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By David Swindle
(May 17, 2024 / JNS) Jewish organizations, policymakers and scholars with expertise on the Middle East offered condolences and reflections on Friday, just hours after the Israel Defense Forces announced that it had recovered the bodies of Shani Louk, Amit Buskila and Yitzhak Gelerenter in a joint overnight operation with the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet).
Terrorists killed all three, who had been at the Nova music festival, on Oct. 7 before taking their bodies hostage and transporting them to Gaza, the IDF said.
“Israel’s recovery of the bodies of murdered hostages is a reminder: This is a fight between good and evil,” wrote Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). He added that U.S. President Joe Biden “is dead wrong to demand Israel leave Hamas in power.”
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) told JNS that he is “devastated to learn of the three Israeli hostages whose bodies were recovered by the IDF earlier today” and is praying for their families and loved ones.
“This tragedy reminds us of the atrocities that Hamas terrorists committed on Oct. 7,” the N.J. Democrat told JNS. “We can and must do more every day to bring the remaining hostages, including Americans like my 20-year-old constituent Edan Alexander, home.”
“Our hearts are heavy with news that Israel found the bodies of three more hostages murdered by Hamas,” wrote Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio). “Israel defends its people and existence. Hamas terrorists are murderers and rapists. There is no moral equivalence.”
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Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, told JNS that “this inhuman, heartless barbarism by Palestinian Arabs, Hamas and Fatah Nazis makes it crystal clear that we dare not allow a state run by people who elected terrorist dictators Hamas and Abbas.”
“A state will only give more power to these despicable terrorists to commit more atrocities,” he added, urging American Jewish organizations to “immediately, publicly oppose a Palestinian state.”
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