Coming home from hell

Had they been wearing striped pajamas, you might have thought you were watching the return of the half-starved corpses who returned from one of the death camps of the Nazi regime. Those were the shocking images witnessed by the Israeli public as we saw our three hostages, Or Levy, Eli Sharabi and Ohad Ben Ami, all forced to be paraded onto a Hamas stage, replicated to look like a Hollywood version of a guerilla warfare set.

Dressed in the mustard color shirt and pants, associated with those worn by prisoners, each of the men struggled under the morning light, squinting – one even wearing sunglasses, attesting to the fact that they hadn’t been exposed to the sun for more than a year.

Responding to the question of a reporter, asking Ohad’s mother how he looked, she said, “At age 56, he looks ten years older than his age.” No one had to tell us what these three men had suffered, because their emaciated bodies revealed a complete story of the 491 torturous days they spent in the hellish tunnels of Gaza. 

Yet, as weak and diminished as they were, the fully masked Hamas bullies conducted a public ceremony, against the backdrop of an iron fist, symbolizing resistance, while forcing each of the three to repeat a litany of propaganda, the last act of humiliation and abasement that could be extracted from men who miraculously survived the worst, in the hope of seeing their beloved families again.

The profound absurdity of the International Criminal Courts ignoring the blatant human rights and disregard of dignity towards innocent captives who endured unspeakable agony, while pointing a finger at Israel’s military and leaders is nothing more than the most shameful hypocrisy that can be imagined, and for those who still are unconvinced that the Jewish homeland is a direct target of the lingering centuries of antisemitism, they have no further to look than the demoralizing display which took place before the world’s cameras on Saturday.

In stark contrast to the intense hatred and loathing of the Hamas captors, who stood on stage, professing victory, with their guns raised to the air, another split screen showed the exuberance of the anxiously-waiting families, opening bottles of champagne to raise a glass of thanksgiving, as they honored “life,” along with the joy of knowing that they would soon be reunited with those they thought they’d never see again.

This is the enormous chasm of ideology between these two people groups.  One holds life with contempt, on a level that can only be described as depravity, while the other holds everything else as meaningless, in comparison to the gift endowed to them by Almighty God.  It is the principal reason that there is no common ground or basis for co-existence, as the value systems are completely in opposition.

Serving as the final nail in the coffin of the two-state solution, we are reminded that our enemy’s aspiration is to humiliate, destroy and erase the Jewish people from the face of the earth. In this round, the 20-year plot, to complete the well-coordinated mission, which began with Hamas terrorists, who came into power in 2006, as they became the elected government of Gaza, took little time to trickle down to the people.

Rather than providing the resources to improve their lives and enhance their situation, no time was lost in co-opting the education of the generation who, at that time, were only toddlers, because those are the killers who stood before us on the stage, proudly waving their weapons. Willing parents handed them over to the worst monsters who then, day and night, drilled into their heads, that Israel must be decimated.

Misappropriating the vast funds which were sent to them, by almost every nation in the world, to better themselves, they, instead, chose to build a labyrinth of sophisticated tunnels which would eventually house the hostages while they fantasized the absolute conquest of the Jewish homeland, the feat for which they have longed for centuries. 

But, true to His promises, no amount of weapons, plans or schemes could override God’s sovereign design and eternal purposes which He intended for the people whom He created. Try as they might, they still come up empty-handed each time they foolishly enter into the delusion that “this time” they will succeed in the final solution.

The attempts are futile, and while they continue to fight a losing battle, it’s time that the rest of humanity recognize the hand of the Almighty in all of this. The Jewish people, whether they live in the land or outside of it, are a people who were not meant to be reckoned with the nations. That means that their destiny is sealed, an immutable fact which cannot be changed!

It also means that those who come against us, do so at their own peril, because, in the end, it not only results in their defeat, but the humiliation planned for us, boomerangs right back at them. History has shown us that those who plotted against us are remembered as the worst examples of humanity, whose burning hatred relegates them to the dustbins of obscurity, never to be recalled as anything but the wicked perverted souls who did the devil’s work.

Contrasting that vision, the people of Israel, continue to live and flourish, literally being raised up from the valley of dry bones, as recorded in Ezekiel 37 as God asks the prophet, “Can these bones live?” We are the witnesses that THEY CAN! On Saturday, we saw these bones literally walk out from the tunnels of hell to the streaming daylight of their homeland and back into the arms of their families.

Breath was placed back into them, proving to all that God is still in the equation, making good His promises to preserve us as a people who would become the “vast army” as spoken of in the same chapter, where it is written that we will be settled into our own land – a guarantee which demonstrates that only God could have done it. 

That is our heritage and the ultimate proof which cause “the nations to know that the Lord is the One who makes Israel holy, because His sanctuary is among us forever.” (vs. 28)

Consequently, Hamas and any others, who attempt to defy such a message, unlike our returning hostages, will be those who never get to come home from hell, because, in the end, it will be their final resting place!