Earlier this week, Hamas threatened to halt the release of hostages unless more humanitarian aid was delivered. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear that if Hamas were going to break the ceasefire deal, Israel would restart the war.
The claim by Hamas that Israel was not living up to its humanitarian bargain was ludicrous. It was one more effort by the terrorists to gain sympathy and inflict pain on the families of Israeli hostages.
Netanyahu called their bluff and the terrorists agreed to continue releasing hostages.
“Accordingly, Hamas confirms its continued position to implement the agreement in accordance with what was signed, including the exchange of prisoners according to the specified timetable,” the group said.
I would like to point out that for the last 15 months, we've been bombarded with desperate pleas for Israel to supply humanitarian aid to Gaza, that people were starving, and the situation was critical.
I have no doubt people were hungry, but it wasn't because Israel was dragging its feet in supplying humanitarian aid.
According to a study in the Israel Journal of Health Policy Research that tracked all food shipments into Gaza during the first half of 2024, Jerusalem exceeded minimum standards for nutrition. The data came from Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, which notes all food shipments that enter the territory by land or air.
Adjusting for projected losses, the authors estimate that a net total of 478,229 metric tons of food was supplied to Gaza over those seven months. That means that each resident had access to an average daily food supply of 3,004 calories, made up of 98 grams of protein, 61 grams of fat, and 23 milligrams of iron. Aside from February, the researchers clocked a “steady increase” in the “tonnage, energy, macronutrients and iron content” of food brought into Gaza month by month.
Those results “exceed” the per capita requirements under the Sphere humanitarian standard for food security and nutrition maintenance in crisis-affected populations, even after the researchers applied stringent assumptions of food losses amounting to 15 to 30 percent of the total. The standard takes into account a robust set of variables, including the varying dietary requirements of men and women across different age groups, including pregnant and breastfeeding women, and the potential conflict-related dietary needs of the population.
The urgency to release the hostages has grown after recently released hostages dramatically showed the effects of their ordeal in Hamas captivity. Alon Ohel, held since October 7, 2023, was kept in one of the Hamas tunnels that crisscross the Gaza Strip and is awaiting his release scheduled for Saturday.
Alon's mother says he "has been kept shackled in an underground tunnel, shrapnel stuck in his eye and shoulder and subsisting on barely one piece of pita bread a day," according to the Wall Street Journal.
Eliya Cohen, 27, also captured on Oct. 7, was held in the same tunnel as Alon.
“He lost more than 20 kilos [44 lbs.] from his weight. He was chained in his legs all the time in the tunnels from the 7th of October until now. He’s in the tunnels without seeing any sunlight and he was disconnected,” said Ziv Abud, Cohen’s fiancée. Cohen doesn't know his fiance survived the Oct. 7 attack at the music festival.
“He doesn’t know anything about what happened outside and that I’m fighting for him,” she said.
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800 humanitarian aid trucks are waiting to enter Gaza, according to reports. COGAT, the Israeli military agency overseeing aid deliveries into Gaza, says there are 400,000 tents in Gaza. Hamas says there are only 73,000. The apparent uneven distribution of massive amounts of aid in Gaza is not the fault of Israel. Hamas is playing politics with the aid meant for its own people.
Just when you think Hamas can't sink into the muck of inhumanity and cruelty any deeper, they surprise us by continuing to dig.
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