The stories told by hostages who have been released by Hamas are heartbreaking. This is just the beginning.

The scope of the abuse won’t fully be known until sometime in the future. Many hostages are not talking much out of fear for those who continue to be held by the evil ones. Others are too traumatized to tell their stories. Their lives will never be the same. The worst for me are the stories of the children, the youngest victims of Hamas.

Children were branded in case they escaped, according to Yaniv Yaakov, the uncle of the brothers Or, 16, and Yagil, 12, who were freed on Nov. 27.

“Every child that Hamas took was taken on a motorcycle, and they took each child and put their leg in front of the exhaust pipe, which caused a burn to mark the children so that in case they ran away or fled, they could find them,” he said.

The kidnapped Israeli children were branded with a burn on their legs, so if any of them succeeded in getting away, every one of the "innocent civilian bystanders" in Gaza would know that to they are Hamas property and to return them immediately. pic.twitter.com/YPIffjWH86

— דבורה 🐝⁦🇮🇱 (@devorah555) November 30, 2023

Twelve-year-old Eitan Yahalomi was forced to watch footage of the October 7 massacres. He is Israeli-French and was held for 52 days. Nine-year-old Emily Hand was so traumatized by the kidnapping that she thought she was held by Hamas for a year.

“Every time a child cried there, they threatened them with a weapon to keep them quiet. Once they got to Gaza, all the civilians, everyone was hitting them. … We’re talking about a child 12 years old,” his aunt said.

“Maybe I was naïve, but I wanted to hope that they [Hamas] were treating him well,” she said. “I was wrong. They are monsters.”

Tom Hand, the father of Irish-Israeli Emily Hand, a 9-year-old who was among 13 Israeli hostages freed on Nov. 25, said she was shockingly pale, her face hollowed out and her head full of lice.

“The most shocking, disturbing part of meeting her was she was just whispering, you couldn’t hear her. I had to put my ear on her lips,” he told CNN on Tuesday. “She’d been conditioned not to make any noise.”

She learned after her return that her “second mom” had been killed by Hamas. (Her mother died of cancer when she was two.)

“Last night she cried until her face was red and blotchy, she couldn’t stop. She didn’t want any comfort, I guess she’s forgotten how to be comforted,” Hand said. “She went under the covers of the bed, the quilt, covered herself up, and quietly cried.”

None of the hostages are being fed, both adults and children survive on perhaps one meal a day. They only ate a little rice in their last days of captivity. They were only given rice, water, and pita bread in captivity. A Thai hostage who was released said that Jewish captives were beaten with electric cables. He said Israeli hostages are treated worse than other hostages.

Women and children are being held in cages. Where’s the outrage? The progressive left in America demonstrated over the children allegedly held in cages during the Trump administration. Is it okay that Israeli children are put in cages now?

Women who were abducted from Israeli territory and held hostage by Hamas in Gaza were kept in cages, according to a report by Israeli media, citing a statement from a member of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.

This claim is not the first of its kind: In the days immediately following the October 7 attacks, videos from Hamas’s Telegram channel showed child hostages being kept in cages for the majority of their time in captivity.

Hamas is not letting the Red Cross in. Hostages are forced to write letters about how humane their captors are. Imagine being treated as they are and then forced to participate in the propaganda blitz by Hamas.

Hamas distributed a letter on Monday allegedly written by Danielle Aloni, who was kidnapped alongside her 5-year-old daughter Emilia and held in captivity. In the letter, written in Hebrew and translated into Arabic, she reportedly thanked Hamas for the “extraordinary humanity” provided to her daughter, who “felt like a queen.”

The letter also read, “I will forever be a prisoner of love because [Emilia] did not leave here with psychological trauma forever.” The Aloni family has not confirmed this letter nor the statements made in it, though it has been widely distributed on social media by the Hamas terror organization.

None of these atrocities are surprising, given the nature of Hamas. They are evil terrorists who do not value life. It is further proof that the Biden administration must stiffen its spine and butt out of Israel’s fight for survival. Secretary of State Blinken and Joe Biden have to stop speaking to Israeli leadership as though they are stern parents lecturing children on how to get along with others. There is no getting along with Hamas. They must be destroyed. Nothing less is acceptable.

To review:

-UN: teacher held (at least) one hostage.

-Red Cross: knew about Hamas use of hospitals and tried to keep Israel away.

Major Media: used stringers who *literally* rode into battle with Hamas brandishing weapons.

Please realize just how over this conversation is.

— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) December 1, 2023