I was feeling okay all day yesterday when our PM dismissed the ridiculous demands of Hamas as basically a “no” on their part to another hostage deal. Good, I thought. Anything reasonable would have torn the country apart, in the way the Shalit deal did.

And then this morning, I see that Ynet has plastered the terms of this ridiculous agreement all over its front page, and talking heads are saying Israel’s answer will probably be a “yes, but.”

What!!? What??? What!!!

What is there to talk about? They are asking for a complete withdrawal and a permanent ceasefire, thousands of housing units, cessation of Jewish visits to the Temple Mount, immediate return of Gazans to north Gaza, 500 aid trucks a day, and the release of 3-5 thousand Hamas prisoners, including those with life sentences as well as the savages of the Nukhba unit, those animals who burned babies alive, and raped hundreds of women.

In return, they won’t even tell us who is still alive. They say they will release only one hostage a day, over a 45 day period: First adult men and women, then female soldiers (we’ll have to wait a month and a half until they let the first girl soldier leave! What???) then young men and soldiers, and finally, bodies

I am telling you right now, so you can stop reading me if this bothers you, I am adamantly opposed to any kind of deal which means we let Hamas continue to control Gaza and we release a single Hamas murderer so they can murder again.

Anyone with half a brain can draw a direct line leading from the Gilad Shalit deal to October 7. Another such deal is the end of our country, as these terrorists understand how easy it is to defeat us, that we don’t have the stomach or the guts to say to the families: sorry, we will get them freed with our army, not knuckling under to Hamas. We will hang every Nukhba monster, and make sure Hamas murderers are imprisoned until they die of some horrible disease, inside prison walls. Or until we have the guts to make the death penalty retroactive.

Just thinking about this makes me feel like I’m on some inquisitorial torture machine that is stretching my body in two directions. Yes, my heart is with every hostage and their family. I can’t even imagine what they are suffering. But I am also a citizen of a country surrounded by homicidal maniacs. We absolutely cannot risk the lives of millions of our people, who have come to Israel seeking refuge and safety from antisemitism and terrorism, by showing this kind of weakness to our enemies, giving them hope that they need not defeat us on the battlefield, but by psychological torture, leading the way for each and every one of us to become a future target for terrorist kidnapping, more valuable to our enemies than any other weapon.

Saying “absolutely not” doesn’t mean we give up on getting our hostages back. Let’s not forget the simple fact that Israel is winning, closing in on the monsters who invaded our country and brutalized our people. Today, the 98^th Brigade uncovered a kilometer long tunnel system where at least twelve hostages were held – three were returned to Israel, the rest remain. The tunnel was then destroyed.

According to those who know, Sinwar is within range of the IDF, scurrying like a rat from hiding place to hiding place. Looking for him, the IDF has found swastikas adorning tunnel walls. The IDF found UN uniforms hanging in the closets of terrorists, and UNWRA bags filled with weapons in mosques. They’ve found a safe containing 20 million shekels for the private use of Sinwar and his buddies. They’ve found documentation for the over 250 million dollars transferred to Hamas and Sinwar by Iran over the last decade.

Where do you think Iran got that money? From Biden and Obama. The monstrousness of it! That U.S. taxpayer money has been given to a terrorist state that uses it to pay people to rape and murder and kidnap Jews. That uses it for arms to attack American soldiers. Repulsive.

There are reports that 32 and as many as 52 of our hostages have already been killed by Hamas. The sheer enormity of this horrifying fact! To kidnap people, children, old people, and treat them so badly they die, or to cruelly murder them outright, while pretending you’re merely holding them hostage and plan to release them.

And now, what torture this is for their families as Hamas insist on these obscene concessions, with Qatar, those sponsors of terror, benignly looking on, pretending to be even-handed as they have the bare-faced gall to present this laundry list of defeat and ignominy to us. And then there is Joe Biden and the Democrats, making sure Congress will not be helping Israel with any aid as a pressure tactic to make sure we stop the fighting lest the “poor Palestinians” experience the defeat they deserve.

For many of us in Israel, this is the very last straw. As our soldiers bear down on the population center where the people responsible for October 7, and their collaborators who rejoiced – i.e., the “poor Palestinians – people who keep guns underneath their little girls’ pink beds, dig terror tunnel entrances under their babies’ cribs, place copies of Mein Kampf on their bookshelves, and send their children to summer camps where they are trained to hate and kill Jews, we in Israel want and deserve to see them pay.

I am thinking about the god these people worship. Hamas says they worship Allah, who is all merciful and compassionate. How does that jell with their behavior and the crimes they’ve committed in this Allah’s name? Do they really believe that an All Merciful God would want them to hurt babies? To rape and mutilate young girls, married women? To slaughter the elderly in wheelchairs?

If this is really what the religion they believe in teaches, then Allah is a pagan god of their own creation, crueler than the ancient cult of Molech, where parents placed their children in the idol’s iron belly and watched them burn.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard precious few voices of Muslim religious leaders raised in denunciation of these crimes which were committed, after all, in the name of Allah.

These people, who claim to be the descendants of Abraham, have desecrated his name and the name of his God who forbids murder, kidnapping, torture, rape., even during war, even if you are feeling “oppressed.” If you capture a woman during a war, according to the Torah, you have to leave her alone for a month, and then marry her before you have sex with her. And if you decide after a month you don’t want to marry her, you have to set her free and let her go home. These are the rules of the God of Abraham.

If I’ve gotten this wrong, my ears are open for the bellowing outcry of the “true” followers of Islam, the Imams of the world, who should be cursing Hamas and demanding revenge against them for their merciless barbarities against innocents, which besmirch the name of Islam and Allah.

So far, I hear almost nothing.

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