Episode 182 Transcript: The Upside-Down Hostage Rescue
Israel gets condemned for rescuing hostages
Hi everyone. I watched this show on Netflix called Stranger Things. You may have seen it, it was a big hit a couple years ago. The premise of the show is a group of kids in 1980s small town America, who find that their reality is punctured by an alternate dimension of monsters and other paranormal phenomenon. The show revolves around them trying to understand the portal that moves them between these two worlds. They call this alternate reality the “upside down.”
I find this metaphor very useful when I come across the latest absurdity around Israel. I’ve been training myself to just shake my head and mutter, “oh look, it’s the upside down.” In Stranger Things one of the portals to the upside-down is a top-secret government lab. For me one of the portals is often the front page of the news.
This past week Israel staged one of the most extraordinary hostage rescues in modern history. They extracted safe and alive four Israeli hostages in the midst of a major battle in the interior of Gaza in an unbelievably complex, daring, and extremely high-risk operation. We know now that this operation was months in planning, all the pieces waiting for the precise right opportunity to get them, without hesitation or equivocation. One Israeli soldier, Arnon Zmora, was killed during the fight, sacrificing his life to save the hostages. I remain in total awe of the IDF’s ability to pull off this kind of stuff, the guts and skill and resolve it takes to just nail every single decision on the absolute knife-edge between life and death.
Not once in eight months were these people forgotten or given up on. The pictures and videos of them reuniting with their families is that rare bit of glorious, euphorically good news amidst this utter catastrophe. This is Israel. This is Zionism. This is ahavat Yisrael, love of fellow Jews. It is right and just and even obligatory that Israel seized the opportunity to rescue the hostages.
But then of course we have the upside-down world, in which Israel is condemned for rescuing their hostages, not Hamas for taking them in the first place. It’s the upside down world where Israel is held responsible for a “massacre” of Palestinians during the rescue, when in fact the army came under heavy attack by Hamas during the extraction. What was the IDF supposed to do? Lay down their weapons and die?
It’s hard to know quite how much attention to put on the upside-down world. Most people in Stranger Things aren’t affected by the upside-down. Likewise most reasonable people today would agree that Israel, or any other country, has every right to rescue hostages, and to kill people when they come under attack in the process. And yet as the kids show us in Stranger Things, the upside-down world, whether you experience it or not, has a powerful effect. Today’s upside down may be a small, vocal, and totally indecent minority, but it includes pretty powerful organizations and people. The biggest media companies, top-tier universities, human rights activists, the UN, the EU, and politicians and diplomats all over the world who buy into, and help create, the upside-down world. It’s maddening and deeply unsettling.
Thankfully, neither Israel nor the Jews nor anyone who supports them has to apologize for rescuing hostages from the pits of despair. This is a win, and I’ll take it.
Thanks to Simone from Tampa Florida, for a kind donation, and to everyone else who has donated the last few weeks. The best thing you can do besides donating is to tell everyone you know about this podcast, and to leave those five star reviews and positive comments wherever you listen. Don’t forget that I also publish a newsletter about once a week through Substack, you can sign up for that at my website jewoughtaknow.com. On to today’s episode. I’m your host Jason Harris, and this is Jew Oughta Know.
The hostage rescue has already entered the pantheon of Israel’s greatest military operations. The meticulous planning, the bold execution, the unbelievable courage of the soldiers — all of it is an extraordinary testament to the Israeli spirit.
At 11:00am on Saturday, June 8 — Shabbat — the IDF gave the go order to enter Nuseirat, a neighborhood in central Gaza. The operation had been gathering intelligence for some time, and knew that four hostages were being held in two separate homes about 200m from each other. They were guarded by families but Hamas was deeply embedded throughout the neighborhood. We know that Hamas frequently moves hostages around to thwart rescue attempts. We don’t know why or for how long these four were in place.
In one building was Noa Argamani. Noa has been one of the emblematic hostages since October 7, when we all saw footage of her screaming in terror on the bike of a motorbike being driven into Gaza. Her mother has been in the late stages of brain cancer, her last wish to see Noa freed.
In the other building were three men: Almog Meir Jan, Andrei Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv. All four had been captured at the Nova music festival.
Dozens of elite troops from Yamam, the special forces, and the Shin Bet, one of Israel’s intelligence agencies, descended on the two buildings at the same time. Reports are that some of the troops disguised themselves as civilians, pretending to be refugees from other parts of the Strip, in order to achieve the element of surprise. We’ll come back to that fact. But otherwise this was a huge show of military force that came barreling into the neighborhood.
By all accounts Noa’s rescue went off without a hitch. The IDF quickly killed her captors inside the building and extracted her to a nearby helicopter. Things went different at the building where the three male hostages were held.
An incredibly dramatic 45 second video has been released showing the troops rescuing the three men. I’ll post the link on this episode’s webpage. Under heavy fire the troops burst into the building. Screaming “Hebrew, Hebrew, where is everyone!” they went flying through the rooms, quickly finding the three hostages. “Names, names!” they yelled, and the hostages said their names. The soldiers reported in: “three are in our hands.” One of the officers fist-bumped Almog. “Everything is ok. We have come to rescue you, be calm.”
The next few seconds shows the soldiers laying down intense fire outside the building, as two of the hostages can be see running for cover through a backyard. Off video, the three hostages and the soldiers piled into a vehicle and sped off towards a nearby landing zone. That’s when things started to go wrong.
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By the time the three male hostages and the special forces were peeling away from the scene, hundreds of Hamas fighters had descended in a desperate attempt to kill the Israelis. They had assault rifles, RPGs — rocket propelled grenades capable of destroying vehicles — along with antiaircraft weapons to fire at planes and helicopters. The vehicle was stopped dead in its tracks by enemy fire as the terrorists surrounded them. The troops and the hostages were in dire trouble. But the IDF had left nothing to chance. The rescue team for the rescue team was activated. The Air Force laid down covering fire — they surrounded the team on three sides with air strikes to keep the terrorists at bay, while leaving one side open as the escape route. This is likely when some number of Palestinian civilians were killed — which we’ll come back to. The rescuers and hostages were able to make their escape. We have a few seconds of footage of the hostages jumping on board a helicopter.
Reports are that it was during the firefight at the apartment building that Yaman Chief Inspector Arnon Zmora became the only Israeli killed. Known to all as a courageous fighter and dedicated husband and father, he fought to save lives at several kibbutzim on October 7, and has been active ever since, continuously reminding his soldiers why they are fighting and who they are fighting for.
His death drew instant comparisons with Israel’s most legendary hostage rescue, the 1976 operation at Entebbe, Uganda, that freed 102 hostages from an airplane hijacking. Then, too, only one soldier was killed in a heroic operation — Yoni Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu’s older brother, who has gone down as the idealized Israeli soldier. Zmora now joins that roster of extraordinary Israeli heroes who gave the ultimate sacrifice to save lives.
In honor of Zmora’s sacrifice, the entire operation was renamed Operation Arnon. If you know anything about Israel, then you know that not a single solider on this operation went reluctantly or under orders. Every single one of them were the first to raise their hands to volunteer for this mission. Thousands of people lined the streets for Zmora’s funeral the other day. As we say, may his memory be a blessing.
As the operation concluded, the word went out like lightning. A lifeguard on the beach in Tel Aviv grabbed his microphone and relayed the news, the entire shoreline erupting in applause and cries and hugs. Because it was Shabbat and religious Jews don’t use electricity, secular Jews went around religious neighborhoods posting flyers to let people know what had happened.
Noa was quickly reunited with her mother. Accounts differ to what extent her mother was lucid enough to recognize what was happening, but they are together now at the same hospital. A video showed Andrei Kozlov falling to his knees in tears as his mother came around the corner to his hospital room. There is amazing video of Almog being greeted by his friends, jumping and screaming for joy. He grabs scissors to cut off the bracelets they promised to wear until his return. Sadly, though, his father had died of a heart attack just that morning, a few hours before he would have learned of Almog’s rescue.
Yet, as we say, dayenu — it’s enough. Dayenu. Of course it’s not, as there are still more hostages. But for this week, like I said, I’m taking the win. The sight of these four hostages returned alive and safe is a moment of just total joy, and I’ll take it.
But of course, like Hamas, the upside-down world also wasn’t happy with Israel rescuing its hostages.
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That was the BBC demanding to know why Israel didn’t warn the Palestinians they were coming in for this surprise rescue. We’re living in the realm of the absurd. The very patient response came from Jonathan Conricus, a former IDF spokesperson.
Within seconds of the rescue, the story across much of the media was not the hostages but instead an obsessive focus on the Palestinian casualties. The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NPR — you name it — all led with and focused on the Palestinians, and all referred to the hostages having been “released.” The headlines were that Israel killed Palestinians during a raid, not that Israel killed Palestinian fighters during combat in the midst of a rescue operation. You’d think that Israel simply showed up in a civilian neighborhood without cause. Hamas lied to claim that hundreds of Palestinians were killed. The media ran with it, taking Hamas at its word (again) that these were all innocent civilians. Nevermind asking why so many innocent civilians seemed to have joined in the battle. Israel says that around 100 Palestinians were killed, but they don’t know how many were civilians versus fighters.
Israel came in for particular criticism for killing the people holding the hostages. One of them was a Palestinian journalist — evidence of Israel’s barbaric war on the press. No argument was made that, whatever your profession, if you are holding hostages for a terrorist group, you are a terrorist, not an innocent civilian. Of course, this is all part of Hamas’ cynical evil, making it impossible to distinguish between civilian and terrorist. We can be sure that everyone in that neighborhood knew exactly what was going on in those two apartments. That doesn’t mean they are guilty of war crimes, but it does mean that the media is ridiculous to peddle the notion that everyone in Gaza is innocent, even those who capture, hold, hide, enslave, and torture hostages.
Egypt, which is supposed to be helping Israel get the hostages back, declared the operation a war crime. So did the UN Human Rights Commission. Norway condemned the rescue, as did Jordan. The European Union’s foreign policy chief condemned Israel “in the strongest terms”, declaring himself “appalled” by Israel’s “massacre” of Palestinians.
The Atlantic, which is normally pretty good on this stuff, has so far only ran one article about the rescue. It was a piece questioning whether Israel is guilty of perfidy. I’m seeing this latest accusation all over the place. In the laws of war, perfidy is a particular case in which an army disguises itself as civilians in order to attack the opposing force. This causes the opposing army to then attack civilians, thinking they might actually be soldiers. Thus perfidy places at risk the lives of civilians. Now, this does not apply in a rescue operation. But more to the point, for eight months now no one has cared a whit about perfidy even though it has been the entirety of Hamas’ strategy. But now suddenly everyone is crying foul on perfidy because, oh look, Israel is supposedly doing it.
The media is just absolutely determined to find something — anything — to ensure that every single Israeli action is classed as an atrocity. It’s the alternate dimension here. Anytime Israel scores a win, it must because of some deceitful war crime against innocent Palestinians. Because this story is supposed to be that Israel loses to the resistance.
Look, I agree with the upside-down world that the best outcome here would have been no Palestinian civilian casualties. That would have been achieved if Hamas hadn’t attacked the rescue operation with hundreds of fighters. Or if Hamas had released the hostages earlier. Or if Hamas hadn’t even taken them in the first place.
And there’s Francesca Albanese, representing the United Nations. She’s the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories and, to be fair, she’s an antisemite, so we shouldn’t expect too much of her. She declared herself “relieved” that four hostages had been “released,” as if Hamas had kindly given them a ride home to Israel. She then condemned Israel for using “humanitarian camouflage” to disguise themselves as civilians in order to slaughter Palestinian children. She accused Israel of using the hostages to legitimize killing, starving, and traumatizing Palestinians. As if taking the hostages in the first place wasn’t killing, starving, and traumatizing Israelis, Thais, Nepalese, French, Americans, Argentinians, Tanzanians, Filipinos, and a dozen other countries. Albanese claimed that Israel could have gotten the hostages back in November if they had just struck a better deal with Hamas. So she and her UN agency believes that Hamas has absolutely no obligation to return the hostages without a steep payment from Israel. No wonder she hates the rescue operation. In her words, it was “genocidal intent turned into action. Crystal clear.” But again, I’m complaining that an antisemite hates the Jews. Why bother?
So ultimately the upside-down world judges the rescue an intentional Israeli massacre of Palestinian civilians. When Jews save hostages, it’s just another example of their campaign of extermination against innocent Palestinians.
So I sit here and I shrug. What else am I supposed to do? “Oh look, it’s the upside down world again.” But I also do find myself questioning myself. Like, what am I getting wrong here?
Israel is fighting a just war. It’s an existential war against a ruthless enemy that will not stop. It is fine to critique and criticize Israel’s prosecution of the war and its strategy, as no war is perfectly clean, without mistakes, or without tragedy. But that’s not what the upside-down is about.
People are not wrong to consider Palestinian casualties. But what is absurd is to willfully dismiss the circumstances. Every single one of them would still be alive if Hamas had not invaded Israel on October 7, breaking the cease-fire that was in place. Israel has every right to take back the hostages. Even when I use the logic of the upside-down world I get to the same conclusion. Oppressed people have a right to resist their occupiers by any means necessary, right? Well the hostages are certainly occupied and oppressed. And if resistance means a helicopter rescue, well the Left can hardly complain, can they? I know, I know — I’m forgetting the part where this logic doesn’t apply to Jews.
Israel is not entitled to reject humanitarian law and moral principles just because Hamas does. Israel must endeavor to uphold the laws of war as best it can. But there is no legal or moral sense in which Israel cannot rescue its own hostages even though Hamas deliberately puts civilians in harms way in order to prevent such a rescue. That is not disproportional. Of course the United Nations knows this. And knows that the hostages were held for eight months without a shred of rights or relief in violation of humanitarian law. UNICEF, the International Red Cross, Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders — all of them are operating in Nuseirat where the hostages were found, and none of them have evinced the slightest interest in the hostages since the war began.
I ask myself how the upside-down world would have responded if the operation had gone badly. If Hamas had succeeded in killing the troops and the hostages during their escape. Would the upside-down world condemn Hamas for that war crime? For murdering innocent civilians trying to escape their captivity? I can’t imagine they would. It would be yet another example of Israeli aggression gone awry, an atrocity entirely of their own making for daring to attack.
People ask me how the upside-down world can be so bad at this, but I’m not sure that’s the right question. They’re not trying to get this right and falling short. They’re pushing an agenda. In the binary thinking of this worldview, in which everything is reduced to the oppressed vs. the oppressor, Israel must be eliminated as the archetypal oppressor state. It’s an illegitimate country that should not exist. And because it’s illegitimate, everything it does must be definition also be illegitimate. If the rescue operation was right then Hamas must have been wrong to take those hostages in the first place. But that would profoundly disrupt the narrative of an evil Israel versus freedom-loving Hamas. We have to twist ourselves into knots to find a reason why Israel wasn’t justified in saving its own people. So you focus on the Palestinian casualties, declare them all to be innocent civilians without proof, and blame Israel for deliberately killing them.
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I don’t expect the upside-down world to care about Israel’s hostages. For them the hostages are almost a hoax, like it’s not even real that Israel would fight a war to get back their family members who have been held captive for eight months. We have to stop trying to reach the upside-down. Because it’s not that they don’t get it and want to be educated. So we don’t need to speak to them or justify ourselves to them. We only have to justify ourselves to ourselves, and to the reasonable people in the world who are able to appreciate what is going on.
A total of seven hostages have been rescued alive by the IDF. 19 bodies have also been recovered. There are still 116 hostages left in Gaza. The IDF says that 41 of them are confirmed dead. And there is still one person missing from October 7. We don’t know whether she was killed that day or is a hostage.
It’s clear that if Israel wants its hostages back, it’s going to have to do it itself. Either with military action or the defeat of Hamas or by paying some kind of awfully painful price. Egypt and Qatar, which are supposed to be mediating, seem to working against Israel and certainly can’t be trusted. The international institutions that are supposed to care about hostages, like the Red Cross, can’t be bothered. We already know where the UN stands. The European Union and various European countries are useless. Spain and Norway want the Palestinians to have all the rights and powers of a state without having to actually act like one. Responsible nations don’t take hostages and don’t slaughter their own civilians to carry out a genocidal ambition against their neighbor.
There’s no use anymore trying to convince the people who live in the upside-down alternate dimension. We should call out their hypocrisies and lies and moral failures and not forget it when they hopefully someday realize they’ve been in thrall to monsters. We should cancel our subscriptions and turn off their channels and make sure their advertisers don’t win our attention. We should vote for whomever is running against them and shred those envelopes begging for donations.
Four hostages came home. It’s a miracle. Dayenu. For that I choose to live in this reality, the reality of celebration and joy.
On a separate note - I am working on some new Jew Oughta Know projects over the summer. Yay! So I’ll be putting out a few less podcasts in the near-term. I’m still here, still on top of it but with a less-regular podcast delivery for a couple of months. In the meantime you can follow my Substack articles by either going to Substack directly or signing up for the mailing list on my website at jewoughtaknow.com. My email is jewoughtaknowpodcast@gmail.com. Thanks for listening everyone and today we can definitely say, Am Yisrael Chai — the Jewish People Live.
© Jason Harris 2024