On the Murder of Six Jewish Hostages
The tragedy that unfolded last weekend with the murder of six Jewish hostages—five Israelis and an American-Israeli—by Hamas Palestinian terrorists has struck all Jews everywhere. We mourn the loss with Israel and the Jewish world. It is awful and profoundly saddening.
The facts are quite simple: Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino, Almog Sarusi, Carmel Gat, and Alexander Lobanov endured almost eleven months of kidnapping, captivity, and abuse by Palestinian terrorists. Five were violently taken from the Nova Music (and peace) Festival; one, Carmel Gat, from Kibbutz Be'eri. All were alive a day or two before an IDF operation to rescue them discovered their bodies in a tunnel, shot multiple times by Hamas Palestinian terrorists at close range. All were between 23 and 40 years old and survived terrible conditions and existential fear. At least one, Hersch Goldberg-Polin, sustained severe injuries protecting other Jews and yet survived until he was murdered execution-style by Palestinians.
Media coverage of this cruel multiple murder by Palestinian terrorists has focused on the outrage by the Israeli public that its own government has not been more successful in bringing the hostages home. We should share that frustration while we remember that it was Hamas Palestinian terrorists who created this war and murdered these innocent people. It has also been Hamas' intransigence, primarily, that has prevented a cease-fire-for-hostage-release deal since the initial exchange of innocent-hostages-for-Palestinian-terrorists way back in November. And it is Gaza's Palestinian "leadership" that has continued to condemn its own people to a hopeless war of attrition.
There is no greater mitzvah in Judaism than the redemption of captives, pidyon shevuyim. As we mourn with the families of the murdered young Jews, we continue to pray for the release of the remaining hostages, and of the bodies of those hostages murdered by Palestinian terrorists and still ghoulishly held in Gaza by Hamas.
And we pray for an enduring peace, in the very face of these latest Palestinian terrorist atrocities.