The town of Khan Younis. AP.
Israel accidently killed three of the hostages taken by Hamas in Gaza. AP. The hostages were killed in Shijaiyah, where there has been heavy fighting between Hamas and the Israelis. The hostages were incorrectly identified as a threat and shot and killed by Israeli soldiers. Hamas took around 240 hostages during their raid on October 7th, which started the war. 100 hostages were released in prisoner swaps and one was rescued early in the conflict but other than that Israel has not been successful in releasing hostages or recovering their bodies. Recovering the hostages remains a high priority for Israel.
My Comment:
Tragic situation in Gaza and one that has to be very embarrassing for the IDF. The whole point of the war right now is to rescue the hostages and they failed about as bad as they could fail here. There is going to have to be a major reckoning as to why and how this happened and I would expect a few careers to end over it.
I do wonder why the incident happened in the first place. You would think it would be easy to recognize a hostage compared to a Hamas fighter, but apparently not. To be fair, I don't think Hamas uses regular uniforms and it's possible the hostages were dressed like locals.
I also wonder if the hostages were armed. There was no explanation as to how these men were out and about where the Israeli soldiers could find them. Perhaps they overpowered their guards during the fighting and came at the Israeli soldiers with a gun in their hands? If not, then this incident is a lot less forgivable.
It's very possible that the IDF's rules of engagement are too loose. They don't seem to care about civilian casualties all that much, and to be fair I wouldn't either after what happened on the 7th of October. But if you are at the point where you are killing the very hostages you are trying to save then it might be time to tighten things up. This is not a thing that should be happening, I can understand blowing up civilians by accident but killing hostages you are trying to rescue? Not a good look to say the least.
Between the heavy bombing by Israel and the fact that Hamas is a pretty awful terror group, I amazed that there are any hostages left to begin with. Indeed, I had thought that most of them had died after the cease fire fell apart. There was little reason to keep them at that point so I would have assumed that Hamas would have killed them. Apparently not.
As for the war itself, Israel appears to be winning the war but losing the rest of the world. Even the White House is trying to get them to stop fighting. I think these criticisms are bizarre, there isn't a group of people on earth I have less sympathy for than Hamas and their supporters, and that includes the lions share of civilians in Gaza.
Still, Israel is getting a reputation of being out of control in terms of their attacks and this incident will add fuel to that fire. The Israelis are going to be criticized for this, and rightly so, and they are going to lose a lot of face. Israel's enemies are probably thrilled with this as it makes them look bad.
Regardless, Israel doesn't seem to care about their reputation anymore and to be honest, I don't blame them. The people that care a lot about what is happening in Gaza are people that hate Israel no matter what they do, so why pay them any mind? The only people they really have to worry about upsetting is Joe Biden and his handlers and so far Biden seems mildly perturbed at worst. As long as Israel doesn't do anything too outrageous they will still have a lot of support for this war. But I would caution them to tighten up their rules of engagement lest any more hostages get killed.
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