After the Hostages Come Home

BRING THEM BACK HOME. The cry for the release of the hostages held by Hamas has now been heard for seven weeks. A deal to release the 40 children and a few mothers is in the works. But until I see with my own eyes the 10-month-old redhead Kfir and his four-year-old brother Ariel, I will not believe it. And this is just the beginning. A total of 238 hostages, including a baby born in captivity, are being held and no information has been received regarding their status or health. I attended a large rally in Tel Aviv last week to support the fami­lies of the hostages. On the square of the Tel Aviv Museum they placed an installation of dolls whose hands are cuffed, similar to how the children in the October 7 massacre were found. A friend told me that such rallies will increase the price Israel will have to pay for the release of the hostages. I understood. But still, I felt that such rallies give the families the strength they need to carry on. Every person should conduct himself or herself as if their own child is a hostage.

At the time of writing, a pause in the war to free some of the hostages, set to begin on Thursday, November 23, had been delayed by a day and was to start instead on Friday, November 24. But, as more assets of Hamas are destroyed, we come to the question: What’s next? What is the future of Gaza? Who will rule Gaza once Hamas is removed from power? Gazan civilians are starting to speak up and show their anger at Hamas who dragged them into this situation, taking Gazans as hostages themselves, while Hamas leaders stay in fancy hotels in Qatar or Turkey. When Hamas was in power, those who spoke up could not speak anymore. Hamas threw their opponents from the rooftops of buildings. The brutality they showed the world on October 7 was also aimed towards their own people. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is asked what the plans for Gaza are, he does not have a clear answer, and why should he? It is not as if he planned to enter Gaza. Children would say, “They started it, we only responded.” Israel is responding with two goals in mind, to remove Hamas and to release the hostages. No one speaks about a long-term occupation. Israel does not want to occupy Gaza or annex it. In 2005, Israel left this area and evacuated Israeli villages with no intention to come back. The only reasons to temporarily occupy Gaza include: ensuring Israel’s security; ensuring that Hamas and the other terror­ist organisation, Islamic Jihad, do not raise their heads; ensuring Gaza is ammunition-free; and ensuring that Israelis living in the villages of southern Israel can sleep at night without worrying that they would be killed, raped or kidnapped one fine morning. If Israel withdraws from Gaza, with nobody to monitor the passage of goods, Iran will send funding and ammunition and we will be back at square one. It is quite clear that a demilitarised zone will have to be built on the outskirts of Gaza.

To manage the border between Israel and Gaza, an international force should be deployed. Probably by way of a combination of Egyptian, Jordanian, and even UAE forces. Egypt will have to play a pivotal role here due to its physical proximity and the fact that Israel maintains good working relations with the Egyptians. The option being discussed for the internal administration of Gaza is the Palestinian Authority (PA) that manages the West Bank. The Palestinians are living in two separate territories. Half in the Gaza Strip that has been entirely independent since 2005 and ruled by Hamas. And the other half is based in the West Bank, a territory once belonging to Jordan, and now governed by PA whose president is Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen. PA is far from being the perfect solu­tion for Gaza. It turns a blind eye to terrorism nests within the West Bank. Many of the suicide-bombing incidents in Israel originated in the cities of Jenin or Nablus. PA does not want to confront those organisations, and the concern is that it will do the same if it took over the Gaza Strip. This is still the lesser of two evils. Just as before, we want to be optimistic that Palestin­ians will invest their energy in creating their own state, and not in demolishing Israel.

When Prime Minister Netanyahu is asked what the plans for Gaza are, he does not have a clear answer. And why should he? It is not as if he planned to enter Gaza. Israel is responding with two goals in mind, to remove Hamas and to release the hostages. It does not want to occupy Gaza or annex it. A demilitarised zone will have to be built around Gaza

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Seven weeks since the massacre, the army is busy with the ground operation but journalists are starting to make their own investigations and trying to find answers to what went wrong and, mainly, how come Israeli intelligence failed. The initial findings are that the lookout female soldiers who moni­tor the border noticed some unusual activities. The Gazans were closely checking the CCTV towers and operated drones to impair the cameras. Hamas terrorists were training next to the border. They even built a mock-up tank and fired at it. One soldier testified that a month prior to the massacre she saw tens of cars reaching a Hamas post next to the border, and people with face masks used binoculars to watch the border with Israel in a gathering that looked like a briefing. The soldiers time and again notified their commanders and were dismissed. The concept that Hamas was deterred and had no interest to confront Israel obscured the ground reality. They were told that their role was to bring the data but not conduct the analysis. The female soldiers complained that they were accused of being hysterical, that they were not taken seriously because they were young women. Unlike the disrespect for the lookout soldiers, the war has brought female combat soldiers to the forefront. For years, the army refused to draft women into such units. Various excuses were made, but organisations and individual women fought to be assigned to those prestigious units and also maintain equality on the frontline. Some cases even reached as far as the Supreme Court. The present war shows equivocally that women can serve on the battlefield. Many stories of heroics are being told about those women, including fighter pilots and command­ers in the Special Forces. There is a story about Inbal Liberman, a 25-year-old, who is the commander of the defence squad of Kibbutz Nir Am. Thanks to her leadership and alertness, the terrorists were unable to breach her village on October 7.

ANOTHER WOMEN-RELATED matter that is tak­ing centrestage is the silence of various international women’s organisations. Hamas raped and sexually abused tens of women, from the very young to the very old, to show their power and also humiliate. No leading women’s organisation called for a condemnation of this. The United Nations’ (UN) women remain silent. The streets of Tel Aviv are full of posters calling UN women organisations to speak up. “Your silence is deafening. Your silence is UN-forgivable”. Sheryl Sandberg, the former chief operating officer of Meta Platforms, stood up and said, “Rape should never be used as an act of war.” The Israeli police are collecting testimonies of the sexual atroci­ties of October 7. The terrorists who were caught testified that they were instructed to rape in order to violate the women. The stories are horrifying. Many of the victims are not here to tell them, and the forensic findings are their mouthpieces. (The reader may want to skip the rest of this paragraph due to its graphic nature.) The rape of a 13-year-old girl in front of her 94-year-old grandmother, with both killed later. A foetus was re­moved from its mother’s belly and stabbed while the mother’s breasts were cut open. Many stories of gangrape. A 19-year-old girl was dragged to the streets of Gaza with blood between her legs while Gazans were cheering and distributing sweets. Many girls were killed after being raped.

The lookout female soldiers who monitor the border noticed some unusual activities. The Gazans were checking the CCTV towers and operated drones to impair the cameras. Hamas terrorists were training next to the border. The soldiers notified their commanders and were dismissed. They were told that their role was to bring the data but not conduct the analysis

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I was invited to watch the horror movie produced by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson’s unit. This 45-minute film is a collection of footage taken from the body cameras of the Hamas terrorists and other cameras. After watching The Kashmir Files, I had thought that I would be able to watch this film. But after only five minutes, when two young boys cried “Daddy! Daddy!”, I decided to leave the auditorium. The father was killed by a grenade explosion while protecting his two boys. The terrorists saw their hiding place and threw a grenade at them. This film was shown this week at the UN, in Wash­ington, in the British parliament, and even to selected opinion leaders in India. You may wonder why this film was produced or why a normal person would want to watch such atrocities. The answer is sad. Many around the world are denying the massacre occurred in the first place. They say Israel made the stories up and that the massacre was not as awful as it was said to be. Israel is showing this film to explain why it cannot allow another October 7. The same groups that deny the Holocaust now deny the October 7 massacre. History repeats itself.

In a recent TV interview, Hamas leader Khaled Mashal bluntly said Hamas would conduct the October 7 massacre a second, third, and forth time until it annihilated Israel. Other Is­lamic fundamentalists are openly riding the hate wave and say that other places in the world are next. The global community should know who the enemy of the liberal world is, an enemy that we all should fight together.

As the war evolves, and Israel fights to defend itself, the global media continues to be one-sided and shows only the sad stories of Gaza. My heart goes out to the poor Gazans forced to flee their homes. I truly hope there will be a good ending to their misery and that we will help them (and ourselves) to be free from Hamas. Time and again, BBC News gave out mislead­ing information, and later apologised. The global media, but for a very few, does not mention at all the 12,000 rockets and explosive drones fired on Israel—rockets, missiles and drones from Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and even from Yemen. Surprisingly, for firing rockets, Hamas has enough fuel. A thousand rockets failed and fell on Gaza itself, blaming Israel for the casualties and the destruction. Even today, while the Israeli military controls the northern part of the Strip, Hamas continues to fire rockets at Israeli cities. The global media does not show the harm that those rockets cause. “Sorry that the rockets and mortars do not kill enough Israelis” is what Israelis say ironically. The Iron Dome interceptors work extra hours, but still, it is not perfect, and people are hurt and killed. About 250,000 Israelis fled their homes in the north and south. South, to avoid the Hamas rockets and potential infiltration; and north, to avoid the Hezbollah rockets, explosive drones and potential infiltration. It was discovered that the Hezbollah terror organisation, based in Lebanon, planned a similar massacre in northern Israel.

No one speaks about a long-term occupation of Gaza. To manage the border between Israel and Gaza, an international force should be deployed. Probably by way of a combination of Egyptian, Jordanian, and even UAE forces. The option being discussed for the internal administration of Gaza is the Palestinian authority that manages the West Bank

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In the pro-Palestine parades in Britain and New York, people were surprised to see Ultraorthodox Jews participating and carrying anti-Israel placards. The Ultraorthodox usually grow long beards and wear black robes and black-brimmed hats. I saw some journalists pointing to that and saying that even Jews support a ceasefire and the Palestinian cause. But those marching and chanting “Free Palestine” were not the regular Ultraorthodox. Those are the Neturei Karta, a small Jewish sect that opposes the existence of the State of Israel, claiming that Jews should not live in the Holy Land before the arrival of the Messiah.

It has been 15 years since 26/11. Both Israel and India con­tinue to suffer from Islamist terror. How come, when India was attacked, no one blamed India for the attack, yet Israel is being blamed around the world for the October 7 massacre? This is no different from when a girl who is raped is accused of lying and the blame is placed on her.

Does Israel really need to wait for the Messiah to live in peace?

About The Author

Anat Bernstein-Reich

Anat Bernstein-Reich is chairperson of the Israel-Asia Chamber of Commerce, a Friend of India Awardee for 2020, and CEO of BDO Israel-India Investment Banking firm

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