Eli Sharabi, Or Levy, and Ohad Ben Ami were released from Hamas captivity this morning after surviving 491 days. The three men appeared so frail and emaciated, the images we are seeing remind many of us of what those who survived the Holocaust looked like just after they were freed. Absolutely heartbreaking.

AIPAC writes: Gaunt and emaciated after being starved by their barbaric captors, the three men were forced to participate in another despicable PR parade staged by Hamas terrorists. The International Red Cross again stood idly by as the terrorists tormented the hostages. Hamas eventually handed the three Israelis to the Red Cross who brought them to IDF forces. The photos of the three smiling men before October 7, juxtaposed against their condition today after sixteen months of torture, begin to reveal the unimaginable cruelty they endured.

• The Coordinator for the Hostages and the Missing, Brig.-Gen. (Res.) Gal Hirsch:
  

  “The State of Israel views with grave concern the repeated violations of Hamas, and with even greater concern the condition of the three hostages released this morning. This will not go unaddressed.”

[HEARTBREAKING VIDEO] The Times of Israel reports: Released hostage Eli Sharabi’s first request when he was back in Israel was to see his family, because he was unaware that his wife and two daughters were murdered in the Hamas onslaught on October 7, 2023, Hebrew media reported. Sharabi’s wife Lianne and their daughters, Noiya, 16, and Yahel, 13, were killed in their home’s safe room at Kibbutz Be’eri, and he and his elder brother Yossi were taken captive. Yossi has since been confirmed dead, and Hamas is holding his body.

WATCH as Eli, Or and Ohad participate in Hama’s cruel propaganda parade, with the Red Cross present (again).

The moment when freed hostages Ohad Ben-Ami and Or Levy were transferred to IDF forces.

Hillel Fuld writes on X: This photo will haunt my dreams. The look on the faces of Ohad’s family when they see him for the first time on the television screen, being paraded by his Hamas captors, broken and emaciated. The world has failed the Jewish people. Again. The west should be deeply ashamed. This is a stain that’ll join the stain of allowing 6 million Jews to be systematically butchered. Remember this photo. Remember those faces.

A mix of joy and tragedy as the hostages are reunited with their families

3 year old Almog Levi is reunited with his father after 491 days. He lost his mother in the brutal massacre of October 7.

Released hostage Eli Sharabi reunites with his mother Chana and sister Osnat at an army facility near the Gaza border after 491 days in Hamas captivity.

Hostage Update

• There are now currently 73 hostages taken on 10/7 currently in captivity in Gaza (there are 76 hostages remaining in total)
  • 183 Palestinian prisoners were released today as part of the cease-fire agreement.
• 21 hostages have been released so far in the first phase of the agreement
• 17 are now remaining on the list for release during the first stage of the ceasefire.
  • 9 of the 17 remaining hostages still to be freed are alive and 8 are dead
    • 3 are members of the Bibas family (Shiri Silberman Bibas and her two children, Ariel, who was 4 years old when taken captive, and Kfir, who was 9 months when taken captive)
  • 6 hostages are Americans: Meet the Seven American Hostages Still Held By Hamas
• 24 hostages will remain in captivity after Phase I and have not been declared dead.
  • 4 are soldiers
  • 7 are residents of the Gaza border communities
  • 11 were abducted from the Nova music festival
  • 2 are foreign workers, one from Thailand and one Nepal
• Link: These are the hostages to be released (and left behind) in the Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal’s first phase – Jewish Telegraphic Agency

• On October 7^th, a total of 261 Israelis were taken hostage.
• During the ceasefire deal in November of 2023, 112 hostages were released.
• 179 hostages in total have been released or rescued
  • The bodies of 40 hostages have been recovered, including 3 mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
• 8 hostages have been rescued by troops alive
• Of the 76 hostages still theoretically in Gaza
  • 35 hostages have been confirmed dead and are currently being held in Gaza
  • Thus, at most, 41 living hostages could still be in Gaza.
  • Hamas is also holding 2 Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015 (civilians Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, who have been held in Gaza for a decade), as well as the body of 1 IDF soldiers who was killed in 2014 (Lt. Hadar Goldin’s body remains held in the Gaza Strip)

Casualties (+2)

1,850 Israelis have been killed including 846 IDF soldiers since October 7th (+2 since Wednesday)

• Sgt. First Class (res.) Nadav Cohen, 21 and Staff Sgt. Nachman Refael Ben Ami, 20 were sadly killed when a surveillance tower fell on them in Northern Gaza due to strong storms.
• The South: 407 IDF soldiers during the ground operation in Gaza have been killed (+2 since Wednesday)
• The North: 131 Israelis (84 IDF soldiers) have been killed during the war in Northern Israel (no change since Wednesday)
• Additional Information (according to the IDF):
  • 2,580 (+8 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured during ground combat in Gaza, including at least 497 (+2 since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.
  • 5,705 (+9 since Wednesday) IDF soldiers have been injured since the beginning of the war, including at least 848 (+2 since Wednesday) who have been severely injured.
    • The increase in injuries is attributed to ongoing operations in the West Bank

• The Gaza Casualty Count:
  • According to unverified figures from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, 47,583 (+43 since Wednesday) people have been killed in Gaza, and 111,633 (+15 since Wednesday) have been injured during the war.
  • [MUST READ] Report: Questionable Counting: Analysing the Death Toll from the Hamas-Run Ministry of Health in Gaza by Andrew Fox with The Henry Jackson Society
  • On October 7th, Ohad Hemo with Channel 12 Israel News – the country’s largest news network, a leading expert on Palestinian and Arab affairs, mentioned an estimate from Hamas: around 80% of those killed in Gaza are members of the organization and their families.”
  • Read this well documented piece from Tablet published in March: How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers
  • The Associated Press, an outlet with a demonstrated anti-Israel bias, conducted an analysis of alleged Gaza death tolls released by the Hamas-controlled “Gaza Health Ministry.” The analysis found that “9,940 of the dead – 29% of its April 30 total – were not listed in the data” and that “an additional 1,699 records in the ministry’s April data were incomplete and 22 were duplicates.”
• The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs publishes official details on every civilian and IDF casualty.

Israel/Middle East Related Articles

What does – and doesn’t – make sense about Trump’s Gaza plan by FDD’s Seth Frantzman with The Spectator

• ‘The US will take over the Gaza Strip – and we will do a job with it, too’, Donald Trump has said. He also stated that the US would ‘own’ it. Some aspects of his proposal make sense… enable Gaza to be transformed into an economic success. Instead of exporting war, Gaza would export peace.
• The more straightforward part of Trump’s proposal is the removal of debris and securing funding to rebuild areas devastated by 15 months of war… Trump wants regional countries to contribute… He has already demonstrated his commitment to change by sending his envoy… to negotiate a ceasefire and hostage deal.
• Now that a ceasefire is in place, attention turns to what comes next. The biggest obstacle to change in Gaza is Hamas… Hamas also has powerful backers abroad – in Qatar and Turkey – both of which are western allies. This means that removing Hamas… would require Trump to persuade Ankara and Doha to cooperate.
• The most significant challenge in Trump’s plan is the assumption that some 1.7 million people would agree to leave Gaza. Furthermore, it is unclear which countries would accept them… historically, most Middle Eastern countries have been reluctant to take in Palestinian refugees…
• For instance, prior to 7 October, most regional governments appeared indifferent to the disaster Hamas was preparing with its bloody attack on Israel… Their failure to take it seriously was a mistake… Trump is proposing a fundamental shift. He rightly notes that Gaza has lurched from one war to another for decades.
• Trump’s first administration helped pave the way for the Abraham Accords… The challenge for his next administration will be to persuade Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Jordan, Egypt, and others to take an active role in Gaza’s future.
• Even if Trump’s plan is not fully realised, his proposals could encourage countries to get more involved in Gaza, rather than allowing it to remain under Hamas’s rule as a persistent source of terror and instability.
• Link: What does – and doesn’t – make sense about Trump’s Gaza plan

It’s time for fresh thinking on Gaza, by Jake Wallis Simons’ Substack

• Amid the howls of outrage… one statement was particularly revealing… Anthony Albanese… continued to support the two-state solution… ‘Australia’s position is the same as it was this morning, as it was last year, as it was ten years ago,’ he said.
• To which the obvious response was: Yes, and that is precisely the problem.
• Few people in the mainstream would argue against Palestinian self-determination on principle… supporting a Jewish homeland while denying that right to their Arab cousins seems a bit rich.
• At the same time, we must face reality. Sanctifying that principle… has resulted in nothing but blood and tears.
• As can be seen by its popular songs, television programmes, newspapers and schooling, its national identity is built upon resistance, not self-determination… Bill Clinton recently reminded us – the sainted Yasser Arafat repeatedly turned down offers of a state that satisfied 100 percent of his demands. It has only got worse since.
• Other obstacles include endemic corruption… lack of democratic tradition… an embrace of brutality… widespread jihadism and violent nationalism… official reward payments to terror convicts… amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
• Taking all this as context, when the lens is turned on Gaza, the notion of insisting upon the discredited two-state solution… is little more than cruel. Ordinary Gazans… are desperate to get out of the Strip… They don’t want to languish in poverty, blighted by continued terrorism and permanently reliant on aid handouts.
• Many are cheering Trump’s plan. The ones who aren’t doing so are largely either jihadis or fanatical nationalists… who care more about land and dogma than building a better life for their children.
• Nobody, least of all myself, would support forced relocation. Is that what Trump meant?… Who will be allowed to live in the reconstructed Strip?
• Moreover, who will take responsibility for the final eradication of Hamas? And is it true, as Trump claimed, that the Saudis are willing to sign a peace deal with Israel without a Palestinian state?
• These, however, are at least new questions. The old… questions about realising Palestinian statehood have stumped the world for decades… Now… Palestinians are being told to stay there and rot.
• To hear the likes of the Australian leader dispense such wisdom when his own philosophy has so obviously failed… feels like condemning ordinary Palestinians to suffering without end.
• Link: It’s time for fresh thinking on Gaza

#WTH Gaz-a-Lago? by Daniella Pletka with What the Hell is Going On?

• Malki Roth was a 15-year-old American girl enjoying a day out in Jerusalem. On Aug. 9, 2001, she was one of 16 people, including three other Americans, killed in the bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria. Her murderer was Jordanian national Ahlam Tamimi, who, despite being given 16 life sentences, plus 250 years, was released as part of a 2011 deal Israel made to secure the release of Gilad Shalit.
• Yesterday, Trump met with Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu and it’s worth reading the full context of what he said:
• “I also strongly believe that the Gaza Strip … should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people … Instead, we should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts … The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it…”
• Trump set Washington alight with his “we’ll own it” line … But I love what Trump said. Here’s why.
• Gaza is not contiguous with the West Bank… Prior to Israel’s conquering of Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza in the Six Day War, there was no interest in making Gaza part of Egypt… Egypt didn’t even give Gazans citizenship, unlike Jordan…
• No one wants Gaza. Egypt doesn’t … The UN wants it, but only to further its antisemitic agenda and continue milking cash from the West … Negotiations with Hamas have not worked. Efforts to subsume Gaza under the PA have not worked … Gaza is a failed territory.
• So what’s to be done? … If you live in Washington, New York, London, Paris, or Berlin, your view is that the same answers should definitely be tried again, but this time we mean it.
• We don’t know what Donald Trump is thinking, and neither does anyone else … But we do know that Donald Trump in his first term upended the region, and forged the first meaningful peace between Jews and Arabs in decades.
• Maybe this was not a “modest proposal;” maybe it was real. No matter what, it should shine a light on the bankruptcy of what has passed for a Gaza policy until now. Mazal tov.
• Link: #WTH Gaz-a-Lago?

Trump’s Plan to Free Palestinians From Gaza by Elliot Kaufman with The Wall Street Journal

• President Trump’s proposal to move Gazans out of Gaza and resettle them in nearby countries shocked observers, not necessarily for its cruelty, but because it challenges the decades-long approach to prioritizing Palestine as a lost cause. Trump argues that living in relative peace outside Gaza would be better than remaining in a “demolition site,” perpetually exploited by their leaders.
• Throughout Palestinian history, leaders such as Khaled Mashal, Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and Amin al Husseini have consistently preferred resistance, even at a catastrophic human cost, rather than accepting a Jewish state. This ethos of rejecting compromise helped transform the failed Arab effort to eradicate Israel into a heroic narrative of Palestinian victimhood and resistance—an approach that repeatedly dooms Palestinians to war and suffering.
• Arab states have also historically fueled this “lost cause,” allowing Palestinians to shoulder the bulk of conflict with Israel instead of offering them full integration or citizenship. This stance relieved Arab governments from the responsibilities and losses of direct warfare, leaving Gazans as proxies in conflicts that repeatedly harm them.
• The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was initially meant to resettle Palestinians displaced by the Arab-Israeli war. Instead, bolstered by Arab and Soviet support, it evolved into a permanent structure that keeps generations of Palestinians in refugee status. Trump’s proposal, coupled with his decision to end U.S. funding for UNRWA, directly challenges this model by insisting on resettlement over indefinite reliance on aid.
• Far from condemning Palestinians to new hardships, Trump’s idea would, in principle, allow them to escape Gaza’s “forever war” environment. The real controversy is the possibility of granting Palestinians a chance to rebuild their lives under new circumstances—thereby depriving Hamas of its human shields and halting the endless cycle of blockade, rocket attacks, and Israeli counterstrikes.
• Critics worry that forcibly transferring people could amount to ethnic cleansing. Yet many also acknowledge that Egypt and other Arab states have repeatedly refused to take in Gazan refugees, effectively trapping them. Supporters of Trump’s plan suggest his bold threats and unorthodox approach may leverage solutions, like involving Saudi Arabia or other regional powers. While it remains unclear if this is a serious blueprint or mere political maneuvering, Trump’s proposal signals a disruptive attempt to break with entrenched Middle East policies that have brought Palestinians perpetual conflict rather than peace.
• Link: Trump’s Plan to Free Palestinians From Gaza

Nobody Wants Gaz-a-Lago by Yair Rosenberg with The Atlantic

• Donald Trump announced a startling idea at a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: that the United States would “take over” the Gaza Strip, “level it out,” and rebuild it into a prosperous region—a “Riviera of the Middle East.” He floated the idea of displacing Gazans elsewhere during reconstruction and even sending U.S. troops to enforce this plan.
• The proposal faces major obstacles. Having just exited prolonged conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, most Americans are wary of another Middle East entanglement—something even hawkish politicians such as Senator Lindsey Graham admit. Jordan and Egypt, both mentioned as possible hosts for displaced Gazans, have historically refused to absorb large numbers of Palestinian refugees.
• Trump’s plan also runs counter to a fundamental Israeli principle: “defending itself by itself.” Although Israel relies heavily on American support, it takes pride in fighting its own battles. Allowing U.S. forces to occupy Gaza would upend that ethos and risk turning Israel into a strategic burden for Washington. Moreover, forcibly transferring Gazans could cross into ethnic-cleansing territory, even if some Gazans might choose to relocate on their own.
• Behind Trump’s half-baked idea is a genuine frustration with a decades-old cycle: The world pours money into Gaza, Hamas diverts resources to wage its war against Israel, Israel’s military responds, and Gaza’s civilians suffer. Then the pattern repeats. This destructive loop reflects years of failed international policy—one that Trump, at least rhetorically, seems intent on dismantling.
• A revised plan would need to temporarily house Gazans in humane conditions while Gaza itself is rebuilt under international supervision, cutting off Hamas from its revenue and human shields. Eventually, Gazans could return to a homeland no longer under blockade or Hamas’s control. Whether Trump’s vision is a mere negotiating gambit, a fleeting fantasy, or a serious mission remains unclear. His surprise remarks also cast uncertainty on other looming regional issues, including a potential West Bank annexation and any renewed confrontation with Iran.
• Link: Nobody Wants Gaz-a-Lago

The End of ‘Palestine’ by Lee Smith with Tablet Magazine

• Yesterday, President Donald Trump single-handedly collapsed the most destructive idea of the last hundred years—Palestine. During meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, Trump said he was going to move 1.7 million Palestinians out of Gaza. And just like that, he broke the long spell that had captured generations of world leaders, peace activists, and Middle East terror masters alike, who had paradoxically come to regard the repeated failure and haunting secondary consequences of the idea of joint Arab Muslim and Jewish statehood in the same small piece of land as proof of its necessity.
• Palestine was a misshapen idea from the beginning, engendered by an act of pure negation. The Arabs could have gone along with the U.N.’s partition plan like the Jews did, and chosen to build whatever version of Switzerland or Belgium on the eastern Med in 1948. Instead, they resoundingly chose war. That’s the storied ‘Nakba’ at the core of the Palestinian legend—the catastrophe that drove the Arabs from their land and hung a key around the neck of a nation waiting to go home. The Arabs chose the catastrophe; they chose war, based on the premise that they would inevitably win and exterminate the Jews.
• Trump said, enough, we’re not rebuilding Gaza. Time for a new idea—the Gazans have to go, they can try to start again somewhere else, in a land where every building still standing isn’t already wired to explode.
• Gazans waged an exterminationist campaign against Israel, and they lost. At any other time in history, save the last 75 years, they would be lucky to lose only territory and not have their legend and language permanently deleted from the book of the living.
• Yet Trump is right to see both Egypt and Jordan as paltry constructions with little-to-no ability to project force on America’s behalf, and whose survival depends month to month on American aid. Cairo is useful to the United States only insofar as it, one, makes sure the Suez Canal is open and, two, observes the peace treaty with Israel—i.e., continues its campaign of repression against a populace of 112 million people who can barely afford to buy bread, and many of whose dreams are filled with the same insanity that drives Hamas.
• The Arabs and Democrats are only the most vocal of the many opposed to Trump’s initiative. Left-wing governments from Europe to Australia are lining up to pledge their allegiance to the fantasy of a Palestinian state, in the hopes of propitiating Muslim and Arab constituencies at home—whose understanding of ‘peace’ means eliminating Israel.
• Trump’s generous offer to the Gazans therefore signals a return to history, but with a twist. Trump has not only spared them, but vowed to provide them with new lives, better lives, work, new homes, a chance to raise their families in peace, an existence not premised on total and permanent war with a more powerful adversary destined to rout them entirely, and would have already done so if not for the objections of other powerful global players.
• Link: The End of ‘Palestine’

Trump’s Gaza: The Art of the Ceasefire Deal by Andrew Fox

• To summarise: the situation in Gaza has been a disaster for a long time (presumably, he means since Hamas took over in 2007), he wants the people of Gaza to live elsewhere whilst the place is rebuilt, and he suggests the place be rebuilt by the USA.
• Even if they agree (and some polls suggest as many as 44% of the 18-29 age group would be amenable), moving the total of the inhabitants of Gaza (as Trump states, 1.8 million) would be an enormous operation by ship, by land convoy or by plane—either to one or multiple countries, no matter who pays. And that is before we deal with opposition to the idea from the Gulf states, the most likely destinations for Gazans, who (led by vital US ally Saudi Arabia) released a stiff statement condemning the suggestion.
• Trump does speak to some genuine issues, however. UNOSAT estimates 50 million tonnes of rubble to clear. The rebuilding of Gaza is going to be an immense undertaking, and the people of Gaza are going to have to live somewhere whilst it takes place.
• There is also the issue of what happens after Gaza is rebuilt, whether in the absence of Gazans, or otherwise. If Palestinians continue to live in Gaza, how do we break the cycle of violence? Removing Hamas is only the first step in this process. Hamas is invested in every aspect of Gazan life.
• That Trump is even talking about this solution, unlikely and problematic though it is, speaks to an astonishing failure of the doctrine of Palestinianism created by Arafat in the 1960s. He reinvented a disparate group of Arab refugees from the Palestinian Mandate and rebadged them as “Palestinians”, committed to their right of return to the area that is now Israel. Having refused every reasonable two-state solution offered by Israel and Western mediators, extreme options now have to enter the conversation as the only ones left on the table.
• Here is the core of the issue, and one I suspect Trump is trying to address. He is pursuing his usual deal style, as we have seen this week with Canada and Mexico. He threatens the worst-case scenario, and in doing so aims to find a lesser solution that then feels like a win.
• The real key to unlocking the problem is the end of the “right of return” narrative, the end of eternal refugee status, forcing Palestinians to accept both responsibility for their actions, and the existence of the State of Israel.
• It is the only solution: Palestinians must throw away the keys to their grandparents’ houses.
• We cannot afford to relitigate the events and errors of the international community in 1948 any more. We have to deal with the problem as it is in 2025. Israel has spent 16 months demonstrating, with extreme violence, that it is not going anywhere and that Israelis will fight to the last bomb, bullet and soldier to defend their homeland. Therefore, to unlock this solution, Palestinians must accept this fact and their lot. Realpolitik. There is no other choice left, and Mr Trump’s comments allude to this fact.
• Link: Trump’s Gaza – Andrew Fox’s Substack

Regular sources include JINSA, FDD, IDF, AIPAC, The Paul Singer Foundation, The Institute for National Security Studies, the Alma Research and Education Center, Yediot, Jerusalem Post, IDF Casualty Count, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Institute for the Study of War, Tablet Magazine, Mosaic Magazine, The Free Press, and the Times of Israel