A piece of very good news came out of Israel this morning when the IDF announced that another hostage had been rescued, ALIVE, from Gaza.

As time goes on, and Hamas continues to refuse to commit to any kind of ceasefire deal, the fear has been that there are very few hostages left alive (the last group of hostages that were found were all dead, and there are reports that others have simply been executed while in captivity, as this last group was), and those who are alive may be the personal human shields of Yahya Sinwar – who reportedly wants Israel to promise not to assassinate him, and is allegedly putting on women’s clothing and hanging around in bars so he won’t be recognized as he moves around in Gaza.

Which makes today’s news of a living hostage rescue so much better. And the identity of who was rescued is going to shatter some myths about Israel and Hamas among the anti-Semites of the world.

Qaid Farhan Alkadi, 52, who was kidnapped by the terror group on Oct. 7, was found in a tunnel in Mahrat during a “complex rescue operation,” according to the Israeli military.

Alkadi, a father of 11 from the Bedouin Arab community, was rescued by IDF soldiers from the 13th Fleet Unit, 401st Brigade, as well as Yalam and Shin Bet fighters, the military said.

The Hostage Families Forum issued a statement celebrating Alkadi’s rescue while underscoring the need to prioritize the release of the remaining captives.

“He endured 326 days in captivity,” the group said.

“Qaid’s return home is nothing short of miraculous. However, we must remember: military operations alone cannot free the remaining … hostages, who have suffered 326 days of abuse and terror. A negotiated deal is the only way forward.”

Tuesday’s rescue was the fourth successful rescue operation to extract living Israeli hostages from the Gaza Strip, the Jerusalem Post reported.

There have been several other successful missions to return the bodies of the hostages killed by Hamas.

Alkadi is the first hostage to be rescued from one of Gaza’s tunnel networks, as all prior live hostages were rescued from above ground.

First image of rescued hostage Farhan al-Qadi at Soroka Hospital in Beersheba. https://t.co/nKaonMrRNi pic.twitter.com/R20s4YtGXt

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) August 27, 2024

Alkadi’s family, is, naturally, estatic. Which is going to give a lot of Western anti-Semites some severe heartburn.
https://twitter.com/Nervana_1/status/1828425191938011589
Hey, where are all the protesters screaming that “Israel is an apartheid state” and other such bullshit? Where’s Rashida Tlaib? Where’s Ilhan Omar? Why were they not demanding the release of their fellow Muslim from Hamas captivity? Oh, wait. This Bedouin Arab Muslim is an Israeli citizen. And he wasn’t the only Muslim being held hostage by Hamas.

Alkadi was one of eight members of Israel’s Arab Bedouin minority who were abducted on Oct. 7. He was working as a guard at a packing factory in Kibbutz Magen, one of several farming communities that came under attack. He has two wives and is the father of 11 children.

But we don’t hear about these hostages from The Squad. Their very existence is inconvenient to their narrative that Israel is an awful, terrible, no-good racist apartheid state that shouldn’t exist because it’s so very bad. And the rescue of Alkadi also throws a wrench in their narrative, so they won’t even mention it. Ilhan Omar’s latest tweet, made after the news broke of the hostage rescue, is bitching about Project 2025. Rashida Tlaib has said nothing. There is no “solidarity” with their fellow Muslims unless they live in Gaza, or hate Israel. An Arab Muslim who lives and works peacefully in Israel, and who was being held hostage by their precious little terror club? Does not compute.

What also is not computing for those who want to keep coddling Hamas is the testimony coming from former hostages. One of the Nova music festival survivors is speaking out about how her Hamas captors tried to extort her family and force her to convert.

A freed Hamas hostage has revealed that the terrorists repeatedly tried to force her to convert to Islam while she was being held captive and demanded that her family pay a ransom in exchange for her release.

Moran Stella Yanai, 41, who was among those snatched from the Nova Music Festival during the Oct. 7 bloodshed, told the Israeli N12 network that her kidnappers also promised to release her sooner if she converted.

“Almost daily one of them would enter the room, saying, ‘Would be better for you to be a Muslim woman,’ and once the terrorist sent one of his comrades to get a head covering to put on me, and show me what it means to be a Muslim woman,” Yanai said.

“As a woman, my biggest fear is being sold. That someone would forcefully marry me and that I will have to convert to Islam.”

The jewelry designer, who ended up being held hostage in Gaza for 44 days, said the terrorists tortured her family as well by trying to extort them.

“It is a part of their mind games, they are not playing just with us, but also with our families,” Yanai said, adding, “it does not end in our death or kidnapping, they continue to torture and abuse our families.”

At one point, she said, the Hamas brutes interrogated her about her father for an entire day — including how much he earned and what price he would be willing to pay to have her released.

Yanai learned later that they had sent her father a photo of her and threatened to murder her if he didn’t cough up ransom money.

Another hostage survivor, 17 year old Agam Goldstein-Almog, who was kidnapped along with her mother and brothers after her father and sister were murdered at Kfar Aza, wrote of her ordeal in the Washington Post.

My Hamas guards hated me for being Jewish, so I was coerced into reciting Islamic prayers and made to wear a hijab. I was forbidden from mourning my father and sister, and often ordered to look down at the ground. Six female hostages I met in a tunnel told me about men with guns who came into their shower rooms and touched their bodies.

Hearing about these young women’s fear of sexual abuse was agonizing. When one of my guards told me that he would find me a “husband” in Gaza, and that I would live the rest of my life as a chained slave-wife, my mother interrupted, deflecting his advances. I was fortunate to be released, along with my family members, in a prisoner exchange after 51 days. But those six young women are still in captivity, held for more than 300 days, without their mothers. They all should have come home a long time ago.

She also wrote about being used as a human shield.

One morning, my family was moved from our safe house to a school hall, filled largely with Gazan women and children. Strangers asked if I wanted anything to sit on, or if I was thirsty — a rare moment of human connection.

But then, in an instant, the low buzz of conversation was drowned out by Hamas launching rockets, just meters away from us, from inside the school compound. The hall erupted in joy, and as the Gazans celebrated, I realized that Hamas had moved us there to serve as human shields.

Shortly before my family and I were released at the end of November, a guard made a point of telling us that, in the next war, Hamas would return to kill us. There would be no hostage-taking, no more dealmaking.

And there was another letter released this last weekend. It was a suicide note from a survivor of the Nova music festival, who decided he could no longer live with himself after what he had seen. The letter can be read here, but fair warning – it is heartbreaking and clearly written by someone suffering from severe PTSD. While today’s hostage rescue is fantastic news, the effects of October 7th on Israel and its citizens, and Jews around the world, will last for a long, long time. And as Alkadi said today, those hostages who are still alive are suffering.

Rescued hostage Qaid Farhan al-Qadi to Israeli President Herzog: “People are suffering there. Do everything you can to bring people home. Work 24 hours, don’t sleep until they return. People are really suffering, you can’t imagine. Suddenly, I heard someone speaking Hebrew… pic.twitter.com/mO5uDKesPo

— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) August 27, 2024

The full post reads:

Rescued hostage Qaid Farhan al-Qadi to Israeli President Herzog: “People are suffering there. Do everything you can to bring people home. Work 24 hours, don’t sleep until they return. People are really suffering, you can’t imagine. Suddenly, I heard someone speaking Hebrew outside the door, I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it. I thank you very much.”

The President emotionally said to him: “Dear Farhan, how moving it is to hear your voice! Our brother has come home. Our brother has returned!”

Any ceasefire deal that the Biden-Harris administration wants (who is in charge right now, anyway?) must involve the return of every single hostage, living or dead. But even that should not blind anyone to the truth that Hamas are the bad guys. They are evil. They need to be defeated, utterly and completely. And I’m kind of hoping that if Sinwar is captured or killed by the IDF, he’s wearing a burqa when it happens.

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