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Israel-Hamas war: Families of Gaza hostages fear for those left behind
The moment Israeli hostages held for 50 days in Gaza by Hamas finally begin crossing the border into Israel in a handoff with the Red Cross will be bittersweet for those families whose loved ones are not yet part of the hostage deal.
“We are very happy for those families whose loved ones will be coming home, but we are worried about those who are staying behind,” said Idan Baruch, whose younger brother Uriel Baruch, from Givon outside of Jerusalem, was kidnapped from the Supernova music festival in Re’im on October 7. “We had hoped to see a general agreement which would bring all of the hostages out, but the government has insisted that nobody will be left behind, and we have to trust in that. What can we do? We don’t make the decisions. So at least there will be those who will be released now, and we will be happy for them.”
The minimum that could have alleviated the fears of family members would have been to demand that Hamas release videos of every hostage as part of the agreement, he said.
“Just to show us videos – even two seconds – so that we can see that they are okay; we are not looking for more than that. That would help us keep our hopes up,” he said. “Even if we just get a sign of life, that he is okay, we will calm down. Part of our stress is that we are living with uncertainty.”At a press conference on November 22, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that visits by the Red Cross to all the hostages had been negotiated as part of the agreement.
“We had difficult negotiations… it does include visits by Red Cross representatives to the hostages and the delivery of medicines to them,” Netanyahu said. “I heard that there is someone denying this. The Red Cross says that it has not heard; then here is the explicit clause: ‘The Red Cross will be allowed to visit the remaining hostages and provide them with needed medicine.’ I expect the Red Cross to do its work.”
Uriel has a very generous soul and is young in spirit and loves music and festivals, said Baruch. The third of four siblings, he is always the first to help whoever needs it – even strangers. He loves to “celebrate life,” and spend time with his family, said Baruch. They are a very united family, said Baruch, and their youngest brother has returned from the US, where he was living, to be with the family at this time.
There is such a big dissonance between who Uriel is – he never spoke ill about anyone or had hate for anyone or had any connection to war or violence – and the situation he is in now, that it is difficult to absorb, said Baruch.
They have been honest with his children – eight-year-old Shalev and five-year-old Ofek – in terms they can understand about what has happened to their father. Uriel’s parents and wife, Raheli, are trying to function day by day, said Baruch.
“It is a very scary situation for her. She has built a home with a man and suddenly one day he is not here. Her thoughts are very scary. We hope that at least he will be in the next agreement,” he said.
They have not heard any news about his brother since the morning of October 7 when they believe he was kidnapped from the car he was driving in with his friend Michael, with whom he had gone to the festival. The last they heard from them was when Michael called his wife to tell her they were surrounded by terrorists.
The family has seen videos of Baruch’s car on social media, with Michael dead inside. They saw Uriel lying on the ground near the car – but don’t know if he was dead or injured – and then later his body was no longer there, and there were no signs of blood. He is assumed kidnapped at the moment.
“We are now with mixed feelings,” Baruch said. “If [the government] had waited just a bit more with the negotiations, and kept up the situation in Gaza the way it is now, Hamas would have understood it is to their benefit to do a general agreement for all the hostages. I think the government is doing the best they can and I can’t criticize them.”
Right now, he said, the focus must be on bringing the hostages back home and not to start looking for who is to blame or criticizing one political side of the political spectrum or the other.
“Later we can talk about that,” he said. “It is an emergency situation… and all our efforts have to be on bringing them home, not on who is guilty.”
The Israel-Hamas ceasefire needed to bring Gaza hostages home
ONE THING is for certain, that without a ceasefire agreement Hamas will not release any hostages, said Lior Peri, son of 79-year-old peace activist Chaim Peri, who is among the oldest of the hostages and was kidnapped from his home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz.
The families of hostages, and especially those from the kibbutzim who were the hardest hit, have said from the beginning that they support any agreement as a start, he said.
“Any agreement is important and good, and it just needs to be used as leverage for the next agreement,” he said. “We support releasing as many as we can now. We want to release all the hostages, and if it has to be in some time, it will be in some time. We think any agreement is good. Of course, we would prefer that my father will be here, but all agreements are a trailer for other agreements.”
“I want to meet personally the person who can refuse the release of a child,” he added.
Still, he said, the conditions of the tunnels in which the hostages are being held are especially difficult physically for the older hostages.
Peri, who lives in Tel Aviv, said the last news they heard about his father, who on October 7 was able to briefly push out the terrorists invading his house, giving his mother time to hide and be saved, was one month ago, when released hostage Yocheved Lifshitz related that she had seen him alive.
The government’s first priority must be to free the hostages, Peri said.
“The government says their two goals are in parallel, but we say they can’t be together. They think putting pressure on Hamas will advance an agreement, but we believe if they focus on pressuring Hamas, the goal of freeing the hostages will go down in priority,” he said. “I know there are things they are not telling us, and I can understand why… I don’t have a problem with that. It is just important that the government tells me they are doing their best.”
Still, he said, because of its monumental failure to protect its citizens on October 7, the Israeli government now has a duty to prove to the citizens of Israel, and to Jews around the world, that Israel still remains the safe haven for all Jews for which it was founded.
“Israel was created to be a refuge for all world Jewry. That is why all Jews support Israel. Our government now has to show that the country is still worthy of being a shelter for all Jews of the world,” he said. “Something in the contract has been breached.”
He said the multilevel protocol set up by the government which awaits the hostages once they arrive in Israel, comes from the government’s frustration with Lifshitz, who spoke to the media without any government “debriefing,” criticizing the Israeli government for ignoring what she said had been warning signs of Hamas activity along the border weeks before the attack, and speaking positively about her treatment by her Hamas kidnappers.
“They are afraid of that happening again, so they build a framework,” he said. “I don’t envy the person who tries to interrogate my father. My father will lose patience, with the anger he feels toward the government which got him into the situation he is in. Though he will be very happy to be free, he will remember what happened to the Israeli POWs who returned from captivity after the Yom Kippur War and were interrogated by the Israeli security services, suffering second hostage trauma.”
Many POWs from the 1973 war have said that their questioning by Israeli security officers upon their arrival in Israel was worse than their experience in captivity.
Israel has never experienced the situation where so many civilian hostages have been held by terrorists for such a long time, and once they are released family and mental health professionals will have to “learn while walking” of what is the best way to help them with their trauma, Peri said.
He is particularly concerned about how the children will deal with their experience, especially compounded with their 20 years of trauma living under constant threat of missile attacks, he said.
“They have not had an easy childhood,” he said.
But what he most fears is what will happen the day after the war, he said.
“Will the government continue to go in the same directions it has gone for the past year? Will they say the tragedy we experienced is not big enough to move us from the path they have been taking?” he said. “If there is no change, it will be very difficult. I am not interested in looking for a life elsewhere.”
There has not been a real attempt to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he said, and after five rounds of fighting in Gaza, nothing has been resolved.
“It is just doing the same actions, bringing the same problems. There has not been an attempt for a new way. It has just been trying to manage the conflict, not solve it, and the conflict can’t be managed,” said Peri. “Now maybe they will be ready for another agreement – with Hamas or the Palestinian Authority; it doesn’t matter. You don’t get to choose the enemy you want to make peace with.”
THE CONTINUED uncertainty of the situation, and not knowing even when the hostage release agreement will indeed take effect, or when another agreement will be reached, is distressing, said Itzik Horn, the father of Nir Oz resident Yair Horn, 45, and of Eitan Horn, 37, from Kfar Saba, who went to visit his brother that black Sabbath.
The agreement is not being made between two states, where an agreement is an agreement, he said, noting that already from the start the supposed release date was postponed.
“We don’t know when they will be released, and for now they are only speaking about women and children. Who knows when there will be another ‘quota’ and how or what the criteria will be,” he said. “Another thing that worries us is that they are saying the soldiers will be the last to be released. But who does Hamas define as a soldier? It can be any one from 18 to 45 years old. If we felt we were in a position of impotence before, now it is even more.”
He is trying to keep up hope that both of his sons are alive. Yair is well known by everybody on the kibbutz, having worked in all different sectors, including managing the kibbutz pub. Nir Oz, with a population of about 400 people, suffered the most losses proportionally of all the kibbutzim, with almost one in four people either dead, missing or taken hostage.
His hair stands on edge when he hears that the priorities of the military operation are first to finish off Hamas and then to rescue the hostages, Horn said.
“The objective is to rescue the hostages first,” said Horn, who was evacuated to Herzliya from his home in Ashkelon. “The government has the responsibility to rescue all of the hostages because they failed to protect them and allowed what happened to happen.”
Quoting a Spanish saying, Horn, who is originally from Argentina, noted that a reckoning for those responsible will come, not during the war but after.
“‘While the cannons fire, the poets are quiet,’” he said. “When this is over we will stop pointing toward Gaza and will need to point towards whoever needs to be pointed at. Netanyahu does not even have to accept responsibility. It is his automatically. If he knew and didn’t do anything, it is his responsibility. And if he didn’t know, it is also his responsibility. We have to start at the head.”
As Sigalit Pasharel, from Holon, waits to hear about what will happen with the hostage release, she tries to go about the mundane tasks of daily life that need to get done: bank errands, getting dinner on the table for her family.
“I have to function as a mother. It is very difficult,” she said. “I barely eat. I am always thinking about him, how he is, if he is suffering. You live with a lot of uncertainty and a lot of stress.”
Never in a million years would she have thought she would be in such a position, she said. Her only brother, taxi driver Eitan Levi, 53, of Bat Yam, was down South on that Saturday just on a fluke, having agreed to make the long drive down to take a passenger to one of the communities along the Gaza border.
“I don’t know anything about the hostage release agreement, because no one knows anything,” Pasharel said. “I am very happy that there are hostages going home, but I am very sad that my brother is not included in that agreement. I believe there are a lot more people who are sad their loved ones are not in the agreement. But this is what the government has decided, so even if I say I don’t agree, it wouldn’t help.”
What is most important for her, she said, is that the Red Cross be allowed to go see the other hostages and assure that they are physically okay.
“I believe there will be other agreements. The government promised us all the hostages will be back home no matter what – those dead and those still living,” she said. “It is very important that they all come home in peace, including my brother – that they work on bringing them back home. I hope there will continue to be agreements and that my brother will be included in the agreement and they won’t leave him to the side.”
The last time she heard from her brother – they are only a year apart in age, and he is her only blood relative outside her nuclear family – was at 6:50 a.m. when he called her to say he was very scared, that he was in his taxi trying to get home via Kibbutz Be’eri after being caught in a barrage of missiles. Nobody knows what happened to his passenger.
“He said he was coming back home, and then we heard him say in a very quiet voice “oy vavoy,” and then all we could hear was a lot of Arabic voices saying ‘Allahu akbar,’” she said. She kept her phone on mute and listened as the car was backed up, and for several hours heard movement on the line and lots of Arabic until the phone was disconnected, but she didn’t hear her brother’s voice, she said.
As part of the Family Forum, she has spoken everywhere and to everyone who will listen to her story, she said. She wants everyone to know that also among the hostages there is a taxi driver named Eitan Levi, who is not home. •
On Sunday, I returned to The Jerusalem Post after being drafted as an IDF reservist for almost 80 days for my second tour of duty in Gaza since the October 7 Massacre. My anecdotal experience as an infantryman and perspective as a journalist in civilian life has given me a unique perspective on Gaza war issues, familiar and unexplored alike. These ten takeaways from someone who has been in the mud of the battlefield should be considered by policymakers and citizens in which much of the information about the war is second-hand information and hearsay.
1. The IDF is winning, and needs to be allowed to win
Compared to their operations during my first tour at the end of 2023, a sense that Hamas is collapsing has since developed. The terrorist organization once fielded ambush cells that conducted frequent hit-and-run anti-tank missile attacks and ambushes from a wide network of bunkers and tunnels for a guerilla defense in depth strategy.
Almost a year later, Hamas seems unable to operate on a strategic level, even from areas in which its battalions have remained structurally intact or reconstituted from degraded units. This is exemplified by Hamas’ inability to launch targeted reprisals for the death of military leaders, or even attempt traditional attacks on Jewish holidays or the anniversaries of October 7.
By and large, they do not operate at night or the light of day, clinging even closer to the low visibility of dawn and dusk, whereas their operatives would once more openly operate in daylight hours due to being able to escape underground after an attack. It appears that their tunnel networks have been greatly compromised, as they have had to travel along roads and weave between buildings.
Their legitimate operations focus on IED and lone sniper attacks rather than using heavier munitions, but a greater focus has been filming any engagement so that they can edit the footage so they can claim to foreign supporters and Israeli citizens that they have destroyed Israeli vehicles. Stealing humanitarian aid has apparently not been enough for some Hamas battalions, as in one case they have resorted to sending plainclothes operatives to loot food and supplies from abandoned IDF positions. Their mortar bombs fall far less accurate than they once were, and we did not encounter any enemy drone activity.
The Netzarim security corridor seems relatively safe, with paved roads, and outposts enjoying electricity provided by power lines. While many soldiers left Gaza positive about the IDF’s advancements, the path of victory is long and the journey should not be confused with its destination. Many soldiers have mixed their sense of Hamas’s significant degradation with the feeling that the military is being held back from decisive action, entering and leaving areas to allow Hamas to retain territorial control.
2. Gaza has suffered heavy damage
The extent of the damage to infrastructure hasn’t been completely appreciated by the general public, and Israeli and international leaders will need to develop extensive plans to rebuild the territory. Whole neighborhoods have been leveled during direct combat, the search and destruction of tunnels and booby traps, and the establishment of defensible positions.
If buildings have not been damaged by their proximity to explosives or pocked by suppressive fire, they have had their outer walls shaved away to reveal the possible presence of terrorists. Concrete rubble and trash are strewn along wide fields in the Gaza Strip and will need to be collected and moved before some areas are traversable, let alone livable. The IDF Spokespeople will also need to prepare to explain the extensive damage to civilian infrastructure.
3. Gaza was far from an ‘open-air prison’
One of the great shames about the extensive damage to Gazan infrastructure is that it was not the desolate “open-air prison” that it had been advertised as in anti-Israel propaganda.
While there certainly were residents living in desperate conditions, the houses, apartments, and villas that we cleared and took position had a decent and even opulent quality of life. All the homes we saw had televisions, computers, refrigerators, decorations, and food stores in line with an Israeli suburb. Our impression was not one of squalor, but normal conditions.
In rural areas villas and mansions oversaw sweeping vineyards on one side and a view of the ocean on the other, and in urban areas large schools, restaurants and other facilities. The lost potential and degraded conditions in Gaza make Hamas’s decision to attack Israel and weaponize their territory rather than develop what they held a shame all the greater.
4. Hamas weaponized Gaza
Much has been said about Hamas’s use of civilians as shields to deter IDF operations — A detained civilian told our troops that he was unable to travel from the North to South along humanitarian corridors because he had to bribe Hamas operatives who were bent on keeping civilians around them as cover. Yet the civilians are just one aspect of Hamas turning Gaza into a weapon to try to destroy Israel.
Tunnel networks are not just placed around or under civilian objects, terrorist infrastructure is integrated into civilian infrastructure in a way that makes the two indistinguishable. Civilian homes are turned into lookout and reconnaissance outposts, with members of families hired by terrorist organizations to provide intelligence, as was exemplified by the capture of spotters captured by a neighboring battalion. Armories are hidden within houses, to be accessed by plainclothes terrorists when they have the need to shed the veneer of being civilians.
Tunnel entrances can be found in the first floor of apartment buildings, not just in their backyards. Other homes are booby-trapped, leading to widespread suspicion of each home as being laced with explosives. With Gaza being weaponized in such a fashion, it has led military units to take precautions and actions that damage buildings and homes so that they can stay alive.
5. The IDF is not conducting a genocide
The purpose of our operations were not geared toward the elimination of Gazan civilians. There were never orders to kill civilians wantonly, and there were debates on if we had enough information to use deadly force and when it was legitimate to open fire. Civilians were allowed to pass by our positions along humanitarian corridors unmolested. These elements would not be found among a force that is devoted to mass murder or genocide. Civilian casualties are tragic, and unfortunately, they always occur in war, which is why such conflict should be avoided in the first place.
6. The IDF needs to restore discipline
While IDF soldiers are not engaged in mass war crimes or genocide, there is inappropriate and even criminal behavior. Other soldiers have shared with me stories of when they have seen looting, and I had to stop someone who had been temporarily attached to our battalion from taking a necklace from a house. While my battalion did not bring our cellphones into Gaza until our last week, when we were moved back to a rearguard outpost, we have seen the widespread use of phones by other neighboring units.
This is all the more shocking not just because posting on social media can be used by enemies to geo-locate positions and gather intelligence, but the violent machismo and inappropriate fooling around in videos and photographs discredits the moral legitimacy of the military and creates an overly relaxed and familiar environment that can get people killed. While journalists have to answer to the IDF censor, it felt to many of us that the IDF has done little to crack down on soldiers who are acting as poor spokespeople and even documenting what appear to be crimes.
Even small issues such as unsanctioned edgy uniform patches lead to a breakdown in discipline, which may lead to even greater behavior unbecoming of the IDF’s ethics. IDF leadership seems unwilling to want to deal with the overly involved families and loss of manpower that comes with disciplining inappropriate behavior.
7. Trust has been eroded in military leadership
The failures of the October 7 Massacre have led to a distrust of military brass among many soldiers and reservists that I have spoken to. It has become a common refrain among the ranks to not trust anyone above the rank of a battalion commander.
High-ranking officers are viewed critically as out-of-touch “October 6” officers who care more about the advancement of their careers through checking task boxes on their clipboards rather than actually changing the reality on the ground.
Reservists and mandatory soldiers alike are results-oriented, and if they feel that officers are more focused on satisfying their superiors rather than the realities on the ground, their orders will have less validity. Military brass, like the political leadership, need to prove to their men that their sacrifices for victory will not be in vain.
8. Reservists are frustrated with domestic squabbles
As news broke that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, fierce debate broke out in the company about the legitimacy of the move. While Netanyahu’s camp claimed that there were professional differences over strategy that could not be overcome, and that the prosecution of the war required Gallant’s firing, too much suspicion and bad blood had been developed about political plays within the current government.
Many believe that the move was done to save the coalition because ultra-orthodox parties threatened to leave because of Gallant’s work towards drafting haredi youth. Such suspicions have been informed by some politicians continuing to pursue their prior political interests, such as major judicial reform proponents calling to renew the process.
While Israeli soldiers are fighting and dying, they don’t feel that politicians are with them and take the war seriously. This distrust extends to the opposition as well — with many of the same actors that were involved in the anti-reform camp pushing for hostage deals at varying cost, many soldiers have expressed to me that they can’t help to wonder if they are motivated by the good of the nation or their own political agendas.
9. The IDF needs more soldiers
As the war and debate about who has drafted has continued, reservists have become increasingly frustrated that some demographic groups are benefitting from the blood and toil of reservists while not contributing to the endeavor themselves. My battalion deputy commander and company commander have become involved in movements calling for a more equal draft.
The need for an increased draft comes as current reservists face multiple tours and are pushed off retirement. Our battalion saw a drop off in reenlistment as some reservists had to deal with crumbling families, businesses, and health. Many reservists came despite these challenges — the sacrifices that they have made are beyond just the risk of death and injury.
10. Soldiers deserve victory
The sacrifices that were made by reservists and mandatory soldiers were made under the implicit promise that they would be in exchange for victory. The state has to consider in its policies and strategic decisions not just the feelings of hostage families and residents who have to return home but also those who have willingly given everything for them and the state.
Reservists want resolution to the problems that led to October 7, they don’t want this war to become yet another round in ongoing conflict. While we will continue to fight for Israel, we don’t want to have to come back to Gaza and Lebanon in a few years time — for not just our sake, but also for that of all Israelis and Palestinians.
Three soldiers became the latest targets of anti-Israel organizations seeking to doxx and level legal challenges against Israeli servicemen abroad.
The Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF) called for the arrest of three Nahal Brigade soldiers for alleged war crimes after they entered the Netherlands on Thursday. The March 30 Movement branch submitted a complaint the same day, charging that the Granite battalion soldiers had been involved in operations in which Gazan homes were burned and the Rafah crossing was damaged without any military necessity.
The disruption of the Rafah crossing constricted the flow of aid in an act of “weaponized famine,” the group said.
The three soldiers were named on social media, and their pictures were shared by the foundation. The doxxing came days after the group filed a complaint to the International Criminal Court against a soldier and called for his arrest while he was visiting the United Arab Emirates.
Many of the foundation’s accusations do not list specific actions by soldiers but place them within Gaza or the West Bank during operations.
Other allegations and doxxing, such as those against an Israeli reservist officer who had to flee Cyprus in mid-November, are based on video and photographs posted by the soldiers on social media. Ynet reported that the officer coordinated his departure from the country with the Israeli Foreign Ministry after the HRF called on Cypriot officials to arrest him over two videos in which he allegedly burned and called to destroy Gazan civilian objects.
Following the November 21 ICC issuance of arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, the foundation called on the international body to also issue warrants against 1,000 IDF soldiers listed in an October 8 dossier it filed to the ICC.
The HRF claimed that it had gathered 8,000 pieces of documentation detailing the destruction of infrastructure, occupation of civilian homes, looting, participating in a blockade of Gaza, and targeting civilians. The documentation reportedly included soldiers boasting “about their war crimes on social media, sharing photos and videos of their participation in the destruction and occupation of Palestinian homes and properties.”
Some of the soldiers had dual citizenship, including 12 French, 12 American, four Canadian, three British, and two Dutch citizens.
More than one group targeting Israeli soldiers
The HRF is not the only group doxxing IDF soldiers who have participated in the war.
The Israel Genocide Tracker X/Twitter account, which has over 160,000 followers, shares the names and pictures of soldiers who had allegedly been in Gaza. Many of those identified by the account are dual-nationals, such as an American-Israeli Golani Reconnaissance battalion sniper doxxed on Saturday.
“We firmly believe that every soldier who entered Gaza is complicit in the genocide,” the group said in a social media post last Monday, defending their operations from those arguing that the account’s posts interfered in ongoing legal and journalistic investigations.
“We will soon release comprehensive lists of soldiers’ names to support international legal actions. We are already collaborating with various human rights organizations that rely on our data to pursue justice.”
Telegram channels published a file allegedly containing the personal information of several thousand soldiers and security officials last Sunday.
The viability of the legal cases against these soldiers is unclear, according to legal experts, with the main objective being the intimidation of IDF soldiers.
Universal jurisdiction
NGO Monitor legal adviser Anne Herzberg said that it is difficult to know if individual cases are actionable without knowing their specifics, but there was concern that courts in countries with weak judicial systems and inadequate due process could be exploited, and warrants could be issued based on “flimsy evidence” and “no advance notice.”
“Anti-Israel NGOs have pushed universal jurisdiction cases against Israeli military and government officials for years as a complement to their lobbying for ICC proceedings,” said Herzberg.
“The shift by these groups to the targeting of thousands of lower-ranking dual-national Israelis has two purposes. First, these cases are about generating negative PR – to internationally tarnish the IDF by delegitimizing and criminalizing IDF service. The second purpose is to deter dual nationals from serving in the IDF for fear they might be subject to criminal proceedings if they return to their countries of origin.
“This second purpose constitutes a military and national security threat and should be taken very seriously by both Israeli and Western officials. It should come as no surprise that several of these NGOs have links to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, or other terror organizations.”
International Legal Forum CEO Arsen Ostrovsky said that these lawfare campaigns were “entirely without merit and no more than political stunts” but noted that “given the changing political climate and growing hostility against Israel in some parts of Europe, there is no guarantee that some countries will not entertain this charade in the future.”
“As a response to this growing threat, Israel should consider adopting a US-style American Service-Members’ Protection Act, which authorizes the use of all means necessary to secure the release of American soldiers and persons taken captive by, on behalf, or at the request of the International Criminal Court, in this case being equally applicable if IDF soldiers (or former soldiers) were detained on the instructions of the ICC and/or individual countries,” said Ostrovsky.
“The United States, which is currently putting a devastating sanctions framework [together] against the ICC over their issuing of arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, should sanction any country that not only seeks to apply the ICC warrants but takes individual actions to arrest IDF soldiers.
“And lastly, Israel should also make it a priority to sign bilateral immunity agreements with other countries, acknowledging the independence of Israel’s judicial system and undertaking not to arrest any IDF soldiers, whether current or former, thereby allowing Israelis the ability to travel freely, without fear of arrest.”
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Israeli Law Center representing IDF soldiers condemns ICC Indictment of Netanyahu and Gallant
The Shurat HaDin Law Center, which has been leading the fight against efforts by the International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute Israeli officials, officers, and troops, has condemned the court in The Hague for its efforts to unjustly arrest Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Gallant.
Shurat HaDin has argued in recent briefs submitted to the ICC that the Chief Prosecutor does not have proper jurisdiction to indict Israeli leaders or soldiers as Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Treaty and that the Palestinian Authority is not a state, as is required to be a member of the ICC. Moreover, they allege that the Chief Prosecutor has displayed his bias and anti-Israel slant by refusing to indict any meaningful members of the Hamas terrorist organization that attacked the Jewish State on October 7, 2023, murdering and kidnapping civilians.
According to Shurat HaDin President Nitsana Darshan-Leitner: “The ICC has finally revealed its extreme bias against Israel and its blatant antisemitism by filing indictments against Israel’s leaders. How shameful that instead of recognizing the murder, maiming, raping, and arson against innocent Israelis, they have chosen to take the side of the terrorist Palestinian groups and joined the fight against Israel. The ICC completely ignores the language of its own Rome Treaty and its deliberate limitations and instead finds skewed paths and unlawful justifications to bestow statehood on the Palestinians and assert legal jurisdiction over Israel. This extreme decision creates a dangerous precedent for the ICC to target other democratic armies and leaders. The Western democratic member states need to immediately protest and disavow the Court’s ruling. They must pledge to ignore the indictments against Israelis. We are calling on the US Congress, Senate, and Administration to finally sanction the ICC, its racist judges, and its chief prosecutor. They must take bold action against The Hague. Tomorrow, they’ll be indicting American officials and troops as well.”
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