The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas released a new hostage video on Monday, showing three elderly male hostages who appear, under duress, to demand that Israel pay any price necessary to secure their release.
The hostages were identified by the Jerusalem Post as Chaim Peri, 79; Yoram Metzger, 80; Amiram Cooper, 84. Peri, ironically, was a peace activist who had volunteers to take Palestinians from Gaza to Israeli hospitals, during peacetime.
"لا تتركونا نشيخ"... حماس تنشر فيديو يظهر 3 رهائن إسرائيليين يطالبون بالإفراج عنهم#نكمن_في_التفاصيل pic.twitter.com/6ZQ44hw4AF
— Independent عربية (@IndyArabia) December 18, 2023
Hamas released another hostage video tonight. The man in the middle is 79-year-old Chaim Peri.
— Trey Yingst (@TreyYingst) December 18, 2023
The Nir Oz resident spent his free time driving Palestinian children to hospitals for treatment and making art to protest violence against Palestinians. He is a peace activist. pic.twitter.com/NiSGGGCuQ9
The video was released as Israeli negotiators met in Warsaw, Poland, with representatives of the Qatari government, who mediate on behalf of Hamas, to discuss a possible new deal to exchange Israeli civilian hostages for Palestinian terror convicts.
The Times of Israel noted that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) condemned the hostage video as “atrocious terror.”
Hamas and a fellow Iranian-controlled terror organization, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, said over the weekend that they would not accept any deal with Israel that did not involve a complete and permanent ceasefire — meaning that Israel would have to accept defeat in its objective of destroying the groups.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.