Brussels, January 20th, 2025 – European Coalition for Israel welcomes the much-anticipated release of the three Israeli hostages Emily Damari, Romi Gonen and Doron Steinbrecher, who were reunited with their families on Sunday. The release comes at a high price as Israel, as part of the ceasefire and hostage deal, had to free ninety Palestinian security prisoners, including terror convicts. The Palestinian prisoners were received by a jubilant crowd waving both Hamas and Hezbollah flags.
“This is a bittersweet moment both for Jews and gentiles alike as we prepare to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps,” ECI Founding Director Tomas Sandell said. “As long as Hamas remains in power in Gaza the liberation of Auschwitz is incomplete as Jews are still threatened with genocide by this and other terrorist groups and their deadly Iranian puppet master in Tehran, while the international community shifts the blame on Israel.”
Last week a potential diplomatic crisis was prevented as the Israeli Prime Minister was threatened with an arrest warrant if he was to attend the Holocaust commemoration event in Auschwitz on January 27. After international pressure, including from ECI, the president of Poland Andrzej Duda intervened, calling upon the government to ensure diplomatic immunity for the Israeli Prime Minister if he would choose to attend the event.
Meanwhile, the incoming US administration has threatened to sanction the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, who issued the arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu. The national security advisor in the new US administration Mike Waltz has said that “Hamas will never rule Gaza” and added that “Israel will have to do what it needs to do”, thus implying support for a complete Israeli military defeat over Hamas.
The cease fire and hostage deal came 471 days after Hamas terrorists and civilians stormed Israel on October 7th, 2023, murdering over 1200 people in the most brutal ways and took some 250 hostages, including women, elderly and infants.
European Coalition for Israel has been calling for the immediate and unconditional release of the Israeli hostages ever since. Just one month after the terrorist attack ECI organized a meeting between family members of the hostages and the President of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, Mirjana Spoljaric Egger. In December 2023 ECI introduced other family members of the hostages to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels who committed to do her utmost to see a release of the hostages.
“As much as we rejoice with those families who have received their loved ones back alive, we think and pray for the other 94, many of them dead by now, who still remain in captivity in Gaza. We have to remain hopeful and vigilant, not only for the ceasefire to hold and all hostages to be released but also in believing for a new Middle East to emerge where the forces of peace and normalization will win over the forces of death and destruction,” Sandell said.
He concluded, “In order for this to happen Hamas will have to be defeated and dismantled in the same way as the Allies dealt with the Nazi forces in 1945. Whereas we cannot defeat the wicked ideology behind Hamas any more than we could defeat the ideology of Nazism, we must defeat them militarily and make sure that they do not pose a threat to Israel anymore. This is not only the right thing to do for Israel but is equally important for those Palestinians who seek a better future for their children and want to live in peace with Israel.”