The Palestinian ambassador to the U.K. has likened the Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons to the hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. It’s a preposterous suggestion, but apparently not preposterous enough for much of the world, that has shown signs of accepting this absurd equivalence. More on his claim can be found here: “PLO official equates released Palestinian teen terrorists with Israeli child hostages,” by Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Palestinian Media Watch,
In the exchange deal between Israel and Hamas, Israel agreed to release 150 terrorist prisoners – among them teen terrorists – in return for 50 Israeli female and child hostages captured by Hamas during its terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
Palestinians and others abroad have shockingly compared the innocent Israeli civilian hostages to the Palestinian terrorists imprisoned for terror attacks.
Thus, PLO Ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot referred to Palestinian terrorist prisoners and Israeli civilian captives as one and the same thing – “hostages”:
But of course, the Palestinians in Israeli prisons have committed crimes, including terrorist murders. Even those Palestinians who were only being detained, as they had not yet been tried, were being held because of crimes they were deemed to have committed. None of these people whom Israel is prepared to swap for hostages can be described as “innocent civilians.”
PLO Ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot: “It is good news that hostages will be released from both sides, and while the world is hailing the release of 50 Israeli hostages – good for them – nobody is talking about the hundreds of Palestinian children that will be released, that have been taken hostage by Israel even before the 7th of October (refers to Palestinian terrorist prisoners released in exchange deal during Israeli counter-terror operation against Hamas’ terror war on Israel; see note below -Ed.)… So this is an opportunity to expose the rotten, corrupted system of racial domination that Israel has erected in the entire occupied Palestinian territories.”
[PLO Ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot, X (Twitter) account,
Nov. 23, 2023]
There is no “system of racial domination that Israel has erected.” There has not been a single Israeli, soldier or civilian, in Gaza since 2005. How could Israel, after having been out of Gaza for 18 years, impose this “system of racial domination”? And in the West Bank, 90% of the Palestinians live in Areas A and B; in Area A, they have complete control over their own lives; in Area B, they have complete control except in matters of security, where Israel retains its responsibility. In Israel itself, the Israeli Arabs have exactly the same political, economic, and social rights as Israeli Jews, except in one respect: the Jews must, while the Israeli Arabs may, serve in the military.
An interviewer with CNN challenged Zomlot’s equating Palestinian terrorist prisoners with Israeli civilian hostages:
CNN interviewer: “When we look at the pictures of how those [Israeli] people [who] were kidnapped, elderly women thrown over motorbikes screaming, taken over the border, shoved down tunnels, kept in dark – there is a quantitative and qualitative difference in the mode of detention between the two.”
[CNN Arabic, X (Twitter) account, Nov. 25, 2023]
Zomlot answered by denying any responsibility by terror organization Hamas, belittling the brutal kidnappings of Israelis of all ages, and claiming they were “done by individuals” whereas the Palestinian terrorist “hostages” were “kidnapped” by “a state”:
In Zomlot’s imaginative and false retelling, the 3,000 members of Hamas who invaded Israel on October 7 were “individuals” who somehow came together on that day, instead of being organized members of a terror group that had been planning its invasion for two years. And as we know, the Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails were not “kidnapped” extrajudicially, as Zomlot wants us to believe, by the Israeli state, but were captured by the police, charged with the commission of specific crimes, and put on trial. Meanwhile, the 240 Israelis kidnapped by Hamas, on the other hand, were not charged with a crime, for they had committed none, except for the crime of being Israelis who deserved collective punishment.
Sensible people will reject this grotesque moral equivalence out of hand. They know the difference between a three-month-old baby, or an eight-year-old child (both of whom were freed by Hamas in the first hostage-for-prisoner swap) and the Palestinian prisoners, whether guilty of lesser crimes, such as crimes of property, or (among those likely to be included in a future swap) convicted of attempted murder, that is, of having shot, or stabbed, or rammed with a vehicle, Israeli soldiers and civilians, who survived those attacks. These are the people Hamas wants you to think of as “innocent hostages.” Don’t let yourself be confused.
Kevin says
Until about 1967, those wrongly called Palestinians were known as Arabs, Moslem Araba or Arab Moslems. The latter two names to distinguish them from Jewish Arabs or Christian Arabs.
My point, there is not much if any truth that comes out of their mouths or their pens.
James Lincoln says
Yes, Kevin.
If a so-called Palestinian actually tells the truth it’s either:
1. To promote an agenda.
2. A mistake.
janet says
tHESE pALISTINIANS LIE AND FAKE ALL THE TIME JUST LIKE THEIR MENTORS. aRABS THAT LIE ARE JUST AS GUILTY AS ANY OTHERS that are not ever going to be truth tellers. They make themselves look like or close to looking like the Christians in NATO or anywhere in the USA to mislead from what they really are. Liars from hell to keep telling that they are not evil but we know them by their words that are and forever will be lies. Come on USA push them out of our country, !
Jayell1 says
‘The Palestinian ambassador to the U.K. has likened the Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons to the hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7.’
So we’re obviously now living in the real ‘Lalaland’ where we really can make up our own reality to suit our own deluded egos and apparently expect every idiot in creation to believe us. Unfortunately, this mental illness (or is it some kind of arrested development or regression?) isn’t restricted to ‘Palestine’ (wherever that’s ever supposed to have been) but seems endemic wherever the ‘religion’ of the ‘Palestinians’ has taken root; for example, a ‘perceptive’ piece of intellectual genius that keeps on arriving as a pdf essay in my email account from some venerable academic institution of the internet that teaches us (quote) ‘How 9/11 and 7/7 hurt muslims in the UK’ (!). It really must be time for the men in white coats to take charge of world affairs before the planet finally turns into one huge asylum for the psychologically afflicted.
bill says
It is hard to fathom the asininity of these kind of claims, but of course he knows the MSM will publish them.
When they bcome ‘true’. The people in Israel’s jails have been tried and convicted with due legal process for crimes against Israel’s citizens and people living in Israel. Of course he knows that very well but to him they are martyrs
held by the ‘illegal’ state of Israel. The palistinians do not recognise the State of Israel so they do not recognise its legal system either. The hostages held by the terrorists are victims of the very same kind of terrorists. He should be a called in and told to pack his bags