WAR UPDATE: THE HOSTAGES’ SUFFERING

WAR UPDATE: THE HOSTAGES’ SUFFERING                by Shimon Eliyahu

One of Hamas’ terror tunnels unearthed by the IDF during the war in Gaza. (Image: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit / public domain)

• A new report describes abuses inflicted on Israeli hostages.

• IDF raids northern Gaza hospital, arrests fifteen October 7 attackers.

• Israel escalates campaign against Houthi forces.

• WHO chief present during Israeli attack on Sana’a Airport.

• Terrorist kills Holocaust survivor in Herzliya attack.

Israel Publishes Hostage Captivity Accounts

For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the Lord, because they have called you an outcast: “It is Zion, for whom no one cares!” (Jeremiah 30:17)

Israel published a new report last week detailing the psychological, physical, and sexual abuse hostages endured under their Hamas captors. The six-page report from Israel’s Ministry of Health details offenses committed against the hostages, as recounted by survivors. Without names or personal details and sterilized by numerical lists, the cataloged atrocities may feel abstract—but the report lays bare a harrowing truth: beatings, branding, starvation, sexual assault, and more were inflicted by one human upon another, each as real as the other.

The victims are only described as the “women, men, and children who returned from captivity” and reportedly included details that freed hostages themselves were unable to reveal in the early days after their liberation. Some of them are still enduring long battles with the wounds inflicted upon them, physical and mental. They fight nightmares, survivor’s guilt, and a long recovery process hampered by the ongoing war and their concern for the welfare of the hostages still being held.

The document, intended for the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, also creates an official entry of the atrocities committed by Hamas for the international record. The deliberate acts of brutal cruelty inflicted on the hostages align with the terror group’s modus operandi, even extending to their treatment of their own people.

Israel recently published disturbing videos discovered in Gaza of Hamas torture and beatings of Palestinians under their control. Given the mounting evidence from multiple sources of Hamas’ longtime and widespread practice of torture, it’s hard to believe anyone can still hail them as freedom fighters rather than the terrorists they are. It’s a truth ignored in places like the U.N. and known too well in the Middle East, where the IDF continues to confront Hamas.

IDF Raids Hamas in Gaza Hospital

The arrogant have hidden a trap for me, and with cords they have spread a net; beside the way they have set snares for me. (Psalm 140:5)

The Israeli Defense Forces recently arrested fifteen of the October 7 attackers during a raid on a Hamas stronghold in northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital. The IDF said the operation targeted the hospital because it had “once again become a key stronghold for terrorist organizations,” after it was originally cleared by the military in October. The military says it evacuated medical patients to other hospitals and arrested 240 suspected terrorists in the operation, including the medical center’s director.

The raid underscores the IDF’s perseverance, as well as the ongoing challenges in fully eliminating Gaza’s terrorist groups. Despite more than a year of war and the devastating ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Israel has not managed to force Hamas into a ceasefire allowing for the return of the hostages or exercise enough military control to prevent Hamas attacks and strongholds.

Modern insurgencies are notoriously difficult to defeat (see Afghanistan), and Hamas is no exception. Last week, Israeli air defenses intercepted two long-range rockets fired from Gaza toward Jerusalem. Though infrequent, the rocket attacks highlight the difficulty Israel faces in achieving total victory in its numerous conflicts—especially when it is never fighting just one enemy.

Focusing on the Houthi Threat

The God who gave me vengeance and subdued peoples under me, who rescued me from my enemies; yes, you exalted me above those who rose against me; you delivered me from the man of violence. (Psalm 18:47–48)

Israel escalated its attacks against the Houthi forces last week after multiple ballistic missile attacks from Yemen.

Israel announced that a new wave of airstrikes last week targeted critical infrastructure and military sites in Yemen, marking the latest strike in a long-delayed act of retribution for months of direct drone and rocket attacks. The Thursday attack drew international attention after the director general of the World Health Organization, who was present at the Sana’a airport during the attack, said he “narrowly escaped death.”

WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was in Yemen as part of a mission to negotiate the release of U.N. staffers held hostage by the Houthis. His delegation is seen on video evacuating as the strikes hit. Dr. Tedros said the airport was a civilian target and should not have been hit, but Israel’s military says they had intelligence to conduct strikes on military targets.

The attack wasn’t entirely a surprise either after Netanyahu recently announced that, after a ceasefire in Lebanon and the collapse of Assad’s Syria, Israel was shifting its attention to Yemen.

“The Houthis, too, will learn what Hamas, Hezbollah, the Assad regime, and others have learned,” Netanyahu said. “And even if it takes time, this lesson will be understood across the Middle East.”

Reshaping the World Order

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. (Psalm 2:1–4)

A 28-year-old Palestinian terrorist stabbed and killed an 83-year-old Holocaust survivor in Herzliya on Friday. The death of Ludmila Lipovsky marks the latest tragedy in the ongoing wave of relentless attacks on Israel and the Jewish community, both within Israel and beyond. Her departure also marks the loss of one more soul who can remember another time when the hatred of Judaism took shape and formed itself into murder on the streets.

Despite decades of progress toward a more moral, just, and accountable world, the snare of anti-Semitism has wormed its way into the forefront of causes for social justice and is reshaping the world in its fashion. Attacks and threats on Jewish and Israeli targets around the world are becoming normalized, along with casual anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism.

Yet, despite much of the world’s wishes, Israel does seem to be gaining ground in the Middle East. Israel forced Hezbollah into a ceasefire in Lebanon, struck the heart of Iran with both missiles and an assassination, warded off two massive Iranian attacks with U.S. help, and secured the border with Syria after the fall of Assad. With an air campaign underway against the Houthis, there’s only one other immediate theater: Gaza.

The ongoing fighting, humanitarian crisis, and captivity of the hostages show no signs of resolution, remaining the primary drivers of the conflict that is reshaping the world order. As Iran’s tentacles wither, Turkey is rising to take up the flag of Israel’s antagonist. Erdogan has teased a campaign for Jerusalem in recent years, and this time, he might have a larger backing than usual from the rest of the global order.

Speculation aside, the future is never set. But it can be influenced by repentance and acts of loving-kindness to hasten the redemption of Israel and the return of Yeshua.