Among the most wretched of the victims of the bloody Hamas attack nine days ago are the hostages — 199, according to Israel — that the group took with them to Gaza. They include a journalist in his Eighties and a grandmother who had survived the Holocaust, as well as women and children. Their situation is desperately precarious.
Hamas has let it be known that they are in tunnels and other “safe places”, but some may have already died in the bombardment of Gaza. If the coming Israeli ground offensive in Gaza is in part aimed at their liberation, it carries the obvious risk that this will make their situation more dangerous.
