Despicable: Will Dems Defend Hamas’ Hostaging of Body Parts?

The war in Gaza may have been paused for the moment. The horror show of Hamas atrocities continues nonetheless.

The terror network has dragged out Phase 1 of Donald Trump’s plan to end the war. Hamas immediately released the 20 living hostages, but it has slowed the process of returning remains of deceased hostages while it jockeys for leverage for Phase 2, in which Hamas agreed to disarm. They have already declared their intent to defy that part of the agreement, but clearly want to delay matters until it can build some political strength to force renegotiations. 

Just how far are Hamas leaders willing to go to slow down the completion of Phase 1? They are now returning body parts of deceased hostages rather than completing the return of all remains. At the same time, they are staging elaborate ruses over the location of these remains:

A casket handed over by Hamas on Monday night to Israel contained the remains of Ofir Tzarfati, a hostage whose body was recovered by the military in early December 2023, Israeli officials said.

The return of Tzarfati’s remains means that Hamas did not return the body of one of the 13 deceased hostages still held in Gaza. Israel has said Hamas has access to many of the remaining bodies and is dragging its feet in returning them, which it is required to do under the terms of the US-backed ceasefire agreement.

Hamas has claimed that it doesn’t know precisely where the remains of deceased hostages might be. Surveillance video exposed this as a despicable lie:

The transfer of the remains Monday night had already sparked controversy, with military sources saying Hamas staged its “discovery” in eastern Gaza City by digging a hole in the area, extracting the remains from a nearby building, placing them in the hole, then pretending to “uncover” them for the first time in front of the Red Cross.

According to IDF sources, the entire incident was filmed by a military drone. The IDF has not yet released the footage, but Tzarfati’s family said they had viewed the video, lamenting “a wound that constantly reopens.”

The politically powerful Hostages and Missing Families Forum has seen enough of Hamas’ compliance. Today, they issued a demand for a meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu to force the completion of Phase 1:

The forum cited Hamas’s numerous ceasefire violations, as well as “despicable actions, cynical manipulation of the hostages, and deception of the Red Cross.”

“Hamas’s repeated violations and the IDF’s documentation prove what we have known and stated clearly and unequivocally: Hamas knows the location of the hostages and continues to act with contempt, deceiving the United States and mediators while dishonoring our loved ones,” the forum wrote.

That would be tantamount to waving a red cape in front of an enraged bull. With the living hostages out of the way, Netanyahu and his cabinet have all their options open to them. And unsurprisingly, Netanyahu has called them to meet:

Israel’s ministers called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to convene an urgent cabinet meeting on Tuesday and dismantle Hamas after it returned the remains belonging to a hostage who had already been buried in Israel, and not any of the 13 deceased hostages who had remained in Gaza.

It is planned for Netanyahu to convene a meeting on Tuesday to discuss Israel’s response to Hamas’s violation of the ceasefire-hostage deal. Sanctions imposed in response may include barring Hamas from entering the buffer zone.

Let’s just say that this option would be on the lighter end of the spectrum of responses Netanyahu would order. This seems like a portent that the response will be somewhat … heavier:

The “modus operandi of Hamas has been revealed,” says the PMO official. “It’s all a big show. It’s just like their ‘starvation’ campaign.”

“They stage everything, everything is a lie.”

“We proved in black and white, in color even, in pictures, how much they are lying,” says the official. “There is no bigger lie than taking a bulldozer and digging up a grave, putting [a body] inside, then covering it. It’s a big deal.”

The Egyptian team — which included a Hamas official — looking for slain hostages in Israeli-controlled territory in Gaza has left the area, says the PMO official.

Emphasis mine. If the response was to be limited to movement restrictions around the Yellow Line, that team wouldn’t have needed to leave. Perhaps they are just being cautious, but it at least appears that they are expecting something more robust. 

This brings us back to Trump and the US response. Trump had pressed Netanyahu for restraint after the deal got signed, but has spent the last couple of weeks expressing considerable frustration with the Hamas Hokey Pokey. One week ago, Trump warned Hamas that he would “eradicate them if we have to,” and that dozens of countries might line up for a chance to do so. All Trump really needs is the IDF, with full support of the US. It might mean the end of his peace plan and a further delay in the expansion of the Abraham Accords, but Trump wants a permanent end to the twenty-year Gaza war, and Hamas clearly wants it to continue.

That brings us to the Democrats. Their party leadership has aligned with the terrorists every step of the way in this war. They have demanded that Israel capitulate to Hamas, barely bothered to mention the hostages and the atrocities committed by the terrorists, and pushed Hamas propaganda at every turn. Will they still embrace terrorists that engage in ghoulish dismemberment of hostage bodies for extortion and deception? Or will they finally align to fight terrorists and support their destruction?

I know what I hope will happen, but … I also know which way I’m betting. 

Editor’s Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.

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