Awful news, and enraging. Israeli forces found the bullet-ridden bodies of six hostages known to have been captured alive by Hamas in a Rafah tunnel earlier today. One of the hostages killed was Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American whose parents pleaded for his release at the Democrat convention.

Hamas had murdered them no longer than 48 hours before their bodies were discovered:

The bodies of hostages Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov, and Ori Danino were found in the Gaza Strip, the IDF said on Sunday morning.

The IDF retrieved the bodies of the hostages from a tunnel under the city of Rafah in Gaza.

They were likely slaughtered by Hamas shortly before the IDF got to them in Rafah.

The hostages didn't get killed as a direct result of a firefight between IDF forces and Hamas terrorists. The IDF didn't encounter any resistance in the tunnels after a battle at ground level above them:

IDF sources did say that if the bodies were indeed those of hostages, they were not killed by any recent fight with Hamas in the area since the military did not use force nearby.

The IDF's main spokesman related the results of autopsies conducted after the bodies were recovered. They had been alive at least as late as last week:

Their bodies were found with gunshot wounds to the head and other parts of their bodies, the Ynet news site reported. An autopsy found they were murdered in the 48 hours prior to the discovery of their bodies, the report said.

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the six were “brutally murdered” by Hamas shortly before troops arrived — possibly only a day or two before they were found.

What will the US do now that Hamas has murdered one of the Americans they held in such a cowardly manner? Joe Biden expressed outrage this morning ... and then demanded that Israel cut a deal with his murderers:

US President Joe Biden said he was “devastated and outraged” by the deaths of the hostages, in particular that of dual Israeli-US citizen Goldberg-Polin, whose parents, Jon and Rachel, he and other Americans had kept in their prayers.

“I have worked tirelessly to bring their beloved Hersh safely to them and am heartbroken by the news of his death,” Biden said.

“It is as tragic as it is reprehensible. Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes. And we will keep working around the clock for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages,” he said.

Well, which is it? Will Hamas leaders pay for these crimes, or do you want to cut a deal with them? It can't be both, especially not by Joe Biden's formulations. Biden wants Israel to agree to a cease-fire and an end to the conflict that would allow Yahya Sinwar to escape with control of Gaza. Biden has pressured Israel in that direction almost since the very start of the war. In fact, Biden pressured Benjamin Netanyahu to delay the entry into Rafah for months for the sake of fruitless talks with genocidal terrorists, which certainly has some bearing on these hostages' fate in Rafah today.

When terrorists murder Americans abroad, we don't demand deals with them. 

Harris may have been a little smarter in her response, apparently omitting mention of any negotiations in her reaction:

“Doug and my prayers are with Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, Hersh’s parents, and with everyone who knew and loved Hersh,” Harris said in a statement.

“When I met with Jon and Rachel earlier this year, I told them: You are not alone. That remains true as they mourn this terrible loss,” she said. “Hamas is an evil terrorist organization. With these murders, Hamas has even more American blood on its hands.”

Exactly, although this too points out the idiocy in Harris' earlier demands for a deal with Hamas. They already had American blood on their hands, and now have even more. Why would we cut a deal with these terrorists that allow them to continue attacking Americans? Why should Israel cut a deal with them that allows and incentivizes them to kill and kidnap more Israelis?

We should offer Sinwar and his terrorist henchmen the same deal we offered the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese: unconditional surrender or utter destruction. That policy liberated hundreds of millions of people and ended two poisonous and genocidal ideologies. And that would reset incentives for every terrorist group, and even more so every terrorist-supporting state.