The released Palestinian prisoners are not hostages
It is impossible to imagine what the Israeli hostages have been through since the October 7 attacks. Yet even on their release their suffering has been cruelly exploited.
The release of the hostages has become a sickening ritual, carefully choreographed by the terrorists of Hamas as a shameless propaganda spectacle.
Last week, when four female hostages were released, Hamas forced the women to wear ill-fitting army uniforms and made them wave and smile from a specially-constructed stage. They were made to thank their captors, terrorists who had taken them from their beds, exploited and imprisoned them. With a final flourish of mocking cruelty, the women were presented with goodie bags of farewell gifts and certificates of captivity. It was simply grotesque.
The hostage exchange that followed a few days later took on a greater edge of menace and danger. 29-year-old Arbel Yehud was forced to make her way through baying Palestinian crowds before reaching safety. Alongside her, 80 year-old Gadi Moses somehow composed himself with unthinkable dignity before the hate mob.
Hamas wants these ugly scenes to be projected around the world, to reach us all via our TV screens and phones. They intend to project power, control and the promise of future terrorist violence. Their masked fighters strut and brandish guns for the cameras to warn they are ready to inflict genocidal terror attacks again if they are given the chance.
You could argue that all media organisations providing live coverage of the hostage releases are giving a platform to terror. Yet this is perhaps unavoidable in our era of rolling news.
What is unforgivable is the false equivalence made by so many news' organisations – including the BBC – between Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners. This has distorted the story in a manner that will have delighted Hamas.
News outlets across the globe have repeatedly referred to the Palestinians to be released as 'hostages'. They have equated the victims of a terrorist attack with violent murderers who seek to kill civilians and erase Israel from the map.
Yet the hundreds of Palestinian prisoners who are set for release as a result of the negotiations with Hamas have never been hostages, and the majority have been convicted of violent offences. They include Mohammad Abu Warda, a Hamas commander who ordered a 1996 bus bombing in Jerusalem in which 45 people died.
Also set for release is Mahmoud Attallah: he had been jailed for life for the murder in 2003 of a Palestinian woman he deemed to be a 'collaborator' with the Israeli authorities.
Then there are three members of the Silwan Squad, a terror cell responsible for multiple attacks in which 35 people were murdered and many more injured.
These are but a few of the hundreds of prisoners who were rightly jailed by the Israeli authorities after due judicial process but are now set to go free. More than half are members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
That they are being released in vastly disproportionate numbers for the few hostages left alive in Gaza is a reflection of the very different values put on life by Israel and its terrorist foes.
It is terrible enough for the hostages and their families to endure the grotesque circus being staged each week by Hamas.
We must not add to their ordeal by falling for terrorist propaganda in subscribing to the 'hostage exchange' lie.
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