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Gideon Markowicz/TPS-IL on 14 January, 2024
Israeli President Slams BBC News in Interview
Jerusalem, 9 February, 2025 (TPS-IL) -- Israeli President Isaac Herzog denounced BBC News on Sunday for creating what he described as a false equivalence between Israel’s treatment of imprisoned Palestinian terrorists and Hamas’s treatment of Israeli hostages.
“I absolutely reject that, and I think that this equality that the BBC is always trying to make is outrageous and preposterous, absolutely not true. We are a democracy. We abide by the rule of law,” said Herzog in an interview on the BBC’s Sunday Morning News.
He was responding to reporter Laura Kuenssberg, who claimed there was “a strong body of evidence about appalling conditions” for Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israel.
“All prisoners in Israel get whatever is necessary as prisoners under the law, under the supervision of the court, even a Supreme Court justice recently visited the prisons,” Herzog said. “And not only that, some of the prisoners, the Palestinians, didn’t want to leave. They didn’t want to go back to Gaza. They preferred staying in the Israeli prisons. So of course, there’s always this notion by the BBC, which is really outrageous in my mind, and I call upon all of you to stop that attitude and understand that this attack on October 7, was an attack on the entire free world, and what we are doing when we are catching terrorists who carried out these atrocities, we are simply preventing them from taking on further attacks attacks against humanity at large.”
He added that the hostages freed by Hamas all showed they were deprived of adequate food and medical care, and suffered from “severe” physical and emotional trauma.
Israelis were shocked by Saturday’s footage of hostages Or Levy, Eli Sharabi, and Ohad Ben Ami appeared thin and pale, struggling with exposure to sunlight as they were forced to cooperate and answer questions at a “farewell ceremony” in the Deir el-Balah area of central Gaza.
Medical evaluations at Sheba Medical Center and Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center revealed malnutrition, decreased muscle mass, heart disorders, and prolonged infections, said Sheba director Yael Nir-Frankel and Sourasky deputy director Prof. Gil Fire on Sunday.
Ben Ami has lost a “significant amount of his body weight,” said Fire, “and we are prepared to address the additional health consequences of prolonged captivity under terrible conditions.”
Said Herzog, “They were kept in tunnels throughout that period. They had no contact with the outside world. They hardly ate. They became totally emaciated, and they have suffered a huge amount of bruises, pains and wounds, and of course, we haven’t discussed the mental situation, but we are all shocked and horrified as we saw them emerging out of those terrible captivity tunnels of the brutal terrorists of Hamas. And we are extremely worried about the fate of all others while there are 76 hostages still there.”
The ongoing first phase of the ceasefire is supposed to see a total of 33 Israeli hostages freed over six weeks in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian terrorists imprisoned in Israel. The exact number will depend on how many are alive. Since the ceasefire went into effect, 583 Palestinian prisoners have been released.
The fate of the remaining 65 hostages will be determined by negotiations during the ceasefire’s second phase. Critics say the phased approach condemns hostages not freed in the beginning to open-ended captivity and undermines Israel’s war gains.
At least 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 76 remaining hostages, more than 30 are believed to be dead.
