Unfortunately, a ceasefire deal will not bring the hostages back

The Israeli demonstrators demanding that Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire are being duped.

By John Richardson, Gatestone Institute

The murder of six more Israeli hostages — Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino — captured by the terrorist group Hamas appears to be leading many Israelis, along with most of their ever-gullible media (remember the Oslo Accords?) to think that if only their government would agree to a ceasefire, they would get their hostages back.

Most people, at least in the West, would desperately like that — not just the American ones — all 120 of them, especially before Hamas finishes murdering them.

If the Israelis really want their hostages back, however, they had better think again.

For a start, the recent demonstrations demanding that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire, look suspiciously like a “new, improved” version of the demonstrations of 2023, against the government’s attempts to bring much needed accountability back to Israel’s Supreme Court.

Those demonstrations were reportedly funded by the US State Department to the tune of “tens of thousands of dollars” of US taxpayer money, funneled to an Israel not-for-profit organization, the Movement for Quality Government.

If the Biden-Harris administration is not behind the current demonstrations, it would be a pleasant surprise.

The US, even before the Obama administration, has been unable to resist interfering in Israel’s internal affairs — such as trying to prevent Netanyahu from being elected and then trying to push him out.

In 2015, Netanyahu’s address to the US Congress about Iran’s nuclear weapons program was apparently organized without consulting President Barack Obama, and, except during the Trump administration, the same US policy appears to have continued unchecked.

During Netanyahu’s visit to the US in July 2024, not one senior administration official greeted Netanyahu upon his arrival in Washington or attended his address to Congress.

The Biden-Harris administration has even tried to direct Israels war efforts.

Vice-President Kamala announced in March that she had “studied the maps” and that it would be a “mistake” for Israel to enter Rafah — which it did soon after, with breathtaking success.

What is all this really about?

Even though the Biden-Harris administration would certainly appreciate all those the anti-Israeli votes they hope will be coming their way on November 5th, above all — should Harris win the presidency — she, like President Joe Biden, appears eager to present the world with a Palestinian State.

Biden stated in November 2023, that “the only ultimate answer here is a two-state solution that’s real” Harris openly, if codedly, admitted as much in her acceptance speech for the presidential nomination:

“President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity. Security. Freedom. And self-determination.”

She repeated the same view in her pre-taped CNN interview on August 29:

“I remain committed, since I’ve been on October 8, to what we must do to work toward a two-state solution, where Israel is secure and in equal measure the Palestinians have security and self-determination and dignity.”

The Biden-Harris administration apparently sees no problem with a Palestinian state being yet another terrorist state, committed to annihilating Israel — as both Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force commander General Esmail Qaani (“Israel is a cancer that must be eliminated”), and senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad have straightforwardly vowed:

Hamad: “Israel is a country that has no place on our land. We must remove that country….We are not ashamed to say this, with full force….

News anchor: Does that mean the annihilation of Israel?

Hamad: “Yes, of course.

The Biden-Harris administration doubtless sees Prime Minister Netanyahu, called “the Churchill of the Middle East,” as standing in their way.

A ceasefire might sound as if it is a “good thing” that benefits everyone — understandably if a friend or family member is a hostage.

The problem seems to be the Hamas demand that Israel should leave the “Philadelphi corridor” on the border between Gaza and Egypt, so that Hamas, backed by its patrons Qatar and Iran, can resume smuggling weapons and ammunition into Gaza, rearm, rebuild, and attack again.

The Israelis who are demonstrating are sadly misdirecting their outrage at just about everything: who is responsible, who is deceiving them, and what the solution should be.

As the journalist Caroline Glick points out, they are playing into the hands of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar:

“… Sinwar views them [the hostages] as a tool. The texts of nearly every single video have been nearly identical. The hostages blame Netanyahu for their suffering and demand that the government bow to Hamas’s demands or else Hamas will kill them.

“All the agency is on Israel. Hamas merely responds to the actions of the government. Whether the hostages live or die is Israel’s decision, not Hamas’s. In other words, the sole purpose of the videos is to destabilize the government by inducing the public to believe that it is the government—not Hamas—that is effectively holding the hostages captive….

“Since May, and with greater determination and urgency in recent weeks, Netanyahu has stated repeatedly that although he is willing to make massive, painful concessions to free even a small number of hostages, he is not willing to remove IDF units from the Gaza-Egypt border. In light of the U.S. position, his stance makes sense. The only way for Israel not to lose is to keep Hamas cut off from its outside supporters. A JNS/Direct Polls survey from July showed that some 60% of Israelis support that position….

“The generals’ position is supported by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Gallant fully abandoned his voters in Likud and began serving as a mouthpiece for the left and the Biden-Harris administration in the Security Cabinet immediately after returning from his weeklong visit to Washington in June.

“The discourse in Israel isn’t simply removed from reality because it is based on a false presentation of the U.S. position by the security brass. The entire domestic debate is taking place while Hamas isn’t even participating in the negotiations. For the generals, for Gallant and their comrades in the Knesset, the media and on the streets, the only one responsible for anything is Netanyahu.

“In other words, Gallant, the generals, the left’s political leaders and the rioters in the streets are all playing the roles Sinwar assigned them.”

It is probably more convenient, for all those trying to overthrow Netanyahu, to look at him rather than at the real perpetrators: Hamas, Iran and Qatar.

Qatar, “the Trojan Horse in Washington D.C.,” has long been financing Islamic terrorist organizations, as well as bestowing more than $6 billion on US universities to teach American youths whatever Qatar’s leaders decide.

Nevertheless, the Biden-Harris administration decided that these qualifications made Qatar perfect to negotiate the Gaza war on America’s behalf, the same way the administration unfathomably decided to have Russia negotiate on America’s behalf with Iran over restarting the nuclear deal.

Clearly, Qatar and Iran are not just godfathers of Hamas; they are also seemingly close friends of the Biden-Harris administration.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on January 1, “quietly” renewed Qatar’s agreement to host the immense US Central Command at its Al-Udeid Air Base for another ten years.

Iran was rescued by the Biden-Harris administration, from a sanctions-imposed poverty that could threaten its regime, to a wealth of billions of dollars that has funded all this mayhem.

Iran, along with its proxies and militias, is also behind “over 150 attacks” on US troops in the Middle East, just since October 7, 2023, wounding many American troops, as well effectively blocking most commercial shipping through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

What the US has been doing, ever since Netanyahu was last elected in 2022, is trying to get him removed.

He would then be replaced — in the original plan by Benny Ganz (minister without portfolio in the war cabinet), who resigned after it was disclosed that he met with senior U.S. officials in Washington against the wishes of the prime minister — in the current plan by Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

The Biden-Harris administration seems to want Netanyahu gone to be able to work with “their” prime minister: one who presumably would be delighted not only to have a terrorist Palestinian state on his borders — a state sworn to Israel’s destruction — and who would also be delighted if Iran — also sworn to Israel’s destruction — had nuclear weapons.

It is the policy embraced by Obama, so long as Iran did not acquire nuclear weapons “on his watch.” Down the road, however, would be an altogether different story:

“Iran could be able to obtain a nuclear weapon much more quickly after the first 13 years of the emerging nuclear deal, President Barack Obama acknowledged…”

What many Israelis seem unwilling or unable to see is, sadly, that even with a ceasefire, the hostages will not be released.

Hamas will hold on to as many of them as they can for as long as they can, to keep them in play as a weapon.

With a ceasefire, Israel unfortunately will not get peace and will not get the hostages.

The Israelis might see a few hostages at a time dribbled out, the living ones first, they hope, each one exchanged for hundreds, if not more, of convicted Palestinian terrorists released from Israeli prisons, whose first job would be to go right back to terrorizing.

Meanwhile, the negotiations over every hostage would allow plenty of time for Iran and Hamas to bring more weapons in through the unguarded border from Egypt into Gaza, in order to rearm.

The current leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, is himself a convicted terrorist who confessed to murdering four people with his own hands.

Sinwar was serving four life sentences in an Israeli prison, when he was released, among more than 1,000 terrorists, in exchange for one Israeli hostage, Gilad Shalit, in 2011.

There is at least one way to get the hostages back quickly, according to Yigal Carmon, a retired colonel in the IDF Intelligence Corps and president of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI):

“Hamas lives off economic and political support from Qatar. Hence, Hamas’s life depends on Qatar. Only if it feels threatened will Qatar truly help. Only if Qatar’s very existence is put in question by using political, economic, legal, and security pressure will it move to help the U.S. and Israel to release the hostages. Right now, Qatar is cheating them both while trying with all its might to help Hamas.

“Qatar will not, however, commit suicide for Hamas, and when it sees that it must choose between Hamas and ceasing to exist, it will choose existence, and Hamas will comply with its demands because Qatar is its lifeline without which Hamas will not exist – especially during and after a war…

“Many Americans believe that they owe Qatar for its hosting of the U.S. CENTCOM base. The truth is precisely the opposite: It is Qatar that owes the U.S., for locating this base there. Without this base’s presence in the country, Qatar would disappear within less than a week – its neighbors would eat it up.”

The Israeli demonstrators demanding that Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire are being duped.

They are being used by the Biden-Harris administration and the gullible Israeli media to produce, in all probability, a prime minister who will smilingly accept a nuclear-armed Iran along with a terrorist Palestinian state.

Instead of saying, as the propagandists no doubt like, “Bring them Home,” meant to sound as if Netanyahu is hiding the hostages under the Knesset, Israelis would be better off saying, “Release the Hostages” — directed at Hamas, Qatar and Iran.

A ceasefire deal unfortunately will not bring back the hostages any time soon.

Hamas will drag out each negotiation, continue attacking Israel and try to make Israelis miserable enough to give up the fight, as many seem to be doing even now.

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