Who is to blame?

- Gilad Shalit Salutes Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his return

Still thinking about the hostages that were just murdered by Hamas. As I see it mentioned on the news shows, I've noted that Netanyahu is often blamed for their deaths more than their actual murderers, and that a ceasefire, apparently that meets all of Hamas' demands, is seen as the way to save the remaining hostages.

I think all that is wrong.

Let's talk about Gilad Shalit.

Gilad Shalit ... is a former MIA soldier of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) who, on 25 June 2006, was captured by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid via tunnels near the Israeli border. Hamas held him captive for over five years until his release on 18 October 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange deal ....

On 18 October 2011, Shalit was eventually released in a negotiated agreement, securing his freedom after more than five years in isolation and captivity. In exchange, 1,027 Palestinian prisoners were released, some of whom were convicted of multiple murders and carrying out attacks against Israeli civilians. According to Israeli government sources, these released prisoners were collectively responsible for 569 Israeli deaths ...

The Prime Minister of Israel at the time of this prisoner exchange was Benjamin Netanyahu, and one of those released prisoners was the present head of Hamas, the architect of the Oct 7 attack on Israel - Yahya Sinwar ...

In 1988, Sinwar planned the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers and the murder of four Palestinians whom he suspected of cooperating with Israel. He was arrested on February that year; during questioning he admitted to strangling one of the victims with his bare hands, suffocating another with a kaffiyeh, inadvertently killing a third during a violent interrogation, and accidentally shooting the fourth during an attempted abduction, and showed investigators an orchard where the four bodies were buried. He was sentenced to four life ...

It's not Netanyahu's fault those hostages died, it is the fault of Hamas, who kidnapped them and murdered them. Would the hostages have been released if Netanyahu had given Hamas everything it wanted ... the IDF leaving Gaza completely, a final end to the war, the release of hundreds of terrorists from Israeli prisons, Hamas surviving in a re-built Gaza?

I think it's probable that Hamas has no intention of giving back all of the hostages, but plans to keep them for insurance, and they would basically have won the war.

All this misery, all the suffering, all the deaths of both Israelis and Palestinians, was brought about by the effing terrorists. No one else. And they should pay for that, not be rewarded.