Gregg Roman considers the hostage release, and the huge price Israel has paid for their freedom, here: “Israel’s Hostages Come Home, But At What Price?,” by Gregg Roman, Middle East Forum, October 8, 2025:
Every person of conscience celebrates President Trump’s announcement [Speak for yourself — Ed.]. After more than two years of agony, Israeli families will finally embrace their loved ones. Children will see their fathers, parents will hold their children, and spouses will be reunited. This is a moment of pure joy that resonates across the free world. Those who have prayed for this day, demanded this day, now see it arrive.
To the families who have camped outside the Prime Minister’s residence, who have marched every Saturday night, who have lived in suspended animation since October 7—their nightmare is ending. Their strength has moved mountains. The entire Israeli nation stands with them as they prepare to welcome their loved ones home. No one, absolutely no one, questions the imperative of bringing them back.
And yet, even as the world celebrates, we must ask: at what price? And more critically: what comes next?
The arithmetic of this exchange should give everyone pause. Israel will release over 1,700 Palestinian prisoners, including 250 serving life sentences for the most heinous acts of terrorism. These aren’t stone-throwers or protesters. These are the architects of the Park Hotel Passover massacre, the planners of the Sbarro pizzeria bombing, the orchestrators of attacks that turned school buses into crime scenes. Each has blood on their hands and expertise in their heads.
Hamas is trading 48 hostages—20 living and 28 dead—for 1,700 experienced operatives—a massive force multiplication that transforms tactical defeat into strategic victory. Every released prisoner returns to Gaza or the West Bank as a hero, a symbol of resistance, armed with years of additional training and burning with renewed purpose.
History provides a grim preview of what comes next. Yahya Sinwar, the architect of October 7, spent 22 years in Israeli prison studying Hebrew, analyzing Israeli society, planning his revenge. Released in the 2011 Shalit deal among 1,026 other prisoners, he used his freedom to orchestrate the deadliest day in Israel’s history. Today, Israel is releasing another generation of potential Sinwars.
The framework speaks optimistically of Hamas agreeing to disarm, to leave Gaza, to accept peaceful coexistence. But Hamas has committed to none of this. They’ve agreed only to Phase 1—the hostage exchange that strengthens their position. Points 2-20 of Trump’s plan remain aspirational, contingent on Hamas’s voluntary compliance with demands no genocidal movement has ever accepted without military defeat….
Hamas has made clear it will not disarm completely. It wants to remain a fighting force. Nor has it agreed to have its leaders in Gaza removed from the Strip. It clearly wants to remain in a condition to claim that it has emerged victorious from the war — with victory being defined as having thousands of its combatants still standing despite the massive IDF effort to destroy them. Hamas, though battered, has not yet been completely defeated, and still has 15,000-20,000 combatants, in Gaza, their numbers being swelled by new recruits to the terror group. These refusals are so far being glossed over in all the understandable jubilation over the release of the hostages.
History teaches that ideological movements committed to genocide don’t negotiate themselves out of existence. The Allies didn’t offer Nazi Germany a twenty-point peace plan hoping the SS would voluntarily disarm. They demanded unconditional surrender, destroyed Nazi military capability, and rebuilt from scratch. Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel’s annihilation and whose leaders promise to repeat October 7 “again and again,” requires the same treatment.
So yes, let the world celebrate these hostages’ return. Let Israel embrace them, heal with them, and honor their survival. But no one should mistake this tactical success for strategic victory. Israel is purchasing today’s relief with tomorrow’s security, saving current hostages while creating conditions for future ones.
Of those 250 convicted murderers that Israel is now freeing, how many will promptly return to plotting the murders of more Israelis, the way that Yahya Sinwar did after being freed in 2011, becoming the mastermind of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023? How many of the 1,700 others the IDF took into custody during this war who are also being freed, had been, or will now become, after being freed, Hamas terrorists? The Shalit exchange of 2011, in which more than a thousand terrorists were exchanged for one soldier, and among those 1,000 were many who went on to murder hundreds of Israelis, provides a cautionary example.
The families waiting at border crossings deserve their reunions. But other families—not yet formed, children not yet born—deserve more than becoming the next generation’s hostages. They deserve the permanent peace that comes only through Hamas’s complete defeat….
If Hamas balks at disarming, as it is required to do under Phase 2 of the deal, Israel should declare that constitutes a material breach of the peace agreement and renew its fight against the terror group in Gaza, including retaking territory it had puled back from as part of Phase 1. If that angers President Trump, so be it.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
💯
Winston 101 says
Agreed. I appreciate Trump et al’s efforts but I find myself musing on what his reaction
is going to be when Islam does what Islam does. When Trump gets the 2025
version of Arafat’s 2000 treatment of Bill Clinton.
Will U.S. leaders then, and in future, finally grasp Islam?
࿗Infidel࿘ says
I doubt it, since Arafat’s rejection of the Clinton peace plan didn’t enlighten Americans or other Westerners about islam
Wellington says
Arguably a short term gain but virtually certainly more long term pain. This is the difference between an ephemeral truce and a lasting peace. And there is no lasting peace with Islam unless complete submission occurs and who or sense and courage wants that kind of peace?
Stive says
Just think that all the Oct 7 death and destruction and hundreds of dead soldiers and emotional and physical and economic cost all the result of freeing sinwar, mashall and hamas leaders in trade for one soldier. This is now many times over worse in months ahead. It’s treacherous.
Many soldiers now sign documents that if captured do not trade terrorists for them as they as soldiers protect and don’t want people hurt over them.
somehistory says
The release of so many murderers, rapists, evil slime….is so sickening. Releasing even one would not be right, but nearly two thousand….this is so very wrong.
There will not be any peace. Just as the sinwar release led to Oct 7 and all of the evil committed that day and the two years since, the release of these others will prove that muzzies don’t intend to be peaceful; they will commit more rapes, torture and murders.
Daniel Triplett says
Excellent essay/report Hugh. I’m duplicating my post below here from an earlier article /Comments Section. This post is more relevant and on topic here:
***********************************************
One of the problems the Israelis face since 10/7 is “war fatigue.” It’s been 2 years now, and the job isn’t done, as you and I see it. But the Israelis themselves, according to Amb Huckabee on Fox & Friends this morning, just want their hostages back, NOW, both dead & alive, and for this all to be over.
Lawrence Jones asked him, “Ambassador, how can I put this delicately? Many Americans are wondering if you all had considered the possibility of carpet bombing the entire Strip and wiping them all out?” –which is how I’d do it — on 10/8 — and although sad, yet unavoidable, and although we wouldn’t target them, some or a lot of the hostages may just have to ‘take one for the team’ as untargeted collateral damage.
Mind you, on 6JUN1944, we unavoidably sacrificed 25,000 friendly French civilian men, women, & children at Normandy, during Aerial Bombardment and Naval Artillery ops to soften Nazi defensive positions. But success with Operation Overlord would’ve been impossible had we alerted and evacuated the locals, thereby also alerting the Nazis and destroying the entire subterfuge / Military Deception (MILDEC) side-Operations at Calais: Operations Fortitude & Bodyguard.
Huckabee’s response to Jones: “At the expense of the hostages? There’s no support for that that I’ve noticed. You could probably fit into a Waffle House all the Israelis who would support a plan like that.”
Was it worth all the care and sympathy the IDF exercised to go in on foot to go door-to-door picking off armed mujahideen face-to-face to avoid harming the “friendly” non-combatants? Is there such a thing? Not in this OEF/OIF combat vet’s eyes/experience. And we all know what the Quran & Sunnah says. ALL Muslims are mujahideen as far as I’m concerned. “mujahid” (s); mujahideen (pl)”: (those who wage Jihad).
Have the Israelis received any earned credit and accolades from the global public for their sympathies, caution, and unprecedented low civilian to Combatant kill ratio? No. In fact, the consequential delay that caution has caused has generated war fatigue and the opposite affect of accolades and credit with global public, earning genocidal condemnation for Israel instead.
Per Huckabee, 1000 IDF Soldiers have died in the urban warfare ops, vs Strategic Area Bombing (aka “carpet bombing”) to prevent any harm to the 250 (now 20) hostages – taken captive and used as bargaining chips…because it works. Per the Witkoff/Kushner hudna, in exchange for the 20 hostages, Israel must surrender 1950 convicted hostile violent mujahideen from prison: 250 of them with Life sentences. How many innocent Israelis will those 1950 go on to kill?
Is that all worth it? To avoid *possible* harm to the hostages? That’s not for me to decide. That decision belongs to the Israelis (though Americans were hostage too, so Trump could’ve/should’ve carpet bombed the Strip himself).
The biggest appetite and support for carpet bombing was in the week immediately following 10/7. With time, that appetite wanes, replaced by war fatigue. We faced the same issue post-9/11. On 9/12, perhaps Americans would’ve even had the stomach for Dar al-Islam random nuke strikes to bring the entire Ummah to their knees, surrendering Islam altogether. Instead, we got Bush’s “Tiny Minority of Extremists hijacking The Religion of Peace” speech, and misdirected, tepid kinetic force and naive Dunning-Kruger nation building.
A missed opportunity indeed.
Winston 101 says
You cover and make so many fine points. Thank you.
I can’t imagine the war fatigue Israel must be experiencing. It reminds me of Churchill trying to point out Germany’s rearming when England, understandably, didn’t want to hear it. They were still fatigued, and hadn’t recovered from, the horrors of WWI. But in both cases the defender doesn’t get to decide whether they must defend themselves, their attacking enemy does.
It seems to me that Israel needs to face the fact that their enemy, Islam, cannot, and will not, ever stop and the price for halting Islam is to take necessary actions that you can’t bring yourself to do.
War, really is, Hell.
Daniel Triplett says
Unlike non-military Americans, who are far removed from Dar al-Islam, so therefore are more uninformed about true Islam, Muslims, and Jihad, the Israelis have a front row seat to Dar al-Islam, with hundreds of thousands of Arabs / Muslims living amongst them.
Especially Bibi, I’d think with his background and experience, and with all his advisors, he may even perhaps have near – Robert Spencer level – knowledge of Islam and true existential threat.
Who knows? He’s obviously under a whole lot of pressure. Israel literally has no world friends other than 70% of the US Republican party. Bibi knows that better than anyone. The Israelis walk a tightrope, totally dependent on Trump & US GOP for military alliance; weapons; support; and trade.
They made the mistake in Trump 1.0, when both Trump & Netanyahu were in power and both assumed they’d be reelected to a follow-on term. Both failed, and as a result, the Israelis came perilously close to getting nuked by Iran. – a mistake the Israelis were not about to repeat in Trump 2.0.
I’m certain Bibi isn’t happy about this Witkoff/Kushner hudna with Hamas, nor is he happy with the Abraham “hudna” Accords. But there’s little they can do about it other than smile and say, “Yes Sir, President Trump.”
Rufolino says
Everyone is celebrating the release of the Israeli hostages.
But I haven’t seen any. Must have missed it.
Winston 101 says
I’ve had the same problem.
I’m not finding all the “moderate, peace-loving Muslims” celebrating the return
of the Israeli hostages.
You know, the Muslims holding signs saying
“Not in My Name”,
“Hostage Taking Violates International Law”
“Allah Says No to Hostage Taking”
I’ll keep looking. . .
gravenimage says
Very true, Rufalino and Winston. Hasn’t happened yet.
terry says
Trump, nor the rest of the world lives in Israel. Annex the territories needful to secure your nation, is what must be done by one of the smallest nations on earth, Israel. And anyone making hay with the vicious ideological international criminal organizations of the Elite Western Globalist, Marxism, or Islam, is part in parcel with 99.9% of the world’s problems- NOT The Solution let alone solutions! No ands. No buts. Period.
alberto gorin says
ile take this as westeren world ooh allah destroy the west
holding a android or windows and technolgy from israel
skeptiker says
Mit Mördern und Vergewaltigern verhandelt man nicht. Man tötet sie oder stellt sie vor ein Gericht.
So sehr ich mich für die baldige Freilassung der Geiseln freue, hoffe ich, dass der Preis den Israel bereit ist dafür zu zahlen, am Ende nicht zu hoch sein wird.
Walter Sieruk says
That “peace deal” overlooks the fact that those Muslims terrorists of Hamas who committed all those brutal cruel atrocities are getting away with complete and total impunity for the many horrific evil actions they committed. As mass murderers and kidnapping then the horrendous criminal affronts, they performed on the people who they had kidnapped and held hostage. Awful things as sexual assault and outright rapes. as well torture and starvation of their hostages. Those wicked and vicious Hamas terrorists even kept the people who they had kidnapped locked in small dark dirty hot isolated rooms.
After World War II, many Nazi’s had to give ab account for the evil things they did and were punished for their war crimes. The same war crimes trials and punishments need to be done to those Muslim terrorists of Hamas.
Walter Sieruk says
That prisoner exchange is absurdly, it’s too lopsided the large number of Arab terrorists released compared to the number of Israeli’s peaceful Israeli citizens who Hamas had kidnapped October 7, 2023 was invasion is out of proportion. There is no balance; it’s unequal, in favor of the Muslim terrorists.
Furthermore, ridiculous and wrong that so many dangerous unrepentant Muslim terrorists will be freed, to engage is further engage in actions of murderous and destructive Islamic terrorism.
gravenimage says
Hostages Freed, But At What Price?
………………………………………
Actually, this has not happened yet–and grimly, I’m not sure that it will, no matter the price.