The open question remains. Just how many of those being held hostage by Hamas are still alive, and how many have been murdered while waiting to be rescued?

If those in the West didn’t take the threat of hostage murder seriously, then the last insane “cease fire” offer by Hamas should really have been the clue bat upside the head. When Israel was negotiating in early April, and asked for 40 hostages to be released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and a cease fire, Hamas claimed that they didn’t have enough hostages that fit those categories who were still alive.

The framework that has been laid out by negotiators says that during a first six-week pause in the fighting, Hamas should release 40 of the remaining hostages, including all the women as well as sick and elderly men. In exchange, hundreds of Palestinian prisoners would be released from Israeli prisons.

Hamas has told international mediators – which include Qatar and Egypt – it does not have 40 living hostages who match those criteria for release, both sources said.

CNN’s record of the conditions of the hostages also suggests there are fewer than 40 living hostages who meet the proposed criteria.

The question of just how many hostages were still alive came up again when Hamas offered dead bodies in exchange for live prisoners. Apparently, Israel was supposed to play the role of Lando Calrissian here, and simply accept it when Darth Vader says “I have altered the deal – pray I don’t alter it any further.” That didn’t happen, for obvious reasons, despite the fact that the Biden administration was desperate to get Israel to sign on, because a dead hostage is just as good as a live hostage, right?

Israel: We'd like our hostages back.
Hamas: Our counteroffer is that you get back their corpses and permanently end your war against us.
NYT: Small changes to the deal proposedhttps://t.co/8Q2fbzUMFn

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 7, 2024

Despite all of Joe Biden’s machinations to get Israel to cooperate with his re-election bid to win votes in Michigan, the IDF has begun the process of moving into Rafah, which was considered the last major Hamas stronghold. The IDF had already rescued two hostages previously from Rafah, and had been dropping leaflets and alerting civilians to move into designated safe zones.

However, there was terrible news out of Rafah today.

The IDF reveals that troops retrieved the bodies of Shani Louk, Itzik Gelernter & Amit Buskila from Gaza and brought them back to Israel for burial.

The death of Louk, seen on Oct. 7 in widely shared footage, was confirmed in October. The fate of the others had not been known. pic.twitter.com/DaR0Lmk09q

— Amy Spiro (@AmySpiro) May 17, 2024

All three hostages were at the music festival, apparently murdered on October 7th, and their bodies held by Hamas. Shani Louk, as many will recall, was already known to be dead due to the fact that photographers were taking pictures of her killers parading her broken body in Gaza on October 7th. In fact, in a disgusting and ugly moment, the Associated Press won “Team Picture Story of the Year” from the Reynolds Journalism Institute for their photograph of Hamas terrorists holding Shani Louk’s body.

Congratulations to @AP for winning a Pictures of the Year award. How does it feel to do so on the back of Palestinian photojournalists who infiltrated Israel on Oct. 7 and took photos like the one below of Shani Louk's dead body in a Hamas pickup?

Was @RJI bothered about that… pic.twitter.com/MSasc9yzVp

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) March 22, 2024

Even Slate found this award to the AP despicable for stripping Shani Louk of any dignity, even in death.

What are we to make of the choice to recognize this photo with an award? On the one hand, the image reflects the way much of the left has viewed Israeli victims following Oct. 7—disposed of, expendable, taken away, gone. On the other hand, it captures the paradox that has allowed Hamas supporters to simultaneously deny that atrocities against women took place on Oct. 7 while celebrating them in real time. Ultimately, the choice to center and honor this image also perfectly captures the intersection of antisemitism and misogyny, as well as the way elements of the left and Hamas are joined in their shared antipathy toward Jews.

Some have suggested that the picture of Louk is deserving of recognition as part of a long tradition of war photojournalism, a practice that stretches back to Mathew Brady’s images of the dead at Antietam. That was the position of Picture of the Year director Lynden Steele, who claimed that the image captures “the harsh realities of war” and therefore merited the award. We understand the merits of war photojournalism, just as we understand that awarding a photograph a prize is not equivalent to celebrating its contents. But the picture of Louk is not war photojournalism. It was taken not during wartime but during a terror attack. The men in the back of the truck are not “fighting.” They are not even wearing uniforms or insignia. They are returning from a pogrom with their spoils, to publicly desecrate a captured corpse. Louk’s family was able to identify her only because viral real-time video of her body paraded through the streets allowed them to recognize tattoos and dreadlocks. Bone fragments from her skull were later found at the Nova festival, suggesting she had been killed at the site.

It is undeniably essential to photograph war and famine and the suffering in Gaza as a means of keeping a public record. But the Picture of the Year prize opted to recirculate an image that was not captured or contextualized in print as an indictment. Louk’s family has explicitly asked, many times, that she be remembered alive and happy. When told that the photo of his dead daughter had won an award, Louk’s father, Nissim, said he hoped that the attention the award would garner for the photo would serve “to inform the future,” but whether that reckoning will happen remains unclear. Louk’s grandmother Nicole Louk Naccache decried not just the award but the public silence, posting Thursday: “My dead granddaughter stars in a photograph that won a prestigious photography competition. And the world is silent! … Tossed as a victory trophy for terrorists and vile photographers.”

Meanwhile, the AP has been named in a suit filed by survivors and family members of the massacre for knowingly supporting terrorism by purchasing photos from Hamas-linked journalists. The AP has also been sued separately by Louk’s family for employing freelance photojournalists who broke through the Gaza fence with the terrorists, then documented the killings. When asked why it would work with a photographer who presumably had material knowledge of crimes committed that day, the AP has chosen to insist that it “had no knowledge of the Oct. 7 attacks before they happened.” The organization has yet to explain why it is acceptable to have knowledge of the attacks and the attackers as they happened.

There is a reason that Hamas has kept the bodies of the dead hostages, and it is because they know that Israel wants them back. They wish to bury their dead with respect and decency, and Hamas knows that given enough time, they might be able to trade the body of a dead hostage for several live Palestinian prisoners. And that really is the key. TIME. Israel tried to placate the Biden administration by delaying the potential end of the war, and that was a mistake. Joe Biden, as is his M.O., has abandoned American citizens being held hostage, and is completely in thrall to the fringe anti-Semitic left on college campuses, cosplaying as terrorists and braying about “intifada” while paying lip service to a cease fire. Israel wasted time waiting on Old Joe, thinking that he would surely come around. Instead, they got stabbed in the back for their patience.

And now the question again comes around to TIME. If there are any hostages still alive in Rafah, how much time do they have left? In this case, I’m not sure patience is a virtue. Any hostage still alive has suffered so much more than we in the West can probably imagine. Hamas has little interest in keeping any of them alive, except to protect Yahya Sinwar as his own personal human shields.

The government of Israel is going to face plenty of questions, and a political reckoning, when this is all over. Joe Biden could be facing a political reckoning of his own. But waiting is only prolonging the agony – for the hostages still alive, for the families waiting to know if their loved ones are alive or dead, and for the civilians in Gaza who are being held hostage by Hamas as well. The IDF needs to finish the job. Israel needs to bring them ALL home.

Featured image: flag of Israel by edu_castro27 via Pixabay, cropped and modified, Pixabay license