Israel says that Hamas executed six hostages, including one American Israeli. They say that they recovered the six bodies in a tunnel in Gaza and that all six were killed execution-style.
The reaction to this horrific news has been mixed. Some are demanding that the Israeli government reach a ceasefire and hostage deal immediately.
Some say that the Israeli Defense Forces may have had a hand in these deaths, accusing Israel of “framing the incident to manipulate public opinion and justify its continued military operations in Gaza. Those commentators objected to what they considered the adoption of the ‘Israeli narrative’ without scrutiny, warning of the dangers of oversimplifying a ‘complex’ situation.”
Hamas reportedly released these haunting messages on Monday, which they say will be followed by the victims’ last words.
The other side of the story.
Others accuse Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of sabotaging hostage negotiations in order to continue the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Which he clearly has.
He spoke on Monday and said that he will not be lectured about the ceasefire because he agreed to U.S.-proposed ceasefires and Hamas refused. Hamas refused because those ceasefires allowed Israel a permanent presence in Gaza and no guarantee that Israel would not continue to imprison Palestinians.
He says that these six deaths mean that Israel will continue to put maximum pressure on Hamas. However they died, their deaths were horrific and so are the deaths of the 47 innocent Palestinians who were killed on Sunday in Israel’s attacks in Gaza.
As Caitlin Johnstone points out, “Western government officials are making it clear that they do not see Palestinians as human in the same way they see Israelis as human, as are the mass media propaganda institutions who’ve been covering the deaths of these hostages with an intensity never seen regarding the IDF’s daily massacres of civilians in Gaza.”
Many Israelis have been pressuring the government to end the war with massive strikes on the streets of Tel Aviv. A court ruled that a general strike by Israel’s largest labor union had to end. The union had been trying to pressure the government to reach a hostage deal and ceasefire but the government will not allow them to do that because it ruled that the strike was economic and not political.
