Shabbat Shalom!
Each week as I prepare to write the Shabbat Shalom email, I plan to share uplifting news from our ministry, life in Israel or some other encouraging piece of information. Unfortunately, as this Friday rolled around, more facts were revealed about that gruesome day in October. Part of me wants to ignore it; a larger part of me cannot.
Today, the bodies of three more hostages were recovered in northern Gaza. Their families will now have peace, but many more families are still waiting in agony and the entire nation joins them in their sorrow and pain.
WARNING: GRAPHIC DETAILS
In the face of worldwide denials of Hamas's atrocities on October 7, the families of five girls who were abducted from their army base tell a different story. Yesterday, those families released footage from the abduction of these young ladies that have been discovered in Gaza. (You can see the video here.) While many around the world would have us declare a cease-fire, even while dozens of living Israelis are still being held in captivity, the IDF has a mission. Their mission is not to kill innocent Palestinians but to bring our people home.
If the IDF had not been there, we would not have recovered the three bodies last week or captured two confessed rapists. A father and son, both Hamas terrorists, Jamal Hassin Ahmad and Abdallah Radi separately corroborated each other as they confess to raping and killing an Israeli woman. I won’t detail their confession, but you can read about it here.
A few days ago, the families decided to release the footage of the young ladies being abducted. The video is just over three minutes. The five young ladies were spotters.
“[F]emale members of the IDF who observe the barriers along the border and activate complex technological systems to prevent the enemy from penetrating into Israel. Theirs is a difficult, cognitively and emotionally demanding job that entails hours of closely monitoring surveillance cameras, with the knowledge that missing even the slightest unusual event along the border could have disastrous effects on the entire country.”
There are reports that commanders had ignored their warnings of seeing Hamas prepare for the attack. Our country let them down.
The video, which was taken by Hamas body cameras, was carefully edited and trimmed down to take out images of dead bodies and other more graphic content out of respect for the families. Hamas killed 15 of their fellow female soldiers before taking the remaining seven into captivity. One of them was rescued in the early days of the war, and sadly, another one was killed. We believe that the rest are still alive.
“These are the girls we can impregnate!”
One of the terrorists speaks about impregnating the girls.
Shira Elbag, Liri's mother, described the video in an interview with Kan Bet radio, "You see the girls, you see them already after they entered the bomb shelter, that is, after their friends were murdered," she said.
"You see that huge amounts of terrorists infiltrated who treat them with brutality and severe violence, speak to them in a very unpleasant and violent discourse, a discourse we don't talk about, but they even say it there – 'Here, these are the girls who can get pregnant,'" she added.
The video shows the girls, beaten and bloodied. The terrorists called them dogs. Another threatens to shoot them. The terrorists take time to pray. They were in no hurry, and none of our soldiers showed up. It was a complete breakdown of our security forces.
An Israeli Arab singer, Nasreen Qadri, had harsh words for Hamas following the release of the video. Speaking in Arabic, she said, “This is not Islam. It’s shameful. … You are abusing the girls, their dignity. … Where [is the] Arab world? Look at yourself.” Please watch her post on Instagram!
It took me three days before I watched the Hamas video. I didn’t want to, and yet I had to. We have to watch these videos to remind ourselves that these girls are still in captivity and we have to rescue them. Let me be blunt: some all of these girls could be eight months pregnant. :-(
Please pray for their safety and their safe return to Israel.
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