Hamas publishes sign of life from hostage Matan Zangauker

The Hamas terror group on Saturday published footage of hostage Matan Zangauker, who was kidnapped to Gaza during the October 7 massacre, together with his girlfriend Ilana Gritzewsky.

Last week, Hamas published footage of hostage Edan Alexander. In the video clip, Alexander, an American citizen, said that he had been held for over 420 days, and asked US President-elect Donald Trump to free him.

In the video clip, Zangauker turns to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that he is "very disappointed" in the offer to give anyone who brings a hostage home alive a sum of $5 million and safe exit from Gaza.

"You do not understand your enemies' mentality," he said, adding that the prisoners "die a thousand times a day, and no one feels for us."

In his statement - which is dictated entirely by Hamas - Zangauker calls on Israelis to "go out and protest" the government's policies, and to pressure the government to agree to a deal.

Cynical manipulation, just like the last video. They have the hostage's scripted message mention a current event, the $5M offer, so as to prove that he's still alive, and try to orchestrate protests against Bibi, so as to pressure him into a bad cease fire that will give Hamas time to regroup and find a new rout for rearming and rearming.

I'm no fan of Bibi, but if Hamas wants me to protest, I'll make a point of not protesting. They got my birthday wrong. I was born the day before yesterday.

The fact that the entire Israeli government was caught napping on 7 October of last year, and the conspiracy theories as a result that I dutifully pooh pooh, but inwardly wonder about.

But he does make some stirring speeches for the UN to ignore. He’s good at that. He’d make a great ambassador to the UN.

Israeli politics are a real mess. Sometimes I think thank that many on the Israeli Left has more in common with Hamas and more goodwill for them than they do for Israeli conservatives.

Collectively, the Israeli Left definitely hates Natanyahuu more than they hate Hamas.

The Israeli Left has very close ties to the American Left who are virulently anti Semitic and reflexively supportive of Hamas

There are some really weird psychodyamics going on here.

It's really hard to tell if the Left's use of hostages to beat up the Netanyahu Government and undermine the war effort to defeat an existential threat to the State of Israel is due to genuine humanitarian concerns or is instead a cynical ploy to undermine their political opposition by supporting Hamas propaganda efforts to the detriment of the State of Israel as a whole.

The taking and holding of Israeli hostages by Hamas is a war crime that is being ignored and normalized by the Biden Administration and the world community.

That will end on January 20.

Hopefully, this will result in the release of the hostages by Hamas.

That said, previous Hamas success taking hostages to act as human shields, to extort the mass release of jailed terrorists and to extort other concessions from Israel is the reason why taking hostages was one of the primary objectives of the Oct 7 terror attacks.

The future security of the State of Israel and millions of Israeli citizens cannot be compromised by negotiations on concessions for the release of a hand full of hostages.

Obviously. There were warnings from the listening posts in Gaza days in advance, warnings from the Egyptian government. Yet there was, by all accounts, apathy and denial all the way up the chain of command, including that blowhard that I voted for, Ben Gvir, Minister of National Security, despite his credentials as a student of Meir Kahane and a ball-busting militant. Lots of inflammatory rhetoric from him. Zero action. I would never in a million years vote for him again, let alone Bibi. For whom would I vote? Not Bennett. Not anyone else that I know of, though if Mr. Katz were to run for public office, I might consider him.

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