The daring rescue by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of Qaid Farhan Alkadi, an Israeli Bedouin Muslim held captive by Hamas for over 300 agonizing days, is not only a blessed, unimaginable relief for his family but a powerful symbol of the profound moral and political struggle currently playing out across the Middle East.
This is a war not just of weapons but of ideas — a war between a future of freedom and democracy and a future of theocratic, genocidal oppression. The outcome will determine whether my Palestinian people, our Israeli neighbors and the Middle East can find a path to peace and prosperity or will remain locked in a cycle of misery and suffering.
Oct. 7, 2023, will be remembered forever as a day of unparalleled horror. It was a day when Hamas, the terrorist organization that has long terrorized not just Jewish Israelis, whom it has long pledged to exterminate, but Palestinians in Gaza as well, launched a savage, genocidal assault on Israel. The brutality of that day is seared into the minds of anyone who witnessed it: 1,200 people slaughtered in cold blood — the largest mass killing of Jews since the Holocaust. The Hamas terrorists did not simply murder in cold blood. They mutilated bodies, raped women and kidnapped over 240 human beings, dragging them into Gaza, where their torment would continue in the form of psychological and sexual abuse.
These acts are not merely crimes of war; they are crimes against humanity, reflective of an ideology rooted in barbarism, theocratic tyranny and a commitment to wiping out any vision of peace or pluralism in the region.