Now it isn’t pretty young women who are being released, but middle-aged civilian men. The hostages returned today are described here:

The day began in Deir al-Balah in Gaza, where Hamas handed the hostages– Ohad Ben Ami, Or Levy and Eli Sharabi– over to Red Cross officials –the fifth group freed under a fragile Gaza ceasefire.

Emaciated and disoriented, all three [civilian] men were forced by their captors to address crowds gathered at their handover ceremony. A banner across the edge of the platform erected for the exchange declared “total victory” for Hamas in Hebrew and bore images of destroyed and rusted Israeli military vehicles. …

“He looked like a skeleton, it was awful to see,” Ohad Ben Ami’s mother-in-law, Michal Cohen, told Channel 13 News as she watched the Hamas-directed handover ceremony. …

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog also denounced the treatment of Israeli hostages as a “crime against humanity” after the men were paraded on stage.

“This is what a crime against humanity looks like! The whole world must look directly at Ohad, Or, and Eli — returning after 491 days of hell, starved, emaciated and pained — being exploited in a cynical and cruel spectacle by vile murderers,” the Israeli head of state said in a statement on X.

Here is a photo where you can see how thin they are:

And here are before and after photos. The “befores” are on the bottom, of course:

And yet the international community has been complaining that it’s the Palestinians who are starving. I have yet to see one in the crowds who looks as though that’s true.

Ben Ami was taken from his kibbutz home along with his wife, who was released in earlier exchanges.

Levy was kidnapped from the NOVA festival, where his wife was murdered on 10/7. They have a 2-year-old son, who is now 3 and has been with his grandparents.

That story is tragic enough. But I think you’ll agree that even more tragic is the situation of Sharabi:

Sharabi, who will turn 53 in February, was at his home in kibbutz Beeri with his British-born wife and their two teenage daughters when Hamas attacked it on October 7, 2023. The armed men shot their dog, before locking the family in their safe room and setting it on fire. The bodies of his wife and two daughters were later identified.

He was taken to Gaza along with his brother Yossi. The Israeli military said early last year that Yossi was killed and his body was in the hands of Hamas in Gaza.

While in captivity, Sharabi did not know that his wife and children had all been viciously murdered. There is a beautiful photo at the link of Sharabi with his wife and children; I couldn’t bear to duplicate it, so you’ll have to click on the link to see it – and please scroll down there and compare how he looks in the photo with his wife and daughters compared to his emaciation in the next photo at the link.

Also please note in the following excerpt the psychological sadism of the Gazans [emphasis mine]:

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. …

According to Channel 12 news, Sharabi was notified of his wife and daughters’ deaths after his return from the Gaza Strip. He was initially reunited with his mother Hannah and sister Osnat, and subsequently with other members of his family, including his brother Sharon. His family was reportedly given advice on how to break the terrible news. …

Hamas announced the death, to great applause, as masked terrorists paraded Sharabi, Ohad Ben Ami and Or Levy in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah before handing the emaciated hostages to the Red Cross on Saturday morning.

At the handover ceremony, Sharabi had been asked in Hebrew how he was feeling by the masked Hamas gunman running the show, and said into the microphone, “I feel very, very happy today to return to my family and friends, to my wife and my daughters.”

All the while, of course, Hamas knew what had happened to his wife and daughters.

I think of Otto Frank, who survived concentration camps hoping that his wife and two teenage daughters had survived. When he returned home, after a while he got the news from others who had known them in the camps that he alone had survived to tell the tale. It was after that that Miep Gies, the valiant woman who had helped hide and feed the Franks and the others in the Annex, gave him Anne Frank’s diary, which she had saved in hopes of her homecoming that never was.

RIP to all those murdered on 10/7, and love and strength and blessings to the families.