In primetime Hebrew TV interviews, the released hostages have confirmed that ordinary Gazans were deeply complicit in every stage of the hostage scheme. Unarmed teens helped to abduct Jews from their homes on Oct. 7, while Gazan women and children held some of the Israelis captive. In other cases, Gazan doctors collaborated with Hamas terrorists to covertly treat kidnapped Israelis and imprison them in hospitals.
When the Israelis encountered Gazans on the streets, the results were often terrifying.
The revelations underscore the urgency of Israel's 100-plus-day war to destroy Hamas and bring home the 132 hostages who, officials believe, remain captive in Gaza. At the same time, though, the released hostages' accounts indicate how difficult it could be to extricate either the remaining hostages or Hamas from a radicalized population.
"The main issue is that the organization is very much melted into the social structure of Gaza," Michael Milshtein, a former senior Israeli military intelligence officer and a leading expert on Hamas, told the
Washington Free Beacon. "There is no way you can really know who is Hamas. Someone might have a grocery store where he sells tomatoes and water, but he might also have storehouse of weapons and give religious lessons there."
And his wife and kids might be keeping an Israeli hostage at home.
"Hamas is not only a political matter in Gaza. It's a way of life," Milshtein said. "We can and should ruin Hamas militarily and change the political arena in Gaza. But ultimately the Gazan people will have to do some soul searching. And here in the Arab world, not only the Palestinians, soul searching is very rare."