Return to Israel -- Alive or Dead

"The State of Israel will continue to make every effort to return all of our hostages -- both alive and dead."

"[While acknowledging the praiseworthy recovery effort that brought six Hamas-captured Israels, killed while in captivity back to Israel] our hearts ache for the terrible loss."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

The bodies of hostages Yagev Buchshtab, Alexander Dancyg, Avraham Munder, Yoram Metzger, Nadav Popplewell, and Haim Perry were recovered by the IDF from the Khan Yunis area in the Gaza Strip.

(photo credit: Hostages and Missing Families Forum)

"[The Israeli army hit] a number of Hezbollah weapons storage facilities [in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley]."

"Following the strikes, secondary explosions were identified, indicating the presence of large amounts of weapons in the facilities struck."

Israel Defense Forces

An Israeli airstrike on a Hezbollah weapons depot in northeastern Lebanon's Baalbek District, August 19, 2024. (Screenshot X)

 

There is the workmanship-like detachment of conflict brought on by the October 7 invasion of southern Israel that saw 1,200 mostly Israeli civilians slaughtered, women and girls gang-raped and tortured, children and the elderly, women and entire families taken hostage by Hamas terrorists that sees the Israel Defense Forces concentrate on their task of eliminating the terrorist hordes in the Gaza Strip, with the knowledge that in destroying terrorist infrastructure, they may inadvertently lead to the death of the hostages.

Hamas taunts Israel, claiming that Israeli hostages, confined in dank, dark corridors of underground tunnels have been killed by Israeli airstrikes targeting Hamas operatives known to be ensconced in the tunnels, along with weaponry stockpiled there. In the instance of the latest recovery of the bodies of six kidnapped Israeli men, five of whom were elderly, Hamas again asserted that they died in air attacks on the tunnels they were kept prisoner within. Despite that autopsies carried out in Israel revealed the cause having been shot to death while in captivity.

That knowledge doesn't make it any more gentle to ease a sense of helplessness in attempts to recover the remaining hostages still hoped to be alive; less than one hundred by now, but it does validate the belief that the hostages have been the victims of torture of every conceivable dimension at the dedicated hands of Palestinian terrorists. An overnight operation carried out in southern Gaza brought the six home. They had been captured alive, and over the months of their confinement had suffered torment.

Six fewer Israels, dead or alive, for Hamas to plan using as pawns for the exchange of Palestinian prisoners intended to accompany an agreement for a ceasefire that would demand an Israeli withdrawal. There is no easing of the pressure felt by the Israeli government and its population to do everything humanly possible to restore the hostages remaining alive to their families. There are still children unaccounted for, there are the girls and women who are repeatedly raped, and there are concerns over the women who may be pregnant or who have delivered a child.

The remains of Chaim Perry, 80; Yoram Metzger, 80; Avraham Munder, 79; Alexander Dancyg, 76; and Yagev Buchshtav, 35, have been brought home to burial and profound sorrow. Abducted from kibbutzim, farming communities which empathized with Palestinians across the border in Gaza, and who offered employment to Gazans as agricultural workers earning salaries far in excess of anything they might find in Gaza. 

 

That among those who had entered southern Israel on October 7, were some of these Palestinian workers who had complete familiarity with the lay-out of the farming villages, their families with whom they shared meals in communal dining rooms, and which buildings housed the kibbutz security personnel, valuable information shared with the terrorists underscored the capacity for betrayal of the trust of ordinary Israelis who paid dearly for that all-too-human judgemental failure. 

 

In the instance of 79-year-old Avraham Munder where some 80 residents of his kibbutz were taken hostage, the word was that he had died "after enduring months of physical and mental torture". The rescue of those tormented and murdered Israelis came about as the result of the tunnel network where they were secreted being raided by the IDF. Of the 110 hostages who still remain, captured in the October 7 invasion, authorities in Israel estimate that some third of the total are now dead.

While mourning their loss and imprisonment under dire existential conditions, Israel through its defense forces carries on its determination to wipe out Hamas infrastructure and its operatives, as well as its entire leadership. That has been complicated by the orders given by the Islamic Republic of Iran to its proxy militias in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has entered the conflict, opening a second front in essence, along with militias in Iraq and Syria and the Houthis in Yemen threatening and opposing Israel's response in Gaza.

(Photo credit: Israeli army)