| Topic: | Re:Israel - what defending your country and fellow citizens really means | |
| Posted by: | John Hawkes | |
| Date/Time: | 27/01/26 16:21:00 |
| "Israel says it has retrieved remains of final Gaza hostage Ran Gvili" - BBC News https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5ydvz7nz4mo "Israel says it has retrieved remains of final Gaza hostage" 'The Israeli military says it has retrieved the body of the last hostage in Gaza, paving the way for the next phase of US President Donald Trump's peace plan to get under way. (Well done Trump. "Talk loudly and carry a big stick. You will go far") - misquoted from Theodore Roosevelt). It had been searching for Master Sgt Ran Gvili since the ceasefire with Hamas began in October. (Israel never forgets or deserts its citizens - dead or alive). Netanyahu's office said Israel would reopen Gaza's key border crossing with Egypt once the operation to find and return Gvili was complete. (Bet that leaving the door open to Palestinian terrorists will really please the locals !) Spokesman Hazem Qassem said the discovery "confirms Hamas's commitment to all the requirements of the ceasefire agreement". ("Well we have to say that or Israel and the US will bomb the sh!t out of us"). The retrieval of Gvili may bring closure to his family and it finally ends Israel's hostage agony after 843 days. (For readers who might have forgotten Google '7th October 2023 - Hamas Palestine invades Israel'). Phase two is meant to involve the reconstruction and full demilitarisation of Gaza, including the disarmament of Hamas and other Palestinian groups. (As if. "What work constructively rather than murder Jews" ?) The plan is also meant to see the deployment of an as-yet unconstituted International Stabilization Force (ISF) and the progressive withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. Reacting to the return of Gvili's body, Trump posted on Truth Social: "Just recovered the last Hostage body in GAZA. Thus, got back ALL 20 of the living Hostages, and ALL of the Dead! AMAZING JOB!" (Yes all on the Putney Forum applaud your efforts President Trump. Well most anyway.....) Hamas was meant to return all hostages, alive and dead, within 72 hours of the ceasefire taking effect. The process took far longer, (who would have thought that might happen ?!) but eventually 20 living Israeli hostages and the bodies of 27 dead Israeli and foreign hostages were handed over, leaving only Gvili missing. The policeman was one of 251 hostages taken in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 in which about 1,200 people were killed. Most of the hostages were released alive over the course of the next two years in exchange for 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,718 detainees from Gaza'. From the Spectator online - 'On 25 October 2023, speaking as Israel prepared to expand its ground campaign in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly and unambiguously set out Israel’s two central war aims: the destruction of Hamas and the return of all the hostages the Palestinians had taken into Gaza. The operation (to rterieve Gvili's body) itself was grim and exacting. Acting on accumulated intelligence, Israeli forces entered a cemetery in the Shuja’iyya–Daraj Tuffah area, operating along the Yellow Line in Gaza. Specialised search teams worked alongside engineers, dental experts, and rabbinical figures. Body after body was exhumed and examined. Ran Gvili was identified through dental records. Having completed a task few armies would even contemplate, the soldiers involved sang the Israeli national anthem, ‘Hatikvah’ (The Hope), as they stood in Gaza and paid their respects to Ran’s body, shrouded in their national flag. I know of no other military that would go to such lengths, at such cost and risk, to recover the body of a single fallen soldier in the midst of an ongoing war. Some argue that this is folly, that risking living soldiers to retrieve a corpse is irrational or reckless. But the Israel Defense Forces are not a professional caste detached from society. They are drawn from it. They are parents, siblings, business owners, artists, scientists, doctors, bus drivers, janitors. Since 7 October, many have served for hundreds of days, suspending ordinary lives to meet an extraordinary demand. As Trump presses forward with his plan to rebuild the territory and maybe one day hand it back to Palestinians under some future form of self-rule, Netanyahu faces a different kind of pressure. He will need to demonstrate that Israel was not overruled, that reconstruction does not become rearmament by another name. That means dismantling Hamas’s remaining military capacity, reclaiming 60,000 Kalashnikovs he has cited, destroying tunnel networks and production facilities, and preventing the reconstitution of armed rule.' (And ignoring all the pearl clutching and hand ringing from inhabitants of places such as West Putney.) To me this is what it takes to be and means to be a Jew. |