world news
Families of Hamas’s hostages embark on global campaigns
Earlier this week, Palestinian social media accounts were filled with eulogies for the two men who kidnapped Yaffa Adar on the day of Hamas’s brutal assault on Gaza border communities last month. Adar, an 85-year-old resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz, has become one of the best-remembered hostages due to a video of her abduction that her captors filmed and published on social media. Now Israeli media outlets, which reported the deaths of the two men, were claiming that the pair were not directly affiliated with the terrorist organization ruling the Gaza Strip – a development that could influence any deal to release the hostages.
This was the second time in one bleak and sleepless month that the Adar family had received updates about their beloved matriarch through social and traditional media. The first report, the heart-curdling affirmation that their grandmother was indeed kidnapped and taken into Gaza, came in the form of a blurry video showing the elderly Adar seated in a golf cart, covered in a pink blanket and flanked by Hamas terrorists on all sides.
A day after the attack, Adva Adar, one of Yaffa’s grandchildren, published a snapshot of the video showing her grandmother and followed by a written plea for help: “This is my grandmother! Kidnapped into the Gaza Strip with nothing standing in the way [of the abductors]. Her name is Yaffa Adar, she is 85!! My grandmother – who founded the kibbutz with her very hands, who believed in Zionism, who loved her country, which abandoned her – was kidnapped. She is probably dumped somewhere, suffering from severe pain, without medicine, without food or water, scared to death, alone. No one is talking to us, no one has any answers, all the information we have was gleaned from videos that have been spread.”
The video left no room for doubt, and soon thereafter Adar and her family were officially notified by the government that Yaffa Adar is held hostage in Gaza.In the time that lapsed between then and now, four whole agonizing weeks passed by before they were told that Adva’s cousin Tamir Adar had been kidnapped, too. Leaving behind his wife and two children, who hid in the safe room of their home, the 38-year-old Adar, a member of the kibbutz’s emergency standby squad, set off to protect his community from the terrorists who had infiltrated that Saturday morning.
“At first we were told he was kidnapped. Then we were told that he was actually unaccounted for, that he is missing. Then we were updated again that there is a high likelihood that he had been abducted. We still have no idea what condition he is in; we don’t know whether he’s alive, dead, wounded. Nothing.”
In the interim, Adar decided that she cannot simply sit and wait. When she is not tending to her one-year-old baby daughter, she is constantly speaking to local and foreign press as well as to foreign diplomats and delegates in order to apply pressure on the international political landscape. Her hope is that these endeavors will eventually lead to the release of all 240 hostages.
“Since the second week of the war, my family has joined forces with the headquarters of the families of the hostages. Through them we constantly give interviews and hold meetings with envoys and representatives of countries from all over the world,” she tells The Jerusalem Post in a telephone conversation from her home in a moshav in the South.
“Two days after the attack I was approached by the Israeli Foreign Ministry and asked to join a meeting with the Czech foreign minister. Last week I traveled to Paris as part of a delegation of families in order to hold diplomatic meetings and speak to the European press,” Adar shares. “We believe that the international powers have sway over Hamas, as well as over Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt, who are all assumed to play a part in the negotiations. Their support also means Israel gets diplomatic backing.
“But that’s not the only reason [it is important to do this diplomatic work and speak out]. When people hear names and numbers, it all seems very distant. But when they can connect the name to a face, to a life story, to a family, it’s harder for them to look away. I feel it each time I talk about my grandma. When people suddenly understand that this video they saw of an elderly woman on a golf cart in Gaza is Yaffa, that she has children and grandchildren, that there are things she loved to do in life – they can’t remain indifferent.”
The beginning of the military ground incursion as well as Israel’s intensifying retaliatory aerial assault on Gaza, where her grandmother and cousin are held captive, are all causes for concern. Nonetheless, Adar says she “wants to believe that the military and the political powers have the hostages at the top of their priorities. I have to believe that because I need a reason to wake up in the morning. I need to believe that they will come back home. But I don’t have any special intel. I can’t know for a fact that when Israel is bombing Gaza it isn’t hurting my family. One can only hope that they know what they’re doing and are not jeopardizing my family.”
Her real concern, Adar admits, is the passage of time. “A month in captivity is way more than a woman my grandma’s age can or should bear. This is a race against the clock. My grandma suffers from all sorts of medical conditions: Heart failure, high blood pressure, kidney problems, four prolapsed discs – which means she can hardly sit, stand, or walk. She’s not a healthy woman. Time is not on our side.”
“It’s our mission to make the world care”
The 32-year-old Liri Roman, Yarden Roman-Gat’s brother, shares Adar’s feeling that time is of the essence. This sentiment has been captured by his family in a campaign it has started in Europe and in the US, where it is using the symbol of an hourglass to remind people overseas that each passing minute could be crucial for Yarden and the rest of the hostages.
Roman, an architect by training who works in hi-tech and lives in Tel Aviv with his husband, has been staying at his parents’ home in Givatayim since the first few days after the family learned that the eldest daughter, 36-year-old Yarden, was kidnapped into Gaza. The family home has become an operation center from which the Romans are strategizing, reaching out to international figures, interviewing with the press, and setting out on diplomatic missions.
Roman, in the meantime, has been focusing most of his efforts on caring for his sister’s three-year-old daughter, Geffen, who survived an attempted kidnapping with her father, Alon.
“My brother and sister have been traveling the world, speaking to leaders and waging this campaign. I decided with a heavy heart that I won’t join them overseas for the time being, because Geffen needs to be surrounded by the people she knows and loves in order to maintain a sense of normalcy; she’s already been so traumatized,” he explains, adding that his little niece is fully aware of the horrific ordeal she and her parents had gone through. “When she plays with her toys she reenacts the scenes she has been through, and she keeps asking for mommy, whom she knows is ‘lost.’”
On October 7, Yarden, a physical therapist, was celebrating the holiday weekend in Be’eri with her partner and daughter. The trio, who previously lived on the kibbutz, had left it a month earlier due to Yarden’s concerns that it wasn’t a safe place to raise a child. They had just returned from a family trip to South Africa, a long-awaited vacation that came in the wake of the death of Yarden’s mother less than a year ago.
Yarden, Alon and Geffen were all kidnapped by terrorists and taken into a vehicle that sped toward Gaza. At the last minute and under heavy fire, the couple jumped out of the car in an attempt to escape and started running for their lives. Yarden, who had been carrying her toddler in her arms, realized that Geffen would have a better chance of surviving if Alon carried her. She handed her daughter to him and tried to hide. Alon kept running, with Geffen in his arms, until he was able to reach what he thought was a safe hiding spot. After many hours of hiding with his daughter in an open field, he came back out, walked in the direction of the kibbutz and was able to join an IDF force that was in the area. A thorough search mission led by the family in collaboration with the military in the following days made it evident that there was no trace of Yarden left behind. Since then, she has been assumed kidnapped by Hamas.
At first the family directed its diplomatic efforts mostly at Germany because Yarden holds German citizenship. In the past month it has expanded its campaign, gearing it at anyone who would listen. The campaign includes a website, an Instagram account that has amassed a large following, hundreds of interviews given to the media by Yarden’s three siblings, mass rallies in large cities such as New York and Berlin, and meetings with diplomats from all over the world.
“We’re taking matters into our own hands,” says Roman, “out of the understanding that this is an event of a scope our country was simply unprepared for. We constantly speak to officials who are well-versed in handling cases of hostages, and they all say no one was prepared to deal with the sheer amount of hostages currently held in Gaza. The rules of the game have changed; we live in a world where Hamas uploads videos of abductions on TikTok.”
Roman says his family will continue doing its best to spread Yarden’s story “because we know that public opinion influences the decisions of policy-makers. When we just began our campaign vis-à-vis Germany, we were making moves that the government wasn’t making yet. Germany is an important and influential country, and now it’s on our side. But where was the state in all of this? So we said: ‘Ok, we won’t wait.’ We literally met with anyone important who was willing to listen, because we wanted them to be better informed and much more empathic when they finally met with [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”
The Roman family is also acting to keep the hostages on the minds of Israelis, too.
Asked what he would tell his sister if he could talk to her, Roman says: “I would tell her that I’m doing my best to watch over her daughter. I would tell her that her daughter is alive and well, because she [Yarden] doesn’t know that, and I imagine she must wonder all the time whether Geffen made it out alive.
“People here need to realize that it’s no one’s duty to care. It’s our mission to make the world care about the hostages,” Roman concludes.
“I feel sorry and sad for the Palestinians of Gaza because I know that Hamas doesn’t care about them. So when I approach my task of explaining to the world what happened to my sister and to the other hostages, I keep in mind that this terror organization has changed the rules of the game, and they are treating both Israeli civilians and their own people as pawns in that game.”
Everyone wants the Mossad on their side when it comes to the debate over the Philadelphi Corridor.
The Jerusalem Post has reported multiple times since May that the unchanging position of the Mossad is that Israel can and should withdraw from the corridor if that would bring back between 18-30 hostages and provided Phase 1 of the hostage deal with Hamas would allow the IDF to return to attacking Hamas in the corridor after around 45 days.
The Post and other outlets have also reported that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the IDF high command favor a deal under such terms, including temporarily withdrawing from the corridor to get some of the hostages back.
Yet on Sunday, an anonymous source who was present during the most recent diplomatic-security cabinet meeting leaked to the media that Mossad Director David Barnea supported Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position not to withdraw from the corridor.In fact, the anonymous source went even further saying that Barnea did not think Netanyahu should move toward Hamas on the issue “even one millimeter.”
Although… actually, that is not what the anonymous source said if the leaked statement is looked at carefully. Rather, it made a messy and hazy statement about Barnea supporting the Israeli position on the corridor to the extent that it would be acceptable to the US.Anyone who has followed the US position knows that it wishes Israel had stopped the war in December-January and for sure by May, and has tried everything it could to pressure Netanyahu to withdraw from the corridor.
Now, once the US said it could not get Netanyahu to completely withdraw from the corridor, it started to explore if it could get Hamas and Egypt to agree to a small Israeli presence in portions of the corridor, while otherwise generally withdrawing. That is not the same thing as thinking that Netanyahu’s stance on the corridor is the right move.The Mossad is in a somewhat similar position.
Mossad’s current position
There are some points where the Mossad’s position is tougher than the US position, but generally, since May, Barnea has been closer to the US, IDF, and Gallant’s view that it is time to cut a deal, even temporarily sacrificing control of the corridor, than he has been to Netanyahu’s staunch opposition to concessions in that area.
Also, usually, when the Mossad puts something out backing Netanyahu in negotiations, it is in its own name, not in the name of some anonymous cabinet official.The absence of a direct statement of support for Netanyahu from the Mossad itself is deafening.
So why is someone (from Netanyahu’s side) trying to pretend that the Mossad stands with the prime minister on this? Bodies of six hostages, who had been alive until last week, were just recovered.Netanyahu is under the greatest domestic pressure in Israel to compromise that he has been under possibly since the start of the war.
As he explains his position to the public, if he can claim that the defense establishment is split – IDF versus the Mossad – then he does not stand alone. His position looks principled and part of a serious strategy instead of about politics. Likewise, Gallant and the IDF want the Mossad on their side so they can present a united professionals’ front versus a political front. The truth is even without the Mossad, there is some principled opposition to cutting a deal if the question is saving the most Jewish lives on a long-term basis by ensuring Hamas is destroyed. But this also requires saying out loud that Netanyahu would be willing to let hostages die as a price to achieve that goal – because that is what happened this past week. Netanyahu is not ready to do this, so instead he would prefer if the battle can be about who supports who and a divide within the defense establishment.However, the more hostages die, there also becomes less incentive for a deal to save the shrinking total number of them still alive.
Whatever the Mossad’s view is, there is no question at this point that Netanyahu is the decider about the question of saving hostages versus keeping the corridor.
World soccer’s governing body FIFA has delayed again its decision on a Palestinian bid to have Israel suspended from international soccer over the war in Gaza.
FIFA said late on Friday it would now consider the Palestine Football Association’s (PFA) proposals against the Israel Football Association (IFA) in October.
The PFA had submitted a proposal to suspend Israel in May, with FIFA ordering an urgent legal evaluation and promising to address it at an extraordinary meeting of its council in July.
FIFA said last month the legal assessment would now be shared with its council by Aug. 31.The Zurich-based body said it had now moved the assessment back to October.
“FIFA has received the independent legal assessment of the Palestine Football Association’s proposals against Israel,” FIFA said.
“This assessment will be sent to the FIFA Council to review in order that the subject can be discussed at its next meeting which will take place in October.”
FIFA declined to give further details of the assessment, or when in October the meeting would take place.
The PFA did not respond to requests for comment.
Accusations against the IFA
The Palestinian proposal accuses the IFA of complicity in violations of international law by the Israeli government, discrimination against Arab players, and inclusion in its league of clubs located in Palestinian territory.
The IFA has rejected the allegations.
The PFA has said at least 92 Palestinian players have been killed in the war, football infrastructure has been destroyed, its leagues suspended and its national team required to play World Cup qualifiers abroad.
In its proposal, the PFA wanted FIFA to adopt “appropriate sanctions” against Israeli teams, including the national side and clubs.
The IDF is doing a better job at catching Palestinian terrorists than Jewish ones.
Anecdotal evidence and statistical evidence both bear this out.
As of August 2024, there were 9,881 Palestinian security inmates being held by Israel.
3,432 Palestinians were being held in administrative detention along with 1,584 Palestinian “unlawful combatants,” 2,074 sentenced prisoners, and 2,791 pre-indictment or pre-conviction detainees.We also know that in the West Bank alone, close to 5,000 Palestinians have been detained over the course of the war.
Sometimes Palestinian terrorists are not immediately caught after an attack, but quite often they are, and it is very rare that they are not caught or killed within a period of weeks or months.
Yet, in multiple February 2023 incidents of Jewish terrorists attacking Palestinians in Huwara, we know that out of hundreds of Jewish attackers, less than 10 were arrested, and an even smaller number seem to be getting prosecuted.
So far out of over 100 Jewish terrorists who attacked the Palestinian village of Jit in mid-August, only four have been detained.
These trends are not new.
Outgoing IDF Central Commander for the West Bank, Maj. Gen, Yedhua Fuchs, said this in his final speech on July 8, current Shin Bet Chief Ronen Bar recently accused officials like National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir of sometimes indirectly and sometimes almost explicitly encouraging the phenomenon, and former Shin Bet and IDF Central Commanders have been sounding somewhat similar warnings on and off certainly since 2014.
The IDF and Shin Bet have also accused Ben Gvir of discouraging the police from reining in Jewish violence, whether in the West Bank or against humanitarian aid trucks trying to get to Kerem Shalom to bring food to Gaza Palestinians earlier in the current war.
There has been extremist Jewish violence against Palestinians with significantly below expectations arrests for many years, even though that violence is still at a much lower volume than Palestinian violence.
The problem isn’t bringing caught perpetrators to justice, that has been happening many times since 2014, when Palestinians have been killed by a Jew or Jews.
Once caught, Israel has pushed hard to prosecute such persons.
On August 15, the Jerusalem Post reported exclusively that the 2019 indictment against a full-bodied minor (his identity is under gag order) for the alleged killing of Palestinian female and mother Aysha Rabi in October 2018 could be close to a verdict in later 2024 or early 2025.
This would not be the only such case of Jewish terrorists facing justice for violence against Palestinians, with the 2014 murderer of Palestinian minor Muhammad Abu Khadir, Yoseph Chaim Ben David, and the 2015 murderer of the Palestinian Dawabsheh family, Amiram Ben Uliel, both sentenced to life in jail in recent years.
Elor Ben Azariah, Ben Deri, and other IDF soldiers have also been given prison time for killing Palestinians.
But this does not address the fact that most Jewish terrorists are never caught in the first place.
So why does Israel catch Jewish terrorists less often than Palestinian ones?
Some of it is the constant passing the ball back and forth between the IDF and the Police, neither of who wants the politically unpopular job of reining in Jewish violence against Palestinians.
Anyone who does that job “well” in recent years comes under attack by Ben Gvir and others who seem to always be opposed to indicting or convicting Jews accused of attacking Palestinians.
Top IDF sources have made it clear to the Post that the military’s main role is to fight wars against other foreign militaries like Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, not to enforce law and order to block small-scale Jewish violence against Palestinians. They believe that the police should be handling Jewish violence in the West Bank, whereas the police, even before Ben Gvir, said they could not carry out large operations in Palestinian areas without the IDF taking the lead.
What has changed since Huwara in 2023 and now with Jit, is that the attacks by Jews on Palestinians are no longer solely small scale.
Now there is a pattern of large scale attacks even if the number of them is still small in relative terms.
During the Second Intifada, Israel decided that it could not view Palestinian terrorism from the West Bank as a mere “law enforcement” issue with very limited rules of engagement.
Rather, it was a terrorism issue, which meant more aggressive rules of engagement.
If a Palestinian throws a rock at an IDF vehicle and breaks the windshield and then flees, even if no one in the IDF vehicle was hurt and even though the Palestinian is running away, and as such no longer presents an immediate threat, IDF open fire rules allow shooting for the Palestinian’s legs to make sure he does not escape.
At Jit, despite over 100 Jews attacking Palestinians and the IDF soldiers “live being in danger” from the Jews as well, all they did was physically push the Jewish attackers out of the village and at most fire in the air.
Sources said that they failed to arrest any of the over 100 Jews because it was hard to catch the attackers running in all different directions at night.
But if the soldiers were allowed to shoot for the legs when trying to arrest Jews involved in large scale attacks, maybe they would have caught more of them. Maybe also fewer Jews would risk attacking Palestinians.
Confronted with this possible change to the open fire rules, both current and former IDF officials who handle such issues did not seem to view such a change as remotely likely.
Some said this question was very dependent on the unique circumstances on the ground, which only the commander seeing things in real time could decide. Others said that there was no principled reason why IDF soldiers could not open fire on the legs of fleeing Jewish attackers, but that this could only be employed if there was no less lethal way of arresting them.
Yet, these responses present the issue as if there is not already evidence that the IDF is doing an extremely poor job of catching such people.
4 out of 100 is a 4% success rate. Clearly, less lethal means are not working and whoever the commander on the ground has been has not acted aggressively enough. This was also the conclusion of the IDF probe issued on Wednesday of the Jit incident.
A much more honest read is that IDF soldiers shooting at Jews legs (even not trying to kill) to protect Palestinians would just be either too politically explosive or likely too many IDF soldiers would ignore the orders and fake some technical sounding reason why they could not fire (such as innocent people being mixed in with attackers.)
There might be creative alternatives. Firing some kind of tracer that cannot be removed or object which could sedate someone trying to flee.
A huge permanent contingent of soldiers guarding all crossover areas throughout the West Bank could succeed, but is also unrealistic in terms of resources.
In the meantime, it is not clear that the IDF has seriously contended with how it will prevent the next Huwara or Jit. If that does not change, no one should be surprised when another IDF probe comes out apologizing for failing to protect Palestinians.
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