Sunday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejected new Hamas conditions for ending the war and releasing the hostages including the Islamist group retaining control of Gaza and Israel withdrawing completely. In response, a Hamas official in Qatar said Netanyahu’s refusal to end the military offensive in Gaza meant there was “no chance for the return of the captives”.

Archive

  • alvvayson@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Honestly, the one thing that really surprises me about this war is how little the Israeli government cares about the hostages.

    They really do value land more than human lives.

    And the absolute cold blooded attitude they have towards innocent Palestinians is horrifying.

    Regardless of what the ICJ decides, for me people who support Hamas, ISIS, Russia, deny the Holocaust, neo-nazis or those who support the state of Israel are all immoral persons.

    And it is difficult to accept that most people are actually quite comfortable with evil. It seems to be that people are just tribal in which evil they support and which evil they object to.

    • streetfestival@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      Honestly, the one thing that really surprises me about this war is how little the Israeli government cares about the hostages.

      Sadly, I think the Israeli government might be aware that there are fewer live hostages to come home than people think after the IDF gave the Hannibal directive on October 7th.

      The possibility of “friendly fire” has been discussed more widely in Israeli news than US/Western news. For example, here’s an opinion piece in Israeli’s current oldest paper (refresh the page, which doesn’t seem to load properly the first time):

      https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-12-13/ty-article-opinion/.premium/if-israel-used-a-procedure-against-its-citizens-we-need-to-talk-about-it-now/0000018c-6383-de43-affd-f783212e0000

      The accounts of the only two survivors of the hostage-taking incident in Be’eri on October 7 give the impression that the Israel Defense Forces employed the so-called Hannibal Directive with the people being held hostage by Hamas inside one of the houses on the kibbutz. When it is implemented, the Hannibal Directive allows the military to endanger a soldier to prevent them from being kidnapped.

    • Akasazh@feddit.nl
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      9 months ago

      Israeli gov doesn’t care about the hostages and Hamas doesn’t care about the Palestinian people. It’s very bleak.

    • Sir_Simon_Spamalot@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      On the contrary, the hostage situation shouldn’t be surprising. It’s been going according with the current trajectory of things.

    • nonailsleft@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Honestly, the one thing that really surprises me about this war is how little the Israeli government cares about the hostages.

      There were 10 times as many Israelis killed in Hamas’ attack in a single day that there are hostages left. They’ve also said they will keep performing such attacks for as long as they can.

      Sad as it is for the individuals, I think Israel considers them lost and the last thing they want to do is prove Hamas right for what they did

      • alvvayson@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I’m not an American.

        Gonna downvote you for making assumptions.

        And no, I am also quite critical of the evil of my own country, but I probably have huge blind spots as well.

  • Mrkawfee@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    If they’re this callous toward their own citizens you can imagine how barbaric they are to Palestinians

    • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      So calous what, that they won’t negotiate with terrorists whose sole demand is to be given their own country?

      No. Hamas has no leverage. They sold themselves out on October 7. Traded their future and their home to kill 1,300 civilians and first responders. Terrorists don’t get to have a country.

      Hamas kidnapped these people and Hamas is using civilians as human shields in order to attract sympathy.

      • Facebones@reddthat.com
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        9 months ago

        If you think Oct 7 was brutal wait until you hear what Israel been up to for the past 50 some odd years 🤔

        • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Yes. Why cannot the Palestinian people seem to organize and get rid of Hamas, put an end to suicide bombers blowing themselves up at coffee shops and what not? Nobody is going to miss Hamas after it’s gone. It’s a shame how Hamas compromised every structure in Gaza City with a bunch of unpermitted tunneling.

          Literally what did Hamas think was going to happen on October 8? They would just hide in the tunnels? Nah, their number is up.

          • ???@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Why cannot the Palestinian people and seem to organize and get rid of Hamas, put an end to suicide bombers blowing themselves up at coffee shops and what not?

            75 years of oppression and apartheid. Seriously try accomplishing anything if this is your life. My grandparents survived the Nakba and were ethnically cleansed. Those who tried to defend our home town were killed by Israel. Add to that the Deir Yassin massacre which prompted the family to flee for their lives and Israeli settlers took over their homes and turned it into a settlement after erasing its name and history. My father grew up in a refugee camp in Jordan under poverty, had to study his way through to even make any livable wage. My grandma had nothing left from her family and struggled to build her own house to raise a family, while still hoping to return home one day. My grandpa could never finish his education and major in English… to this day he feels sorry to only have afforded to study until 6th grade because he had to work every day of his life since his family lost literally everything they had because of Israel.

            Sorry we were too busy fixing our lives after Israel wrecked it, didn’t have time to make huge political changes in a system we’re never allowed to return to or vote in or affect in any way, in a country where we get strip searched and forced to walk in caged queues and where any of us could get shot on spot with no justice.

            So again, super duper sorry! We were busy being displaced and getting over trauma.

            Ah yes and Bibi funding Hamas endlessly to lead up to October 7th.

            You’re smart but sometimes you ask the weirdest questions.

            • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Man, I understand all that. Generational trauma, generational poverty. Hasn’t everyone suffered under Hamas and it’s predecessor ideologies long enough?

              I read about that massacre. Arabs began lying about the body count immediately and four days later they bombed a clearly marked medical convoy and killed seventy eight doctors, nurses, and students. What has changed?

              Maybe if the Palestinian side had not squandered every dollar in foreign aid it has received on paying pensions to suicide bombers and launching rockets that practically never hit their targets, stop glorifying terrorism and martyrdom, there could have been something to negotiate about. If the national Palestinian response to a massacre is to come together and do another massacre, there is nothing to negotiate.

              Oh well, now we will find out what Gaza looks like without Hamas. Hopefully the people there will soon be out from under the extreme religious fundamentalists who are running the place, escape their inevitable fate of being used by Hamas as human shields to score sympathy points.from gullible westerners, and actually have some responsibility and determination over their futures.

              • ???@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                Do you really understand, or do you just repeat what I’m saying to make it look like you “acknowledge and understand” but then proceed to ignore it anyway?

                If the national Palestinian response to a massacre is to come together and do another massacre, there is nothing to negotiate.

                ???

                I think this is it. I’m done with debating you. We had a good long debate on many threads, but I’m seriously done. Don’t take it personally, it’s just tiring. Seeing video footage of people dying at every single place they went to shelter in, and then seeing you day in day out pretend the numbers “aren’t so high” and trusting the IDF blindly… eh.

                I think the discussions were worth it, but today is the first time I cried in a while over this conflict, and I honestly do not think (based on our conversations) you would ever be able to show empathy on a true level.

                • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  Man I am a bleeding heart liberal who has a lot of sympathy for the innocent Palestinian people caught up in this.

                  Where we disagree is that I think the greatest utility comes from liberating the region from Hamas and related ideologies of violence.

                  You should cry more often. Very clarifying. There is a lot of emotion in your point of view and I think it clouds your assessment of things.

                  Yeah, you’re right, I can look at lot of the “reports” of atrocities and find justification for Israel. If someone says that some apartment building was bombed indiscriminately and then I can go and find the actual recording residents of the same building received hours before the bombing and videos of the airburst shells they fired as warning shots before the ordinance, it’s not a lack of empathy that allows me to conclude that the bombing was justified, it’s that the alternative proposal, to let terrorist win simply because they use human shields.

                  You seem perfectly content to let Hamas stay in charge and see another generation of Palestinians be martyred, coerced into doing a suicide bombing or ignoring evacuation orders and warning shots to die as human shields. I am not content with that. That’s my sympathy. You are concerned with the lives of tens of thousands of people. I am too. I am simply more concerned with the lives of tens of millions. They take up a bigger space in my brain and in my heart.

          • Kbobabob@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Your statement sounds an awful lot like they should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

      • SasquatchBanana@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I am glad Israel doesn’t negotiate with Hamas and has decided to carpet bomb and glass Gaza.

        Btw, how much video of the IDF fighting Hamas are there? It’s been over 100 days of fighting. I swear we’d have so much video of the IDF fighting Hamas.

        • ???@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Just the vidoes Hamas posts of the IDF getting their ass kicked lol

          • nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca
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            9 months ago

            Why are you acting like you wouldn’t immediately pivot and begin justifying it if Isreal did carpet bomb Gaza?

                • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  You have misread or misunderstood my point of view, then.

                  Everytime someone cites some horrible atrocity, I take five minutes to look into it and every time it is more complicated than presented and always involves mitigating circumstances on one side and exaggeration and reckless disregard for human life on the other.

                  Someone says “oh Israel indiscriminately bombed this apartment building and killed a hundred people.” And you look it up and find out that before the bombing, Israel called every cell phone in the area and fired warning shots, and that the 100 people in the building were a Hamas commander and his extended family, who he forced to stay behind specifically so that they would be killed, so that gullible westerners would be tricked into sympathizing with an actual terrorist organization.

                  Do you agree that Hamas is a terrorist organization that must be eliminated for the good of the Palestinian people?

          • SasquatchBanana@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Deflecting again? Sure i didn’t use the right term but the meaning of what i said is the same. Israel wants to flatten Gaza and if they can carpet bomb it they would.

  • raynethackery@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Drag all the Knesset members outside and put them in combat gear. Then ship them off to Gaza in front of all the other soldiers. If you are not willing to lead at the battlefield, you have no right to lead from your comfortable offices and homes.

    • Guydht@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      As much as I agree on the “no dealing with terrorist” rule, you can’t expect the families to not protest and do everything in their power to get their loved ones homes.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    9 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Family members of Israelis held hostage in the Gaza Strip have stormed a parliamentary meeting in Jerusalem to demand that Israel’s government does more to return their loved ones, as fighting in Khan Younis reached unprecedented levels.

    On Sunday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejected new Hamas conditions for ending the war and releasing the hostages including the Islamist group retaining control of Gaza and Israel withdrawing completely.

    The families of the remaining 130 hostages, worried that their relatives’ plight now comes second to Israel’s objective of destroying Hamas, appear to be turning to more drastic measures in pursuit of another release deal, including further demonstrations outside Netanyahu’s private home.

    An admission from the Israel Defense Forces last week that three hostages, whose bodies were recovered in the Jabaliya area in December, may have been killed by an airstrike on a Hamas tunnel, has also stoked relatives’ fears.

    Israeli tanks reached the gates of two Khan Younis hospitals on Monday, residents in the area said, in the bloodiest fighting of 2024 to date and the worst violence in the south of Gaza since the war began on 7 October, when Hamas killed 1,200 people in its attack on southern Israel.

    Joe Biden has expended vast amounts of international and domestic political capital in defending Israel’s war effort, despite a growing global outcry over the conflict’s devastating humanitarian toll.


    The original article contains 943 words, the summary contains 229 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • Spzi@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    Has the general consensus changed about how to deal with hostage takers? I think it was “don’t negotiate with terrorists” not long ago. Very tough for the relatives, but meant to prevent more harm in the future, by spoiling the plans of the terrorists.

    When reading reports and comments about the Israeli hostages in Gaza, I get a different impression. Why is that, what is different?
    Are there no concerns for encouraging more hostage taking this time?