S2 E55. Could the Six Murdered Hostages Have Been Saved?

I spoke last night with our frequent guest, former IDF spokesperson, Lt. Col. (Res.) Jonathan Conricus, to focus on what many outside Israel find to be a very confusing state of chaos. There is a government that has made clear that a red line – an inviolable boundary in its negotiations for a hostage deal with Hamas – is that it will not abandon the Philadelphi Corridor. Shortly after this position was made public in a leaked recording from an Israeli security cabinet meeting, the bodies of six hostages were found in the Gaza tunnels. They had been murdered by Hamas a short time before. And their deaths enraged the nation. Were their murders avoidable? Was PM Benjamin Netanyahu being callous to their plight in sticking to this position? Or was he steeling and doing what is necessary for the future of Israel? Listen to our discussion in which we explore this horrible dilemma.

Below, just received before publishing this podcast episode, is the transcript of PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks to the international press at 8pm (Israel time) today, Wednesday, Sept. 4. His very full statement stands as a robust response to many parts of our podcast. I suggest reading the statement in full.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Remarks at his Press Conference for the Foreign Media

Following are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks, this evening (Wednesday, 4 September 2024), at the GPO in Jerusalem:

"Israel is experiencing days of horror, sorrow and rage. A week ago, we experienced such horror.

Yesterday, I visited in Ashkelon the family of one of the hostages murdered in cold blood. A day earlier, I spoke to several of the families of these murdered hostages. It tears your heart out. I said to them that I'm sorry. I apologized that we, we didn't get them out. We worked so hard to get them. We were close. But we didn't. And they changed the torment of families worried about their loved ones to families grieving for their fallen beloved. That sentiment I know because I belong to that family. But it's a horror.

We also lost brave policemen and brave soldiers who were fighting in the Gaza front and I embraced their families as well. All our people do.

On October 7th, we experienced the worst savagery in this century. On October 7th, we experienced the worst savagery meted on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. These savages massacred our people. 1,200 civilians. They beheaded our men. They raped our women and then murdered them. They burnt babies alive. They took 255 of our people hostages to their underground dungeons. That's a horror that the world saw and responded to initially.

It's important that we remember it. But we were given a reminder. A terrible reminder. Last week, when these savages murdered six of our hostages in cold blood. They riddled them with bullets. Then they shot each of them in the head. Some of them several times.

And these are the savages, these are the terrorists that Iran implanted next to our border as elsewhere. And we're committed to defeating them, to extirpating this evil from our midst. I want to talk to you today about some of the things that we must do to achieve that goal, including the questions of the Philadelphi Corridor.

But before I do that, I want to give your readers and viewers some context because often you see maps of Israel. You think it's a Goliath.

Well, I'd like to give you first an overview of where Israel is. (Click here for a PDF file.)

This is the Middle East, and this is the entire Arab world, and this is Israel. It's one of the world's tiniest countries. I give it the, you know, the thumb test. This is a big one, so you need a bigger thumb. But it's a tiny country. It's one of the tiniest countries on the planet. It's, I think one tenth of one percent of the territory of the Arab world, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's two tenths of one percent.

It goes from the river. The river is right here. That's the Jordan River. To the sea, the Mediterranean Sea. So, when Hamas is talking about liberating Palestine from the river to the sea, basically, what they're saying is destroying Israel.

And the entire width of this, it's probably around the width of the Washington Beltway, it's all together in its widest point is about 50 miles. Right here. Tiny.

And here's Gaza there. This is the red thing that you see here. That's Gaza. Now I want to zoom in. When I zoom in, remember how tiny this is. Remember the distances here.

Now, take a look. Here it is enlarged. This is Israel. This is the Mediterranean Sea. The Jordan River is right here.

This is Egypt and the Sinai desert. Now, look at Gaza. Where is Gaza? Gaza is implanted in this tiny country 30 miles from Tel Aviv, 40 miles from our capital Jerusalem, 30 miles from Beer-Sheva. These are three of Israel's largest cities. Gaza is within spitting distance to them.

Israel, up to the disengagement agreement of 2005, Israel controlled this border under an agreement with Egypt after the Camp David Peace Accords. We controlled this part, which is called the Philadelphi Corridor, I'll talk about that in a minute, right down to Eilat in the Red Sea. This was our border. And while there was, I would say a minimal amount of terrorism, that wasn't, we didn’t really face a big problem.

Let's zoom in on that a bit more. Here's Gaza Strip enlarged. Again, this is the situation in Gaza before the disengagement of 2005. And the Gaza Strip is firmly under Israeli control. We control the maritime border. You can't smuggle in weapons. They tried but we stopped it. You control the land border. And you control this border between the Sinai desert, Egypt and Gaza. The Gaza Strip, it's controlled. This is the Philadelphi Corridor. This is the Rafah Crossing. Controlled by the IDF.

Now look at the distances from Gaza. It's four miles to another city in Israel called Ashkelon, where I visited that bereaved family yesterday. It's a population of 170,000 people. They are four miles away. But some of our communities like kibbutz Be'eri, which was one of the hardest hit, is one mile away from Gaza. Kfar Aza is less than one mile away. It's literally walking distance. Okay.

And so, as long as we controlled this, these communities, sometimes they were harassed by this rocket or that rocket but it was marginal. We controlled the security situation. But something happened in 2005. Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza. It just went out. It took out everything. It took out the army. It stripped, uprooted communities, took out 10,000 people.

The army left the Philadelphi Corridor. Here's what happened.

This is Gaza after the disengagement. And Hamas now has a weapon smuggling operation nurtured by Iran, financed by Iran, supplied by Iran, delivered by Iran.

And here's what happened. That Philadelphi Corridor became completely porous. The other borders controlled by us. But once this was perforated, even though the policy of Egypt was to prevent it, you know, it didn't necessarily work, it didn't, it didn't succeed. And this border once we left our side of the Philadelphi Corridor, rockets went in, missiles went in, drones went in, ammo went in, weapons manufacturing equipment came in, tunnel drilling equipment came in.

Once we got out, once we left the Philadelphi Corridor, Iran could carry out its plan to turn Gaza into a base, a terrorist enclave that would endanger not only the communities around it but would endanger Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Beer-Sheva, the entire country of Israel. It became a huge terrorist base because we left that Corridor.

So, we vowed, or I would say, all this, you have to understand that the centrality, the centrality of the Philadelphi Corridor to the arming of Gaza, to the arming of Hamas and this all led to the October 7th massacre, which Hamas has vowed, proudly vowed to do again and again and again.

We vowed that they won't be able to do it. So we said, as far as Gaza is concerned, three war goals: The first war goal was to destroy Hamas's military and governing capabilities. The second was to free our hostages. And the third was to ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel.

And all three of those goals, all three of them go through Israel's control of the Philadelphi Corridor. And it's obvious why. You want to destroy Hamas's military and governing capabilities – You can't let Hamas rearm. It's obvious. So you have to control the corridor. You can't let them have…by the way, it's not only to prevent them from terrorizing us, attacking us, it's also to prevent Hamas or any other terrorist organization from terrorizing the people of Gaza.

Gaza cannot have a future if Gaza remains porous and you can enable rearmament of terrorists through the Philadelphi Corridor.

The second thing is to release the hostages. First of all, you can't prevent, if you leave this Corridor, you can't prevent Hamas from, not only, not smuggling weapons in, you can't prevent them from not smuggling terrorists, hostages out. It's walking distance, nothing. They can easily smuggle hostages out here to the Sinai desert in Egypt, they disappear. It's crossing distance. The distance is nothing, it's meters, meters away.

They cross the, the barrier above ground. They don't even have to go underground. They disappear in the Sinai and then they end up in Iran or in Yemen. They're gone forever.

And you need something to squeeze them, to prevent them, to put pressure on them to release the remaining hostages. So if you want to release the hostages, you've got to control the Philadelphi Corridor. And the third reason, the third goal of ensuring that we prevent Gaza from being again a threat to Israel. It's clear. Gaza must be demilitarized. And it can only be demilitarized if the Philadelphi Corridor remains under firm control and is not a supply line for armaments and for terror equipment.

I think that's clear to most Israelis, to all Israelis. But a question has arisen: that may be the case, but why don't you leave Gaza for 42 days, you could come back. Well, aside from what I said that they could smuggle the terrorists out. I want to show you what they've got under Gaza. I didn't show you that. So I want to show you that.

This is what they have under the Philadelphi Corridor. Just so you understand the supply lines we're talking about. This is one of the tunnels there. Look at the engineering, look at the investment here, look at what they've got. We've got dozens of such tunnels, dozens of such tunnels, underneath the Philadelphi Corridor. To give you an impression of the size of these things: This is a soldier. This is a tunnel. You could drive a truck through this. Indeed, you could. Here's a truck, or it's a Humvee. This is a huge, huge problem.

Now, you're just going to walk away? It's obvious we have to control it, right? I think, once you see this, you understand that? But then the next question is, okay, you leave and you come back. That's what they tell us. Okay. We'll have complete international legitimacy to come back. Sorry, we've gone down that route. We were down that route when we left Lebanon, and people said you can leave Lebanon and you can come back. The first time they fire a rocket you can come back, the world will support you. It didn't. And we've been out of Lebanon for 24 years.

They said the same thing when we left Gaza in the disengagement. They said, you can leave, and the first rocket. I remember, Prime Minister Sharon said this to me. The first rocket above ground or below ground, we'll be able to go back in. It's been 20 years and we haven't gone back in. Because you all know and understand that the international community, including friendly countries, under enormous domestic pressure because of the propaganda that's leveled against Israel and against them, there'll be enormous, international pressure not to come back. What is their message? End the war. End the war. And so, when we want to come back and resume, we'll pay an exorbitant price in many fields, including in the lives of our men.

To come back? It's not a just a military question. It's a military, political, strategic question. And we make that decision. We're not going to leave. 42 days? We're there. I don't want to leave in order to come back in, when I know that we didn't come back in. And it's not going to take another 24 years to come back in. And God knows what price we'll have? How many more massacres? How many more kidnappings? How many more hostages? How many more rapes? It's not going to happen.

So, people said, yeah, but if you stay, this will kill the deal. And I say, such a deal will kill us. And there won't be a deal that way. This is a false narrative. I'm willing to make a deal. I made one already, one that brought back 150 hostages, 117 alive. And I'm committed to return the remaining 101. I'll do everything I can to get them in.

But leaving Philadelphi does not advance the release of the hostages, because the deal cannot be advanced. They'll give you a minor part if they give anything, and keep the rest. Go and argue. You know when they started giving us hostages? When we went into Philadelphi. When we went into Rafah. When we controlled the Rafah Crossing. That's when they felt the pressure. As long as they didn't feel the pressure, they wouldn't do it. The first batch, the first deal that we got, was a result of our invasion, the military pressure we put in. They gave us the hostages. After that, they thought, well, you know, we'll have the international pressure turn on Israel so we won't have to do, we won't have to make any concessions. But after Rafah, their tune changed, and they began to change. If we leave Rafah, if we leave the Philadelphi Corridor, there won't be any pressure. We won't get the hostages.

I said I'm willing to make a deal. The real obstacle to making a deal is not Israel and it's not me. It Hamas. It's Sinwar. On April 27th, I put forward a proposal by Israel, which Secretary Blinken called extremely generous. On May 31st, having met Blinken again, I said, we agreed to the US-backed proposal, and Hamas refused. On August 16th, the US brought forth what they called the final bridging proposal. Again, we accepted, Hamas refused. On August 19th, Secretary Blinken said, Israel accepted the US proposal, now Hamas has to do the same. On August 28th—that's a week ago—the deputy CIA director said Israel showed seriousness in the negotiations, now Hamas must make the deal. This was last week. So, I ask you, what has changed. What has changed in this week? What's changed is that they murdered six of our hostages in cold blood.

Now, the world will seriously demand that Israel make concessions after this massacre? What message does this send to Hamas? I'll tell you what the message is. Murder more hostages, you'll get more concessions. That's not only illogical, it's not only immoral, it's downright insane. So, it's not going to happen. We have red lines before the murder. They haven't changed. We'll hold to them. But we also had flexibility. And I'll tell you one thing, Hamas will pay for this. That you can be assured. We'll make sure that we extract that price from them. But we are firm on our red lines, including the Philadelphi Corridor, for the reasons I described here. I'm flexible where I can be. I'm firm when I have to be.

I think there is a possibility of getting this deal if we stick to this strategy. I said before, we got 150 hostages out because we combined a firm stance with military pressure. And I said that Hamas after that relied on international pressure, but it had weakened. And then we went into Rafah and the Philadelphi Corridor, so it got strengthened, and they were beginning to balk. A condition that they said they'd never accept, a red line, is that we must commit to getting out of Gaza and enabling Hamas basically to take over Gaza again. End the war, get out, let them retake Gaza. That's obviously something we couldn't do.

They said there'll never be a deal. Well, they started caving in there after we took the Philadelphi Corridor. And then they started backing off. You know why they waited? Why they started backing off? Because they waited for Iran to start a general war with Israel. That didn't happen. So then they waited for Hezbollah to start a general war with Israel. That didn't happen either. So now they resort to the final tactic. They're going to sow discord and create international pressure, again using the hostages, even after the murder. And this is something that's not new because they started this a year ago.

You should see this. I mean, this is their tactic. This is Hamas orders for psychological warfare, found in Hamas underground command post on January 29th, that's right after the beginning of the war, 2024. And this is the original document in Arabic. Our soldiers found it.

And here's what it says: Push photos and videos of hostages. Put it out in the media, because that creates enormous psychological pressure. Who's not affected by it? Any human being seeing these souls, these girls, these people, young people from those dungeons, you're affected by. Second: Increase psychological pressure on defense minister. Third: Continue blaming Netanyahu. And fourth: Claim ground operation will not release hostages.

That's Hamas', it's not only their talking points, it's their strategy. And their idea is this will sow internal discord and increase international pressure on Israel. That's what they hope to achieve. And they hope, they think this will happen. Well, it won't happen. I can tell you why it won't happen. I'll tell you why they'll fail. Because overwhelmingly the people of Israel are united. They understand everything that I said here. Overwhelmingly. You should know that. It's important. And the second thing is, we're committed to achieving our goals—all three goals: Destroying Hamas' military and governing capabilities, releasing all our hostages, and ensuring that Gaza does not become a threat to Israel anymore. And all these require standing firm on the things that will ensure the achievement of these goals. And with G-d's help, and with our people's will, and with the courage of our soldiers, we will achieve all goals."

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