Why Western media will never tell you the stories of freed Palestinian hostages
Even after the release of 1,968 Palestinian hostages in the latest exchange, thousands more remain incarcerated.
The release of Palestinian hostages from Israeli dungeons is always a lesson in steadfastness, unshakeable faith in God, and gratitude for His mercy. The piercing eyes and luminous faces of the Palestinian hostages shine through despite tears. As they kiss the feet of their mothers in reverence, hug their wives and siblings, and lift their children in warm embraces after years of separation, we see the deep familial values that the Palestinians are imbued with. When they say Alhmadulillah — all praise to Allah — after 20, 30, or 40 years in the Israeli rape-and-torture dungeons, we see people whose faith did not waver despite enduring years of the harshest conditions imaginable with barely a sliver of hope at the end of the dark tunnel of their incarceration. When we see their skeletal frames with telltale signs of excruciating, years-long torture, we encounter people whose dignity never faded despite insurmountable odds.
In an increasingly atomised world, where self-interest reigns and collective values are ridiculed, these Palestinian men and women stick out for being living embodiments of values that seem otherworldly, values that most of us read about only in books and hear about in lore passed down from our ancestors. Despite their elusiveness, these are the values that matter and these are the values on which a better world can be built. A world where there is no respect for ties of kinship, no purpose beyond self-aggrandisement, and no sense of the smallness of individual existence in the incomprehensible vastness of the universe, and therefore, the majesty of its creator, indeed, is a recipe for a fractured, disoriented, troubled world — the very world we are living in today.
Harping non-stop on the minutest details of the lives of the 20 released Israeli terrorists, who literally had their guns and tanks pointed in the direction of the 2.3 million besieged Palestinians in Gaza at the time of their capture, the Western press has had nothing to say about any of the 1,968 Palestinian abductees freed in the same deal. They won’t even mention the names of the schoolteachers, barbers, students, farmers, scholars, doctors, fishermen, university administrators, and freedom fighters abducted by the genocidal Jewish supremacists lording over their lives for over a century.
They will not tell you about Nasr Jadallah Erheem. In heartwarming scenes, he was reunited with his daughters — who couldn’t stop wailing at the site of their father after years of separation — and his elderly, wheelchair-bound mother in the twilight of her years. After years of torture and abuse, the old and frail Erheem had only gratitude for his Lord
You will never hear about Mahmoud al-Ardah, the brains behind the stunning September 2021 escape from the Israeli Gilboa dungeon with five other detainees. The six used mere spoons and bare hands to dig a tunnel through the high-security dungeon for months to script their own freedom. For his troubles, the Israelis denied Mahmoud access to spoons for the four years following his recapture. He could finally use one after the resistance won his freedom.
How about Mahmoud Issa? Issa was abducted by the Israelis in 1995 for daring to kidnap an Israeli soldier to use as leverage in negotiating the release of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin. Free after 33 years, Issa, with distinctly sunken eyes and a frail frame, only had words of gratitude for the the immense suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza:
I was sentenced to three life terms and an additional forty-six years, of which I served thirty-three. God, in His grace and mercy, granted me freedom. My thanks go to my brothers among the resistance fighters who sacrificed their lives, their blood, their families, and their children to free us from the prisons of the oppressors.
All salutations — every salute — to proud Gaza, the Gaza of dignity, which has inscribed a page of glory in the history of humanity: a page unlike any before it, and I doubt there will ever be one like it again.
May God bless you, O Gaza — for Gaza has a favour upon us and a debt we must repay.
To greet Issa, his comrades from Al-Qassam Brigades’ Special Unit 101 of the early 1990s — tasked with capturing occupation soldiers for prisoner exchanges — met him in Egypt, where he has been deported.
They will never tell you the story of Mahmoud Abu Foul, who lost both his legs in an Israeli airstrike in 2015, yet was still abducted by the Jewish supremacists from Kamal Adwan Hospital along with the entire hospital staff and patients late last year.
His ordeal was to get worse. “I lost my eyesight after being beaten on the head, from the back and the front,” he recounted, his eyes in urgent need of medical attention, unavailable in Gaza under a shattered health system.
Yet, this is what Foul had to say: “Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds.”
He added: “This is God’s decree — and His decree is mercy.”
You will never hear the story of journalist Shadi Abu Sido from Western journalists. Abducted from Al-Shifa Hospital in March 2024, the Israelis psychologically tortured him. They told him that his family had been wiped out, that his wife and children were dead. Shadi could not control his emotions upon seeing his family alive after returning to Gaza as a free man:
Western journalists will not tell you about Ahmad Al-Talbani. Abducted from Gaza, relentless Israeli torture caused him to forget the faces of his children: “A full year of continuous torture made me forget the features of my children,” Ahmad said after his release. “I no longer remembered their faces or voices, but today I regain them with every breath of freedom.”
They will not tell you about Ayham Kammamji, another hero of the Gilboa escape. Freed after years of incarceration that entailed horrific physical abuse and torture, Kammamji had only words of praise for God and the people of Gaza for their steadfastness that paved the way for his freedom:
My Lord has been kind to me and has brought me out of prison. Words fall short and feel constrained. I find myself powerless before the people of Gaza and the sacrifices of its people, who accomplished feats that can only be called legendary. What they did is truly a legend.
The reality of their actions is beyond the capacity of any living human being who belongs to this land. The deeds they carried out will be glorified not only on Earth and in our history but also in the heavens. And I do not exalt anyone over God.
When I received the news, I swear by God, I was overcome with a feeling of shame. How can I face the people of Gaza? How can I meet the eyes of their widows and orphaned children? It is an incredibly difficult feeling, one that no one can describe except the Lord of the heavens. I share in the grief and pain for those we have lost—this is, of course, the way of life. Yet, at the same time, I am proud and honoured because I belong to the people of this land.
Truly, by God, I say this sincerely and from the bottom of my heart: you are a crown upon the head of this entire nation and a testament before the greatest of nations. How much more so, then, before the smallest. You truly teach people the art of noble deeds, showing what they are in their truest form. May God honour you and make us companions in this world and, God willing, brothers facing each other in the Hereafter. Thank you, people of Gaza. Thank you.
You will not hear about Ahmad. Fearing for his health and sugar levels in Israeli incarceration — notorious for depriving hostages of palatable food — Ahmad’s mother brought chocolate to feed him. But for Ahmad nothing could be sweeter than the embrace of his mother after their long separation.
You will never hear these stories in the mainstream Western press, because they would humanise the Palestinians and further puncture the fake narratives the Israeli barbarians and their allies have concocted out of thin air — narratives they have propagated worldwide through their total control of the media sphere, which they are tightening even more now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag. Palestinians are everything the Israelis are not and will never be.
These are just a handful of Palestinians breathing the air of freedom after ceaseless torture in Israeli dungeons, where Jewish supremacists run sadistic experiments and perform grotesque rituals on their minds and bodies. Even after the release of 1,968 Palestinian hostages in the latest exchange, thousands more remain incarcerated.
The released hostages are a picture of the righteousness and steadfastness of the Palestinian people and their just cause. Such dignity and decency are increasingly an anathema to a world enthralled by the cult of the individual. These heroes do not quite register with a public long attuned to titillations and shrieks.
Imagine how much better the world would be if all these noble people were free — and their jailers and enablers were the ones behind bars instead. But that’s a world the mainstream press cannot allow you to see. They’ve grown so accustomed to the stench of their own cesspools, they wouldn’t recognise righteousness if it stood right before them — unbroken, defiant, and free.
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The dignity, the humbleness of Palestinians speaks so much of their culture. If only white people could learn.
Hi PWBF
Another thing that western press neglects is that the IGF re-arrests Palestinian hostages quicker than it releases them.
Look for those cells to be overflowing again by now.