The true story of Israel’s daring hostage rescue

Last year, I set out to tell a story that much of the media seemed determined to distort.

On June 8, 2024, Israeli special forces launched a daylight raid into the heart of Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. Four hostages, Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv, were being held in civilian homes. The operation unfolded under heavy fire. Intelligence had to be near-perfect. One wrong move would mean death for everyone involved.

I documented the firsthand accounts of IDF soldiers on the ground, the grieving parents of a fallen hero, and the elite special operators who carried out one of the most daring hostage rescues in modern history — Operation Arnon.

Any sovereign nation subjected to such a vicious assault bears both a political and moral responsibility to bring its citizens home.

The mission succeeded. The four civilians, kidnapped on October 7, 2023, returned home alive. But not without cost. Chief Inspector Arnon Zmora was mortally wounded. The operation, originally known as Seeds of Summer, was renamed in his honor.

The heroes of Operation Arnon were buried under headlines focused solely on casualty counts or international criticism. While the world debates the operation’s justification, the firsthand accounts in my documentary “Operation Arnon” reveal its compelling operational necessity.

Operation Arnon was a proportionate and justified response to the October 7 attacks carried out by Hamas and other allied terrorist organizations.

Any sovereign nation subjected to such a vicious assault bears both a political and moral responsibility to bring its citizens home. This “no man left behind” ethos is present in any nation that places value on the lives of its civilians and military personnel. Every life matters. Everyone comes home.

The recent combat search and rescue operation for the United States F-15E pilots epitomizes this dogma. On April 3, 2026, two U.S. pilots ejected from their damaged aircraft, landing into Iranian territory. U.S. joint forces immediately executed a CSAR, deploying over 150 aircraft, hundreds of U.S. troops and special operators, including Delta Force and Dev Gru, and CIA operatives.

The United States actions demonstrated the same unyielding commitment to the ethos that fueled Operation Arnon, an ironclad conviction that no sovereign nation can abandon its people to terrorists.

Yet Jeremy Laurence, spokesperson for the U.N. high commissioner for Human Rights, preferred to denounce the operation’s success, questioning its grounds for “distinction, proportionality, and precaution,” drawn from the conclusion that hundreds of civilians had been haphazardly slain as a result of the operation.

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Blaze Media Illustration

The numbers of civilian deaths were reported by Gaza’s Ministry of Health, run by the Hamas government. The second “civilian” house has been confirmed to be owned by the Al-Jamal family, whose son, Abdullah Al-Jamal, was a Hamas operative and was complicit with the hostages being held in his house.

Article 34 of the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly prohibits hostage-taking in armed conflicts. Article 51 of the U.N. Charter affirms the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a member state. This right, subject to necessity and proportionality, has been invoked in precedents such as the 1976 Israeli Operation Entebbe and supports targeted rescue operations.

Despite a long history of being held to a double standard by much of the international community, Israel continues to demonstrate what it means to value life. The U.N. General Assembly routinely passes more resolutions condemning Israel than against the rest of the world combined, including regimes like Syria, Iran, North Korea, and China.

In contrast, other nations conducting counterterrorism or rescue operations, such as U.S. and French strikes against ISIS in Syria and Iraq, or broader military campaigns in urban areas, often face far less sustained international condemnation.

The heroic actions of every soldier who took part in Operation Arnon embody the enduring belief that freedom and human dignity are worth fighting for, even at the highest cost. That commitment remains a powerful reminder to the world that some principles are not negotiable.