… was the usual sickening theater from Hamas. But it also engendered the usual joy at seeing the hostages return to Israel and their families. This time the cynical and abusive “ceremonies” around the hostage release seemed to feature even more Gazans than usual hanging around to watch the show, most of them videoing the festivities with cellphones held high.

This time, we saw the return not only of three male civilian hostages kidnapped on October 7, but also of Avera Mengistu, an Israeli of Ethiopian ethnicity who suffers from mental illness and who has been a hostage for ten years. And yet Hamas made a spectacle of him, as well, although they didn’t make him give a speech.

And there was this little touch for one of the Israelis who was captured at the NOVA festival:

Shem Tov was also directed to kiss two of the masked Hamas gunmen on the tops of their heads by the terror group’s cameramen, who were filming alongside the hostages and the gunmen at the carefully staged handover event.

Shem Tov’s father comments:

Malki Shem Tov, father of Omer, says his son was held for most of his captivity alone in a tunnel.

“He said that he was in tunnels alone for the whole time — [almost] 500 days… For the first 50 days he was with Itay [Regev] and all the rest, on his own,” Malki tells Kan TV.

He says Omer “didn’t see daylight at all.”

His returned son is still “our Omer… Omer the funny, Omer the optimist, just 16-17 kilos less.”

Regarding this morning’s handover ceremony, “he told us that they compelled him to wave and to kiss [on the top of the head] that [masked] guard who was standing next to him. He said they told him what to do. You can see in the footage that someone came up to him and told him what to do.”

Was this meant to convey the idea that he was thanking his captors, and that he liked them? Also, that he is subservient to them? I don’t recall any other hostage being asked to do this; it’s a new one to me.

Here is Shem Tov in much happier footage, reuniting with his parents:

The other hostage who has been in Gaza for about ten years and was released, Hisham al-Sayed, is a Bedouin Israeli who was spared being made a spectacle like the others. My guess is that this was because of one or both of these factors: he is in extremely bad shape, and/or Hamas doesn’t want to highlight the fact that they held an Arab hostage all that time. Also, like Mengistu, al-Sayed is mentally ill – that’s apparently part of the reason each of them voluntarily entered Gaza before being held hostage there for a decade.

The show is for the inhabitants of other Arab countries, and for Hamas sympathizers all over the world, to supposedly project strength and to humiliate the hostages further, as well as to torment the hostages’ families just a little more.

There are four more hostages to be returned in Phase I, but it is assumed that they are all dead. Their heartbreaking stories can be found here.

As for Shiri Bibas, her body is now in Israel and forensics also indicate she was brutally murdered in Gaza. As were her baby and toddler. Three generations of her family – her parents, herself, and her children – were murdered by Hamas. Her husband endured unimaginable hardship as a hostage and is now left to mourn, but at least he is in Israel with surviving family members. Please pray for him.