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The Bright and Dark Sides of the Hostage Deal
A woman walks past posters of hostages kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Dec. 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov
Israeli headlines were bursting on Wednesday night with the dramatic news of a deal to bring home the remaining hostages and end the war in Gaza.
Over the course of six weeks Hamas will gradually release the “first phase” of hostages: 33 women, children, and elderly. Israeli intelligence believes that most are alive, but some will be returned as corpses. Yet phase two, during which Israeli men would be released, has not even been fully negotiated yet, and there is a disturbing possibility that it will never be.
To understand Israel’s bitter-sweet reaction, one needs to realize that there are two main representatives of the hostages’ families: the “Hostages and Missing Families Forum” and another called the “Hatikva Forum,” and they hold fundamentally different views.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum is mostly comprised of families of women, children, and the elderly who would be released in phase one. This forum has long demanded a deal at any price, often through furious and ongoing public protests. On Wednesday night we saw Israeli families screaming for joy, breaking down in tears, and other heartbreaking and heartwarming displays. Words like “catharsis” and “relief” have dominated Israeli headlines, and every Israeli feels this deeply.
The Hatikva forum, however, is not expecting to see their children any time soon, because their loved ones are mostly young men — in other words, hostages who will not be released in phase one. These families have long insisted on releasing all hostages at once, comparing a phased deal to the practices of the Holocaust, in which Nazis separated Jews into groups that would live or die. Indeed, Hamas’s previous demands with respect to a potential phase two have crossed all of Israel’s red lines, making a phase two appear highly unlikely.
Even more concerning is that after phase one, Israel will have given up much of its leverage and military momentum. If the deal fails after that point, the children of the Hatikva families might be effectively abandoned in Gaza, permanently. Over the past 24 hours the Hatikva families have been mostly ignored by Israeli media, and they describe the entire situation as a “betrayal.”
Israel is preparing to release approximately 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, including those who participated in the Oct. 7 massacre. The IDF will leave the “Netzarim corridor” which separates northern and southern Gaza, allowing Palestinians (and presumably also Hamas) to return to northern Gaza. Most of the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023 initiated from northern Gaza, making this area especially sensitive from a security perspective. Israel will also reportedly reduce (though not entirely end) its presence in the “Philadelphi corridor,” which connects Gaza to Egypt, and has long been a source of Iranian resupply to Hamas.
Finally, if we do reach beyond the first and second phases of this deal, Israel will announce a permanent ceasefire and Gaza will be subject to a flood of aid and reconstruction. Reconstruction is expected to be supervised by Qatar (one of Hamas’s main sponsors), Egypt (which is lately rumored to be preparing to open military hostilities against Israel), and the United Nations (which has long supported Hamas’s terror activities through its UNRWA organization).
Crowds took to the streets in Gaza to celebrate the news of a ceasefire, chanting, “We are the people of Muhammad Deif” (one of the architects of the Oct. 7 massacre). And just in case there was any doubt about the prevailing sentiment in the Arab world, the late Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was recently declared the Arab world’s “Person of the Year” by Egypt’s Hurriyat news network, with 85 percent of the wide-ranging vote.
There is, however, cause for hope.
Israeli Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fox claimed Tuesday evening that the current deal “is the same deal as May 27” which Hamas had rejected. Hamas has long insisted that any deal begin with an immediate and permanent end to the war, immediate and complete IDF withdrawal from the entirety of Gaza, and a significant role for Hamas in post-war Gaza, along with binding international guarantees of the same.
In the latest deal, Hamas has achieved none of those goals, and there’s a reason why. Since Hamas rejected a similar deal in May, the IDF has defeated and dismantled the last of Hamas’s 24 formal battalions, it’s leadership, (including Oct. 7 architect Sinwar) has been mostly killed, Hezbollah has been reduced to a shadow of its former self in Lebanon, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad has fallen, Iran has been militarily humiliated, and the United States has elected a new president, Donald Trump, whose incoming national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said just this week, “Gaza has to be fully demilitarized, Hamas has to be destroyed to the point that it cannot reconstitute … Israel has every right to fully protect itself, [and] all of those objectives are still very much in place.” This is a significant departure from the rhetoric of the prior US administration, giving Israelis hope of maintaining its military leverage through phase two and beyond.
There are other benefits to this deal: thousands of IDF reservists desperately need to return to their families and careers, and the IDF needs to redeploy its readiness to face new and emerging challenges (including a rapidly changing Syria and the possibility of a direct confrontation with Iran). Most importantly, Israelis have not been able to rest knowing that one of the principal goals of the war, the return of the hostages, had yet to be accomplished even after more than 400 days.
The promise to protect every Israeli is central to the covenant between Israel and its people. This means bringing home the hostages, but it also means protecting all Israelis — including those who could potentially become the next hostages or targets of future terror attacks. At times it seems difficult or impossible to accomplish both of these imperatives at once. Yet the Middle East is a vastly different place than it was on Oct. 6, 2023, in many respects for the better.
The next six weeks of “phase one” will be a kind of emotional torture for Israelis, with highs and lows, terrible suspense, joyful reunions, and tragic disappointments. All the while, Israel’s young, male hostages will remain in captivity as their families hope against all odds that they too might eventually come home. Finally, the months and years to come will determine whether Israel and the Middle East become safer and more prosperous, or whether we will repeat the same long-term mistakes that brought us to this torturous year in the first place.
Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.
The post The Bright and Dark Sides of the Hostage Deal first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘They Don’t Know What the F—k They’re Doing’: Trump Blasts Israel, Iran Over Ceasefire Breach
US President Donald Trump speaks to media ahead of boarding Marine One to depart to attend the NATO Summit in The Hague, Netherlands, from the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, DC, US, June 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US President Donald Trump blasted Israel on Tuesday for violating a newly brokered ceasefire with Iran, warning Jerusalem against further escalation and saying the two sides had “been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f—k they’re doing.”
Israeli officials said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out only a limited strike on Iranian radar infrastructure — a move meant to signal deterrence while complying with Trump’s demand to avoid broader retaliation.
The scaled-down response followed what US and Israeli sources described as a tense phone call between the two leaders. According to Axios, Trump urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stand down after Iran launched a missile at Israel less than ten minutes into the truce. Netanyahu reportedly replied that canceling the strike outright was not an option, but ultimately agreed to confine the operation to a single symbolic target.
“ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS! IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!” Trump posted on Truth Social shortly afterward, but later added that Israeli jets had turned back “while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran.”
The ceasefire, which went into effect at 7:00 am Israel time, was broken within minutes by Tehran. Israeli officials later said that three Iranian missiles were launched within the first three hours of the truce. The first came just six minutes in, with two more following shortly after 10:00 am. All were either intercepted or landed in open areas. In response, Israeli warplanes struck a single radar installation north of Tehran, a strike Netanyahu’s office described as a proportional reply to Iran’s violations of the agreement.
But as Israeli jets fired, an incensed Trump told reporters on the White House lawn: “I’m not happy that Israel’s going out now.”
“There was one rocket that I guess was fired overboard [by Iran]. It was after the time limit, and it missed its target. And now Israel’s going out,” Trump said. “These guys gotta calm down. Ridiculous.”
Israel also launched a major offensive deep inside Tehran in the hours before the ceasefire took hold, targeting regime infrastructure and reportedly killing hundreds of members of the Basij and other internal security forces.
Iran retaliated with a missile barrage shortly before the ceasefire took effect. The southern Israeli city of Beersheba was hit in the strike, killing four Israelis and wounding two dozen others. Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited the site on Tuesday, describing the weapon used as one of the heaviest in Iran’s arsenal. “That missile, which is way above 400 kilos, landed here specifically to kill women, children, the elderly — people living ordinary lives,” Herzog said.
Twenty-eight Israelis have been killed in missile strikes so far in the 12-day war, along with more than 3,200 wounded. Of those, 23 remain in serious condition and 111 were classified as moderate. Officials said 15,000 homes were destroyed nationwide.
While Netanyahu hailed the ceasefire as a success that prevented further bloodshed, some senior Israeli officials voiced concern that the deal came too soon. Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir praised the military achievements but said the campaign should have continued. “We should have continued for a few more days, overthrowing the Iranian regime and eliminating the source of oxygen for Hamas and Hezbollah once and for all,” he said.
Others also warned of long-term strategic risks. The Ynet news outlet cited Dennis Citrinowicz, former head of the Iran desk at Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, as saying that the absence of a formal agreement leaves Iran free to rebuild its nuclear and missile programs. “There is no mechanism that prevents them from getting stronger again,” he told Ynet. “Without a political agreement, we’ll be dragged into a war of attrition — one far more costly than anything we’ve faced in Lebanon or Gaza.”
Security officials also raised concerns that Iran may attempt to bypass nuclear restrictions by procuring weapons from abroad, or by deepening cooperation with Russia or China. “The success of the operation depends not just on what we destroyed,” the site cited one intelligence official as saying, “but on our ability to stay ahead of their next move.”
Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren said that moving forward, Israel must maintain “a constant and credible military threat on the table.”
“Israel has to act to ensure that Iran can never rebuild [its nuclear program]. And they will try all the time. They’ll start today,” he told reporters in a briefing on Tuesday afternoon.
He noted that for most of Israel’s 77-year history, tactical victories had effectively served as its strategic doctrine, but said that approach was now beginning to shift.
“Every couple of years our enemies try to destroy us, and we have to turn around and remind them that attempts to destroy us are not a good idea,” he said. “But now, for the first time, that pattern can change. The tactic won’t be the strategy; the strategy will be the strategy. And that strategy is changing the nature of this conflict entirely. But it requires vision, it requires statecraft, and it requires courage from our leaders.”
Meanwhile, families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza are calling on the government to expand the ceasefire framework to include a broader deal that would end the war and bring their loved ones home. “The ceasefire agreement must expand to include Gaza,” a statement from the families read. “We call on the government to engage in urgent negotiations that will bring home all the hostages and end the war. Those who can achieve a ceasefire with Iran can also end the war in Gaza.”
Some political sources say Hamas may be more amenable to a deal now that Iranian support appears to have faltered. “Hamas expected a different kind of backing,” one official told Ynet. “With Tehran under pressure and Hezbollah deterred, they may now be open to serious talks on a prisoner exchange.”
Oren, for his part, expressed his hope that the hostages would be part of a deal. “It is my hope that at that negotiating table, the Americans would say to the Iranians, you want sanctions relief? We’ll give you sanctions relief, but every single one of the hostages has to be released in one hour, and Hamas leaders have to get on a boat and go somewhere,” he said.
“I personally would like to send them to Ireland,” he quipped.
The military campaign delivered a clear victory, but a greater challenge now lies in the diplomatic front, Oren said.
“Militarily, Israel and the United States have won the war. Now, diplomatically, we together must win the peace,” he said.
“Iran’s nuclear program must end — no more enrichment, no more warhead and delivery systems — but so, too, must its support for terror and campaign to destroy Israel and America. Lebanon and Syria must be independent and free to make peace with us. Gaza must be demilitarized, Hamas dismantled, and every last of our hostages redeemed.”
“This is one of history’s greatest inflection points,” he told The Algemeiner. “We must not miss it.”
The post ‘They Don’t Know What the F—k They’re Doing’: Trump Blasts Israel, Iran Over Ceasefire Breach first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Pro-Hamas Campus Groups Call for Toppling US Government, Killing Soldiers
A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a megaphone at Columbia University, on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict, in New York City, US, Oct. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
The National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) organization condemned the US bombing of nuclear facilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran over the weekend, threatening that the American government will be deposed.
The anti-government comments came one day after US President Donald Trump ordered the bombing of three key Iranian nuclear sites — Fordow, Isfahan, and Natanz — where Western governments believe the Islamist regime was working to build nuclear weapons. Tehran has claimed its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes
“The empire will fall, from Gaza to Tehran,” NSJP said, writing on the Instagram social media platform. “The unprovoked attacks the US and the Zionist entity have launched against Iran prove only one thing: imperialism in the region will not stop at suffocating Palestine. From Iraq to Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and now Iran, the Empire [sic] demands constant expansion and destabilization.”
It added, “We must be clear: Nuclear development is neither a crime nor the reason for the US’ war against Iran. The US Empire cannot permit the continued existence of a country that dares to stand against Zionism and imperialism.”
On Monday, Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East expert and the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), said that NSJP is mirroring an ideology that university professors have trafficked and taught to their students since the 1960s.
“Left-wing academics have loathed ‘American imperialism’ since the Vietnam War and used it to explain and more importantly justify violent ‘’iberation movements’ around the world. Both communist and Muslim revolutions and insurgencies have been applauded over the years by American academics and their European counterparts,” Romirowsky said. “Some of that has been transmitted to students disinterested in the details of Islamic theology (which underlie Iranian policy). Anti-imperialism situates the Palestinian cause firmly on the political left and glosses over its theological basis in Sunni theology — which is perfectly well expressed in the Hamas Charter and countless other Hamas statements.”
SJP splinter groups across higher education rallied to share NSJP’s post, as noted by the antisemitism watchdog group AMCHA Initiative on Monday. Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapters at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Florida reposted it to their Instagram stories, while an SJP group for graduate students of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) did so as well. At Columbia University, a group which calls itself “Unity Fields” posted a photograph of the coffins of fallen US soldiers, captioning it, “Soon, Inshallah,” which means “God willing” in Arabic.
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), another pro-Hamas group which directs campus activities, said, “From Iran to Palestine, from Lebanon to Syria to Yemen, it is our duty from within the belly of the beast to stand against the US empire and zionist [sic] entity’s barbaric, illegal genocidal aggression, and to stand by all those resisting the ongoing genocide in Gaza by any means necessary.”
The tight coordination of the group’s messaging demands a complete accounting of NSJP’s funding, according to Alex Joffe, a historian and editor of the BDS Monitor for SPME.
“The relationship between NSJP and other action-oriented groups, such as Within Our Lifetime and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, suggest nearly complete overlap in interests and even personnel. Most problematic are the relationships between these Muslim and communist vanguard groups and the nominally legitimate Democratic Socialists of America and Working Families Party,” he explained. “These overlaps and penetrations into broader politics leaves outstanding the question of who is directing whom. The instant pivoting of Communist Chinese Party-backed groups like Code Pink to support Iran points to the fact that they, like NSJP, are not grassroots movements but primarily tools for state actors, above all Qatar, China, Iran, Russia and North Korea.”
He continued, “The question of who funds NSJP is therefore more important than ever. With NSJP and other organizations threatening and engaging in domestic violence, the national security threats have increased and should be addressed by local and federal authorities.”
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, National Students for Justice in Palestine, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, has publicly discussed its strategy of using the anti-Zionist student movement as a weapon for destroying the US.
“Divestment [from Israel] is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself,” the organization said in September 2024. “It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high-cultural repositories without the continuous suppression of populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.”
The tweet was the latest in a series of revelations of SJP’s revolutionary goals and its apparent plans to amass armies of students and young people for a long campaign of subversion against US institutions, including the economy, military, and higher education. Like past anti-American movements, SJP has also been fixated on the presence and prominence of Jews in American life and the US’s alliance with Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.
On the same day the tweet was posted, Columbia University’s most strident pro-Hamas organization was reported to be distributing literature calling on students to join the Palestinian terrorist group’s movement to destroy Israel during the school’s convocation ceremony.
“This booklet is part of a coordinated and intentional effort to uphold the principles of the thawabit and the Palestinian resistance movement overall by transmitting the words of the resistance directly,” said a pamphlet distributed by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spinoff, to incoming freshmen. “This material aims to build popular support for the Palestinian war of national liberation, a war which is waged through armed struggle.”
Other sections of the pamphlet were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose is to build an army of Muslims worldwide.
“We call upon the masses of our Arab and Islamic nations, its scholars, men, institutions, and active forces to come out in roaring crowds tomorrow,” it added, referring to an event which took place the previous December. “We also renew our invitation to the free people and those with living consciences around the world to continue and escalate their global public movement, rejecting the occupation’s crimes, in solidarity with our people and their just cause and legitimate struggle.”
Middle East experts have long suspected that foreign agents are conspiring with SJP chapters — and its spinoffs — in the US to convulse college campuses and lobby for the disintegration of the US-Israel relationship, an outcome that would benefit Middle Eastern powers such as Iran, whose leaders regularly call for the destruction of both the US and Israel.
In July 2024, then-US National Intelligence Director Avril Haines issued a statement outlining how Iran has encouraged and provided financial support to the anti-Israel campus protest movement and explaining that it is part of a larger plan to “undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.” Haines also confirmed that US intelligence agencies have “observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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UK to Ban Group Palestine Action Under Anti-Terrorism Laws
Police officers block a street as pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather in protest against Britain’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s plans to proscribe the “Palestine Action” group in the coming weeks, in London, Britain, June 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
Britain said on Monday it would use anti-terrorism laws to ban the organization Palestine Action, making it a criminal offence to belong to the group after its activists damaged two UK military planes in protest at London’s support for Israel.
The proscription would put the pro-Palestinian group on a par with Hamas, al-Qaeda, or ISIS under British law, making it illegal for anyone to promote it or be a member. Those who breached the ban could face up to 14 years in jail.
Palestine Action has regularly targeted British sites connected to Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems as well as other companies in Britain linked to Israel since the start of the conflict in Gaza in 2023.
In its latest and most high-profile action, two of its members entered a Royal Air Force base in central England on Friday, spraying paint into the engines of the Voyager transport aircraft and further damaging them with crowbars.
“The disgraceful attack on Brize Norton … is the latest in a long history of unacceptable criminal damage committed by Palestine Action,” Home Secretary [interior minister] Yvette Cooper said in a written statement to parliament.
“The UK’s defense enterprise is vital to the nation’s national security and this government will not tolerate those that put that security at risk.”
She said the group‘s actions had become more aggressive and caused millions of pounds of damage.
Under British law, the Home Secretary can proscribe a group if it is believed it commits, encourages, or “is otherwise concerned in terrorism.” The banning order will be laid before parliament on June 30 and will come into effect if approved.
Palestine Action, which says Britain is an “active participant” in the conflict in Gaza because of military support it provides to Israel, called the ban “an unhinged reaction” which it would challenge, and accused Cooper of making a series of “categorically false claims.”
“The real crime here is not red paint being sprayed on these war planes,” it said in a statement.
Earlier on Monday, the group was forced to change the location of a planned protest after police banned it from staging a demonstration outside parliament, otherwise a popular location for protests in support of a range of causes.
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