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Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70—both from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak—are reportedly in good condition.

(JNS)

Israel freed two hostages—Fernando Simon Marman, 60, and Louis Har, 70—in an overnight mission in Rafah, according to the Israel Defense Forces.

The IDF, Israel Security Agency and Israel Police worked together to free the two, who are both from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak and in good medical condition, per the IDF.

Earlier in the night, the IDF detained some 20 Hamas terrorists in the Al Amal Hospital complex in Khan Yunis, the Israeli military stated. It and the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories delivered 20 oxygen tanks to the hospital.

“Before operating inside of the hospital, IDF soldiers were briefed to adhere to international law, protecting patients, civilians and medical equipment,” the IDF stated. “The operation also entailed pre-coordination with the hospital itself. Hamas continues to embed itself in civilian areas. This includes hospitals where Gazan civilians are supposed to receive life-saving care.”

On Sunday, U.S. President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that he believes “that a military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the more than one million people sheltering there,” according to a White House readout of the two leaders’ call.

On Friday, Netanyahu stated, “It is impossible to achieve the goal of the war of eliminating Hamas by leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah. On the contrary, it is clear that intense activity in Rafah requires that civilians evacuate the areas of combat.”

On Thursday, John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council of the White House who was recently promoted to assistant to the president, told a reporter that the United States has “seen no plans that would convince us that they [Israel] are about to or imminently going to conduct any kind of major operations in Rafah.”

“More than a million Palestinians are sheltering in and around Rafah. That’s where they were told to go. There’s a lot of displaced people there, and the Israeli military has a special obligation as they conduct operations there or anywhere else to make sure that they’re factoring in protection for innocent civilian life, particularly the civilians that were pushed into southern Gaza by operations further north—Khan Yunis and North Gaza,” Kirby said.

He added that “absent any full consideration of protecting civilians at that scale in Gaza—military operations right now would be a disaster for those people, and it’s not something that we would support.”

Image: The freed Israeli hostages Fernando Simon Marman, 60, left, and Louis Har, 70, from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak. Source: X.

What our forces discovered in Gaza leaves no room for doubt. The connection between UNRWA and Hamas is literal, not metaphorical.

Ariel Kahana

(Israel Hayom via JNS)

You have to hand it to Hamas—if this were a tourist attraction, one couldn’t ask for a more enjoyable experience. A wild jeep ride to Gaza’s beautiful seaside. A meeting with our heroic soldiers, who have been destroying the enemy for 120 days already. Then a descent 20 meters underground, to find a buried treasure.

The prize: An unambiguous, indisputable connection between the murderous organization and the infamous “aid agency” UNRWA.

It took me only two minutes touring UNRWA’s headquarters in the heart of Gaza’s upscale Rimal neighborhood to understand that they knew everything. Just as it was impossible for Tel Avivians not to know about the city’s light rail construction, just like all Jerusalemites heard about the “secret tunnel” in the capital, it’s impossible that Gazans, and UNRWA heads in particular, didn’t know about the tunnel and server farm that was set up right under their noses. Not near, not close by, but literally right beneath them.

I saw with my own eyes the cables connecting UNRWA’s communication room on the first floor of the building to Hamas’s server room directly underneath it.

Did Thomas White, UNRWA Gaza director since the summer of 2021, not notice the trucks removing soil for years from the compound he managed? Did he not wonder who the people walking around his headquarters were? Was he not puzzled by the computers, air conditioners, servers, batteries, cement mixers, cables, tiles, steel doors and even the motorcycles that arrived in his backyard? Did he not notice the cables that very strangely ran from his communications room to some unknown destination underground? Did he never once have a doubt that made him think to report to his superiors at the United Nations?

You have to be very naive, or more likely dishonest, to answer “no” to these questions. What our forces discovered in Gaza leaves no room for doubt. The connection between UNRWA and Hamas is literal, not metaphorical.

In this case, after the Israel Defense Forces cleared the Rimal neighborhood two months ago, intelligence indicated that there was more going on here.

The tunnel was located, and careful clearing began. For several days our forces advanced meter by meter. They discovered a maze whose deciphering required great ingenuity. They also discovered the luxury conditions that the terrorists had prepared for themselves underground—from a first aid kit for emergencies to motorized scooters that would save them from having to walk bent over for 300 meters there and back, to state-of-the-art Electra air conditioners.

The air conditioning was intended not only for the people—even in winter it’s hot underground—but mainly for Hamas’s server room, located, as mentioned, beneath UNRWA’s main compound in Gaza.

We were not allowed to view the full room, but even from the little we did see, it’s clear this system would not have embarrassed a high-tech company. Columns and columns of servers, cooled by new white air conditioners. Next to it is a power facility, connected above ground.

“We are at the heart of the secret, in the server farm,” said Col. Nissim Hazan, who was brought in to command the operation to expose the tunnel. “This is the farm from which Hamas created its intelligence superiority. There are 10 server cabinets here, full of valuable information. You could only get to this place with soldiers. You can’t do this by remote control or with an aerial bomb. Above us is UNRWA’s huge building; Hamas intentionally located [the site] here so we couldn’t strike it.”

While we don’t yet know what information was on the servers, the connection to UNRWA is clear as day.

After we again sank into the mud, crawled through the tunnel, walked hunched over for hundreds of meters and emerged into daylight, the IDF APCs brought us to UNRWA’s headquarters. There, among offices, schools, kindergartens and SpongeBob Squarepants drawings, the commander of the IDF’s 401st Brigade, Col. Benny Aharon, showed us the agency’s own server room.

“We’re in UNRWA’s server room. Coincidentally—I say this cynically—it’s located right above the server room you saw underground,” he said. “Notice that all the cables are ripped and disconnected; they left almost nothing, only what they managed to cut off. We’re lucky a few cables remained that they didn’t manage to cut…They took out all the DVRs and computers. Only someone who has something to hide does something like this. What kind of international humanitarian organization that only has good intentions behaves this way?”

Evening is falling and a cool breeze comes off the sea. The APCs head back to the beachfront handoff point. The brand new Netz unit—black coffee is their speciality—takes us out, toward Kibbutz Be’eri, again in armored vehicles. We speedily traverse the same route the Hamas killers raced toward our communities on that fateful October morning.

The whole way, I couldn’t stop thinking: Why did they do this? Hamas knew that one day the IDF would arrive. Hence the tangled tunnels, hence the fortified steel doors, hence a whole array of obstacles meant to delay the inevitable invasion. But if so, if you knew that in the end, Israel would defeat you anyway, why do this? What’s the logic and benefit of committing crimes against humanity that end in your own destruction?

Originally published by Israel Hayom.

Image: Israel Hayom reporter Ariel Kahana next to the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza. Photo: Ariel Kahana.