Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has halted the release of 602 Palestinian terrorists in return for Israeli hostages because of the morbid ceremonies in which Hamas makes hostages participate before they are freed.
Israelis were shocked last week when Hamas performed a bizarre and grotesque celebration over four coffins purporting to contain the remains of Ofer Lifshitz, 84, and Shiri Bibas, 33, and her two children, Ariel, 5, and Kfir, 2.
(Ultimately, Israel determined that one of the coffins did not even contain Shiri Bibas’s body.) The coffins were placed on a stage with a mural of Netanyahu as a vampire, and placards listing October 7 as the date of the hostages “arrest.”
On Saturday, two living hostages, who are not set to be released until “Phase 2” of the deal, were forced to watch a ceremony in which several other hostages were released, and their reactions were filmed.
According to the Times of Israel, Israel has told mediators that it will release the 602 Palestinian prisoners if Hamas hands over the four remaining bodies of hostages set to be released as part of “Phase 1” of the ongoing ceasefire deal without any public ceremony.
When Phase 1 ends, there will still be Israeli 63 hostages in Gaza, 24 of whom are still thought to be alive, according to Israeli Consul General Anat Sultan-Dadon, who was interviewed on Breitbart News Sunday this week.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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