Warning: Advocates of a ‘ceasefire-for-hostages’ deal are lying to you.

If we truly want to return as many of the hostages as possible and prevent more October 7th-like attacks in the future, a ceasefire is the last thing we need.

Israeli soldiers operate in Gaza. (photo: IDF/X)

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This week, against the backdrop of intense so-called “ceasefire-for-hostages” negotiations between Israel and Hamas, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated:

“This (deal) needs to get done, and it needs to get done in the days ahead, and we will do everything possible to get it across the finish line.”

In other words, the U.S. of all parties directly and indirectly involved seems most desperate for a “ceasefire-for-hostages” agreement, and those of us who have been paying attention know precisely why: Blinken’s Democrats are feeling the mounting pressure to appease leftist extremists in their party, most notably the anti-Israel quasi-“progressives” as well as Muslim and Arab American voters and donors, in the Democrats’ hopes of retaining the White House following November’s presidential election.

Hamas, even if they are seriously battered and bruised after nearly 11 months of a war that they started, must be watching the Americans’ mismanagement of these negotiations with incredible delight. Blinken and his comrades are doing Hamas’ bidding for the terror group by creating make-believe pressure that will only be placed on America’s supposed ally, Israel, if for no other reason than the fact that the U.S. has far more control and leverage over Israel than it does over Hamas.

There is also this inconvenient truth: A “ceasefire-for-hostages” agreement will in all likelihood lead to a long-and-drawn-out ceasefire while keeping many hostages in Hamas’ possession. More specifically, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar will undoubtedly retain a bunch of the hostages for his own “insurance policy” against an Israeli assassination attempt at any point in the future.

By now many of us know that many of the hostages still in Palestinian captivity have already died — and the reason they are dead is because their captives have created the conditions for them to die, or they have outright killed them.

Plus, it is in Hamas’ favor to kill certain hostages so that they do not return to Israel to speak about the horrendous conditions and treatment which they were forced to endure in Gaza. Among other reasons, an Israeli society that hears such horrors will press its government to take out Hamas leaders and their allies “by any means necessary” — to borrow a line from the so-called “pro-Palestinians.”

Yet the U.S. and even a select few in Israel have both implicitly and explicitly blamed Israel for the amount of time that the remaining 100-plus hostages are still being held in the Strip. This is blasphemous victim-blaming, for two things can be true at the same time:

1. All of Israel’s political, military, and security leadership is responsible for not preventing the Hamas-led October 7th massacres and kidnappings, or at least on the scale in which they did.

2. Hamas is an Islamist, genocidal terrorist organization which perceives negotiations as a massive victory in and of themselves. In other words, negotiations only enable it and other terror groups to learn from their October 7th masterpiece and double down on it with future (more atrocious) attacks, both against Israel and other places across the West.

If we truly want to return as many of the hostages as possible and prevent more October 7th-like attacks in the future, a ceasefire is the antithesis prescription. It is the last thing we need. What we need, in reality, is to unequivocally eradicate Hamas’ military infrastructure and governing apparatus in Gaza — again — “by any means necessary.”

There are multiple American hostages in Gaza, which means there should be multiple American boots on the ground working with the Israelis to search for and rescue them, while simultaneously dismantling Hamas’ military infrastructure and governing apparatus throughout the Strip.

But because the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris Administration (which Blinken works for) has desperately over-indexed on these quasi-“progressives” as well as on Arab and Muslim American voters and donors in the run-up to November’s presidential election, the Democrats are saying all the rights things but not doing what is in the best interests of America (i.e. most Americans) and its extraordinary ally, Israel.

Instead, they are doing what is in the best interests of Hamas and its chief sponsors, Qatar and the Islamic Republic of Iran, all of which openly detest the Western world and have been working tirelessly to topple it.

In other words, the U.S.-led West (and, in turn, the Democrats-led U.S.) is dangerously pushing a “ceasefire-for-hostages” deal that would only accomplish one significant thing: Israel would have to cease so Hamas can still fire.

Even Democratic politician Chuck Schumer, who has strategically manipulated his Jewishness and supposed pro-Israel position to elevate his U.S. political career, did not make a single mention of Israel or the hostages (despite rambling on and on about antisemitism) during his official speech at this week’s Democratic National Convention.

And President Joe Biden, in his official remarks at the convention earlier this week, made sure to mention that the tens of thousands of so-called “pro-Palestinian” protestors there “have a point” — even as they have for months both implicitly and explicitly supported Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. You know: Islamist, genocidal terrorist organizations that see their desire for the complete destruction of Israel as merely a first step in bringing down the entire West.

This saga is plainly absurd.

And please don’t get me wrong; I appreciate that all Americans’ voices matter and everyone has the right to free speech, protest, and so forth — but isn’t there a line somewhere closer to the U.S. Constitution and further from Hamas’ death-cult charter? Shouldn’t implicit and explicit support for some of the most vile terrorist organizations on this planet be a tad too much?

Had Hamas attacked, say, nearby Cyprus or even Egypt to Gaza’s southern border, virtually no one in America (or across the rest of the West) would be siding with the terror group and their terrorist friends. They would be marching in solidarity with the Cypriots or the Egyptians — and for good reason — just as they have been doing for Ukrainians after their country was invaded by Russia in 2022.

But because Hamas led the October 7th massacres and kidnappings in Israel, the Jewish state, so-called “Westerners” have spiritlessly found the gall to get behind the terror group. It is not necessarily that they would love to grab a beer with Hamas operatives or live under their oppressive, authoritarian regime, but that they automatically support any group, no matter how heinous, which opposes the Jewish state — because it is Jewish.

And this is exactly what should both infuriate and frighten Jews in the West, many of whom are ardent supporters of political parties which welcome and cater to these Hamas-supporting “Westerners” such as America’s Democratic Party.

Yet, because the Democrats’ current adversaries are former U.S. President Donald Trump and the Republicans, an uncomfortable amount of Jewish Democrats are blinded to the growing fact that the Democratic Party is far more antisemitic than are Trump’s base and/or the Republicans.

I am not talking about numbers, though. I am talking about influence. Everyday Democrats (and especially these quasi-“progressives”) have an outsized impact on consumer technology (such as computers, social media, and search engines); media and entertainment; and education — and thus, “pop culture.” This means that they can… actually, they are already leveraging this impact to impose their politics and worldviews on everyone who uses these technologies, consumes this media and entertainment, and receives this education.

Part of these politics and worldviews characterizes the Palestinians as the purely blameless “oppressed” and Israel as the warmongering, colonizing, ethnic-cleansing, genocide-conducting “oppressors.” Never mind that Hamas’ reign in Gaza since 2007 has been outrageously marked by actual warmongering, colonizing, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and oppression.

But Hamas knows that they can get away with all of this because many Western audiences and their political representatives are gullible, superficial, uneducated, non-critical thinking, and inherently biased against Israel (if not in intention then in outcome).

Furthermore, Hamas understands that even the terminology “ceasefire-for-hostages” will serve as a smoke-screen against Westerners who did not have a damn clue about Islamism and its perilous effects on Islamist societies, as well as on these Islamists’ self-professed enemies, notably Israel and the greater Western world.

In Israel, the “ceasefire-for-hostages” discussion is heartbreaking, and hovering over it is the unspoken recognition that Hamas is calling the shots here, preying on the intrinsic humanity of Israeli society — and Hamas’ blatant disregard for their own people’s deaths and destruction — to burden Israel with an unsolvable problem for this traumatized nation.

Every Israeli wants the hostages home. But some people feel, by using the line “bring them home,” the more precious the hostages are to Hamas, redoubling the terror group’s efforts to keep them. Perhaps a more effective slogan would be “let them go” in order to rightly put the onus where it belongs, on Hamas.

In private conversations, many Israelis say that however emotionally thrilling it would be to make a “ceasefire-for-hostages” deal and have the abductees return home, the conclusion among Israel’s enemies (such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and their chief sponsors, Qatar and Iran) would be that kidnappings are the Jewish state’s “Achilles heel” — and Israel’s enemies would iterate on their schemes to kidnap more Israeli soldiers and civilians in the short- and long-term future.

So, many Israelis believe, making a deal for these 100-plus suffering souls could well lead to the suffering of countless more down the road. I don’t write this proudly, but amputating your elbow to save your arm does not seems like an effective solution if we are looking at Israel and Middle East stability on the whole.

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