Anti-Israel activists expressed dismay on social media at the news of the IDF rescue of four hostages from terrorists in Gaza on Saturday. They said the IDF conducted a massacre of Palestinians disproportionate to the number of hostages who were freed.
The IDF was aided by the US military, the activists said, adding that the operation was not a success because of the amount of previously slain hostages.
The alleged casualty count fluctuated on Saturday on social media as anti-Israel commentators published responses to the raid, claiming around 80 to 200 Gazans had been killed as terrorists fought with IDF rescue units. Writer Mariam Barghouti claimed late Saturday that 210 had been killed and that the casualty count was still rising.
“[Israel Security Agency] reporting that [the] Israeli army ‘rescued’ four of the Israeli hostages like it’s some achievement,” Barghouti wrote on X. “It took 245 days, the slaughter of 40,000 Palestinians, most of whom are children, the killing of 70 of the Israeli hostages by Israeli airstrikes and at least 3 of them by direct field executions, and Israel is trying to sell this as [an] achievement. What a delusional regime that’s truly trying to find anything to justify its slaughter.”
The social-media account allegedly run by Lebanese commentator Sarah Abdallah said: “Mostly women and children” were killed in the rescue operation.
“The media won’t tell you this, but Israel just killed 150 Palestinians in Nuseirat refugee camp today,” she wrote. “This is a massacre. Israel is committing the worst crimes in modern history, and Western regimes are calling it ‘self-defense.’”
Analyst Omar Baddar described the rescue as worse than the deadliest mass-shootings in US history.
'A diplomatic agreement with Hamas'
“If Hamas had killed 200+ Israelis today, that massacre would dominate all media coverage,” he wrote. “But Palestinian lives don’t matter, so the massacre is a footnote.”
Activist Noura Erakat said: “Israel could have had all of its civilian hostages returned on October 8 through a diplomatic agreement with Hamas,” but instead it “shot to death nearly as many hostages as it extracted through military [operations] and destroyed all [universities], hospitals, cities (minus Rafah) & killed 40,000 Palestinians.”
Egyptian actor Amr Waked said Hamas had allowed the hostages to be rescued as part of a political maneuver, and they would not have escaped alive unless Hamas had wanted it to happen.
“Israel killed more... 150 Palestinian civilians in an operation to release 4 prisoners of war,” he wrote. “The prisoners were all alive and in good health. Hamas did not kill any of the four POWs. You cannot ignore this!”
Palestinian journalist Hind Khoudary wrote that 210 people were killed to rescue four others and asked, “Can we delete today from the calendar?”
Abdullah Omar, claiming to be blogging from Gaza and near the weekend fighting, called for social-media users to follow him on X, as Gazans were “here now in our last moments,” so he could show the world the supposed massacre.
“To free 4 of the prisoners, they killed at least 50 Palestinians in central Gaza,” he wrote. “Where is the humanity? Where’s the global outrage? Are you satisfied with what is happening to us amid the silence?”
British commentator Richard Medhurst said it was “Jewish supremacy and white supremacy” that allowed Israel to justify what he deemed a disproportionate outcome of more Gazans slain than Israelis rescued.
“Do you know how Hamas can kidnap 10 Israelis and use them to free 100 Palestinians?” he wrote. “Because Zionism makes you believe that a Jew is worth more than any other human being. It makes you stupid and desperate.
“Any negotiator worth their salt knows it’s actually a very generous offer from Hamas. Those Israelis have spent far, far less time in captivity; they were treated humanely; and many are not civilians but POWs. Palestinians should be demanding way more than they currently are.”
Israeli activist Alon Mizrahi said the death of 250 Palestinians was not to save hostages. Instead, the hostages were just an excuse to murder Gazans “as part of the US and Israel’s final solution to the Palestinian problem, which they are carrying out openly for the whole world to see.”
He insinuated that because of the raid, Hamas would decide to kill to hostages.
“The rescue of 4 Israeli captives is very bad news for the dozens of Israelis Hamas still holds,” Mizrahi wrote. “Israel is telling Hamas it doesn’t have any reason to keep the captives alive, as Israel has given up on getting them released except by force.”
Controversial social-media influencer Jackson Hinkle said the Israeli military had killed “150 Palestinians in the Nuseirat airstrikes.” He argued against the framing of the operation as a success, saying Israel had killed more hostages in operations than it had saved.
Baddar said the IDF had killed 70 hostages over the course of the eight months of war between Israel and Hamas.“Their kill-to-rescue ratio stands at 10:1,” he wrote, adding: “You can only deem this a success if you share the Israeli government’s view that the destruction of Gaza is worth more than the lives of hostages.”
Medhurst, who has ties with the Iranian regime, shared Hamas claims that Israeli hostages were killed during the Saturday raid.
Medhurst, Hinkle, and Australian pro-Assad commentator Maram Susli also pushed the narrative that Noa Argamani’s appearance proved that Hamas treated the captives better than Israel treated captured Hamas operatives. Medhurst compared Argamani’s smile to that of Nazis held by the Allies freed after the war.
Susli and other activists attacked the character of the hostages, claiming that they were “IDF terrorist prisoners” who “should be in prison forever.”
“If four ISIS terrorists escaped a prison camp, would you be celebrating? Would you be calling them ‘hostages?’” Susli wrote. “If an IDF prisoner of war tries to escape imprisonment, Palestinians are well within their right to shoot them under international law Article 42 of the Geneva Conventions. The fact that four IDF terrorists are now free in the world is a terrible risk to children.”
Susli said US Delta Forces had participated in the operation, while Abdallah and Medhurst said the operation had been launched from the US humanitarian aid pier.
“I told you from day one that stupid pier is a cover for a US military foothold,” Medhurst said, urging the Houthis to engage in further maritime terrorism in response.