Israel rescues four hostages alive from Gaza who were captured by Hamas at Nova music festival on October 7 - including girl seen kidnapped on back of motorbike

[keenforhelp]

Well done Israel - fantastic, wonderful news
xxx

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13508615/Israel-rescues-four-hostages-alive-Gaza-Noa-Argamani-motorbike.html

@LordPercyPercy yes I can only imagine what the poor girl went through. I'm glad she's back. But the cost in human lives to rescue her has barely been acknowledged or mentioned by all of the people celebrating on this celebratory thread. I guess I would be interested to know why people don't think it's important to acknowledge that.

I suggest you read the details of what happened during the hostage rescue mission!

Hamas kept the four hostages within a heavily civilian populated area and the Israel Defence Force came under heavy fire before the rescue AND when extracting the hostages.

Hamas even used RPGs in this civilian area!

The end result of actions from Hamas IS going to inevitably be civilian deaths. That suits Hamas because they ARE a destructive terrorist death cult who openly declare Hamas need Palestinian civilian blood who they purposefully put in harm's way to use as human shields aka human sacrifices.

None of that suits the Israel Defence Force who would have preferred a much easier way to rescue the hostages. But they won't ever get that with a ruthless terrorist group like Hamas.

Operation Summer Seeds was a well planned and well executed operation under the circumstances.

Three points to bear in mind:

1. civilians who engage in hostilities become legitimate targets for the duration of the hostility.

2. areas CANNOT be rendered immune from military operations by the presence of protected people, i.e, civilians. If that was the case, Hamas would have a very clear advantage every single time with the Israel Defence Force unable to touch them. That wouldn't make sense.

3. civilian infrastructure that's used for military purposes becomes a legitimate target too, i.e., using it for non-humanitarian purposes such as holding people hostages, planning attacks, launching attacks from, etc.

It really doesn't follow to think any of this means "people believe Israeli lives are worth more than Gazan lives".

Put the blame for any non-involved Gazan civilian deaths right where it belongs - at the feet of Hamas!

Israel Defence Force has every right to mount a mission to rescue hostages from Hamas.

Islam is a beautiful religion. But fundamentalism is a choice, and one that leads to absolute misery. Fuck those idiots.

Absolutely. The more I am reading the more uncomfortable it feels.

@dontlookgottalook honestly, because a lot of the reporting of civilian deaths are figures from Hamas so I don't really know what to believe or what the true civilian death toll is, so I'm reserving comment there.
Whereas Noa and the other hostages being reunited with their families are a matter of fact.

@LordPercyPercy Why don't you just look at C4 news to see the aftermath of this operation and listen to a British doctor working there? I don't think you can doubt the injured children and adults.

@DownNative well said.

The brilliance of Mumsnet is you can pick and chose what threads you stay on and engage with.

The veiled 'we see you on other threads' is quite sad. A new low one might say.

With respect, Israel didn't choose this hideous war.

Hamas is to blame for that as I explained above. They even used RPGs in a heavily civilian area.

Of course, that's going to result in a lot of civilian deaths. The Israel Defence Force came under heavy fire by Hamas.

If any Gazan civilian also fired at the IDF, they also become legitimate targets. We know Gazan civilians were involved in holding the four hostage and we know Gazan civilians were also involved on 7th October 2023.

The aftermath of this kind of operation is not going to look anything less than horrific.

Exactly.

It was a really impressive operation, it actually has left me with hope I didn't have before for the rest of the hostages. Hamas is clearly starting to fragment internally for them to get the intel they did.

I hope they keep going until they have them all.

Any civilian deaths lie at the feet of Hamas and the Palestinians that support them.

Thanks @DownNative But that's irrelevant. @LordPercyPercy stated they don't know what to believe regarding the impact on civilians, whereas they know the hostages are real. Was simply pointing them to watch the news on C4 to get some idea of the impact on civilians. FWIW I am completely uninterested in childish denials of responsibility from any quarter. Who pulls the trigger is responsible.

Hope is all we have.

"the impact on civilians" is, unfortunately, a trump card played by Hamas.

Absolutely! I'm sure you won't be surprised to find I don't go into every thread going or post in them all.

There's really no need to do that as far as I'm concerned.

I get the impression some want the Israel Defence Force and, by logical extension, every legitimate Sovereign Power's military forces to have their hands tied behind their backs and pants around their ankles so terrorist groups everywhere can whack them on the arse over and over again until Kingdom come!

Not gonna happen. Certain statuses have protection, but not 100% off limits. Many, I find, forget that important crucial point.

It may be that some people in the world want terrorist groups to have every single advantage on the urban battlefield.

This war is definitely revolutionising modern warfare, especially with the tunnel warfare the IDF has to deal with. Eventually, the development will be robots sent down to fight terrorists. Tunnel warfare is here to stay, unfortunately, as its pretty effective.

IHL will also evolve to address new, emergent threats. Most people don't realise its already evolved a few times, e.g. post-WW2 & 2001 + War On Terror.

Behind what scenes?

@DownNative let’s be honest. They probably knew how many civilians would end up killed or injured in that situation, but they needed the political win so they went ahead with their operation despite the risks.

All of your thoughts regarding how the operation was carried out and your reasonings as to why you believe it was legitimate, does not make what happened to those innocent civilians any better. The dead are still dead and the injured still hurt. The outcome is the same.

On the contrary, it IS entirely relevant. You appear to want to ignore context of deaths during this specific Operation Summer Seeds.

So, I provided it. Very much needed to repeat again and again, to be honest.

It's also not as simple as "Who pulls the trigger is responsible" either. Urban Warfare is usually more complicated than that, especially when a civilian fires shots at soldiers who shoot back killing the civilian and whose weapon is then taken away by other civilians engaged in hostilities which means the now deceased civilian looks like....an innocent civilian murdered by a soldier.

As I said, urban warfare is rarely that simple or straightforward. Civilians, on the other hand, often think it is that simple and straightforward!

This strikes me as a really fucking twisted way of interpreting one of the few happy bits of news to emerge from this hideous conflict.

@DownNative

"We know Gazan civilians were involved in holding the four hostage "
No judgement can be made on a civilian who is effectively living "under the gun" as I am sure you well know.
But as you have given no verified explanation of the photo you shared earlier it can be assumed you are biased and anything posted be read with caution.

Urban conflict is indeed complicated and messy, and likely to result in civilian casualties. People are still responsible and accountable for the actions they take. If someone kills another person, they are responsible for that action. Having responsibility for an action doesn't mean the person has necessarily done the wrong thing. I'm fairly sure many people would, in a survival situation, do whatever it took to survive. But afterwards, people need to look themselves in the mirror and be able to live with what they've done. If I call a time of death, that's my call and my responsibility. If I determine that an out of hospital amputation is someone's best chance of survival, that's my responsibility. I've never fired a gun to end someone's life, but if I were in a situation where I did, that would be my responsibility too. Deflecting responsibility and accountability is disrespectful.

That's not axiomatically true as its not always possible to know how many deaths will occur in any given operation. There's too many variables at play for that and too many things that can go wrong. All operations have risks.

Anyone who claims they don't or believe they don't are lying, ignorant or both.

There is a difference between international law on the legality of military operations and whether people die. The sad reality in every type of warfare is that innocent people WILL die.

If there was any way around that during war, we'd have found it by now. But there isn't.

Because of the fact the dead are still dead, it's better NOT to start wars.

Unfortunately for Israeli and Palestinian peoples, Hamas decided to start a new war on 7th October 2023 when there was no need to.

That's the cold, hard reality here. The Israel Defence Force wouldn't be operating inside Gaza since October 2023 if it wasn't for Hamas.

Indeed, the IDF pulling out of Gaza in 2005 enabled Hamas to develop their plans over a good period of time. As their leaders admitted, they went to a lot of effort to make Israel, the West and everyone else think they were happy to govern Gaza.

Like I said, it's better not to start wars.

9/11 is the worst terror attack documented, not what happened on Oct 7th. Not taking away from this, it's great to see them home but just being factual

I an so happy for the hostages who have been freed, particularly Noa, as hers was a story that stuck with me, and I've wondered about her most days. I hope they are physically OK and that any mental scars will lessen over time.

That being said, I am terrified that this is being seen as a 'victory', though hundreds were killed in the process including children. I find it chilling to think that this may relieve the Israeli government of any pressure they were facing and that the bloodshed will increase dramatically. I fear so much for those innocent Palestinians, who are just sitting ducks right now 😳

Whilst it is wonderful that these 4 have been rescued, I think any celebratory tone is slightly inappropriate at this time.