April 11, 2024: Most of the Hostages Are Dead, U.S. and Israel Say

Jackson Hinkle is a Chinese op; Israel and Indonesia to normalize ties; Iran floods the West Bank with guns

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The Big Story

Mainstream reporting is catching up to The Scroll’s speculations. In our March 25 edition, Tablet’s geopolitical analyst wrote:

My guess is that most or all of the hostages are dead and their bodies are buried deep in tunnels—which is why these “negotiations” don’t and can’t go anywhere. The reason the hostages are dead is that moving them around became a clear strategic liability, while their gruesome accounts of torture and rape at the hands of their captors would only further inflame Israeli and perhaps world opinion against Hamas. The eventual report of their deaths will be merely a “drop in the bucket” next to the “tens of thousands of dead Gazans.” 

The Israelis are obviously constrained from saying this because it is speculative—and giving Hamas an excuse to kill any surviving hostages would be morally questionable and politically explosive, which obligates them to go through the motions. On the other hand, assuming an 80% or higher probability that some version of this scenario is right, which only grows over time, “the fate of the hostages” is no longer sufficient to constrain Israeli action.

Following reports from earlier this week that Hamas could not produce 40 living hostages as part of a deal, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday:

Around 130 remaining hostages taken in the attack are still in Gaza. Of those, Israeli officials have publicly confirmed that 34 are dead, but Israeli and American officials estimate privately that the number of deaths could be much higher. ...

Some U.S. estimates indicate that most of the hostages are already dead, U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence said. They stressed, however, that U.S. visibility on the hostages is limited and depends, in part, on Israeli intelligence. Some were likely killed during Israeli strikes on Gaza, the officials said, while others have died from health issues, including injuries suffered during their initial capture.

The Israeli military, the Israeli prime minister’s office, and the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence all declined to comment publicly on these estimates. The Journal notes that these estimates represent a marked increase from Israeli and U.S. assessments in February, when about 80 of the 130 hostages in Gaza were believed to still be alive. The “majority” of the dead, according to the paper, died from wounds suffered during the Oct. 7 attack, though some have likely been killed by Hamas in captivity or by Israeli airstrikes. Israel has admitted to mistakenly shooting three hostages, and a fourth was killed in a failed rescue mission. 

As our analyst pointed out on March 25, the likely fate of the hostages means that Israel has dwindling incentives to sacrifice battlefield gains for a hostage deal—other than the negative incentives provided by American pressure. Which may be one reason the White House has been steadily escalating its pressure on Israel over the course of the past month. 

On X, meanwhile, Jason Beale observes that the U.S. government under Obama and Biden has been quite aggressive in publicizing the plight, and seeking the release, of Americans held hostage in foreign countries—when doing so fits with its foreign-policy goals. When Americans are held hostage by a terrorist group that the White House is attempting to protect? Not so much:

IN THE BACK PAGES: Why is the DC Abortion Fund condemning “Zionism” and the “genocide” in Gaza? Allison Tombros Korman explains—and explains why she quit

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The Rest

→Jackson Hinkle, the 24-year-old anti-Israel social media influencer who recently spoke to a gathering of the Houthi leadership in Yemen, appears to be getting a boost from a Chinese botnet, according to a Thursday profile in The New York Times. A former teenage racial justice and climate activist who now regularly posts Russian, Chinese, and Iranian propaganda (plus a healthy dose of Jew-baiting), Hinkle saw his follower count on X rise from 417,000 on Oct. 6 to more than 2.5 million today. But that growth does not appear to be organic. Here’s the Times:

Several organized networks of inauthentic accounts amplified his posts, according to Next Dim, an Israeli company that studies inauthentic activity online and that previously found evidence of an effort to amplify pro-Beijing messages on X.

One of the organized networks had previously boosted unrelated content—in Chinese—that criticized the Japanese government for releasing radioactive wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in August, the researchers found. Once the fighting began in Gaza, the same network, which had at least 20,000 accounts, began reposting Mr. Hinkle’s content.

Another research company in Israel, Cyabra, found that Mr. Hinkle’s account gained 1.2 million followers over the first 19 days of the war. A sample of 12,510 of them suggested that roughly 40 percent were fakes.

Hinkle has also, the profile notes, visited Russia and China this year “at the invitation of organizations close to the governments.”

We’d observe that despite the nearly decade-long panic about “foreign disinformation” undermining Americans’ “cognitive infrastructure,” and the Department of Justice’s successful prosecution of Douglass Mackey for posting pro-Trump memes, the American power structure seems relatively unbothered about a transparent Chinese information op to discredit an American ally. We wonder why that is.

Read the rest here: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/11/business/media/jackson-hinkle-israel-gaza-misinformation.html

→Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, has agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, according to a report in Ynet News. The diplomatic breakthrough, which follows three months of quiet negotiations between the countries, includes Israel agreeing to drop its objection to Indonesia’s application for membership in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which requires the unanimous consent of the 38 members. Israel had been working to normalize ties with Indonesia since before Oct. 7, but those efforts were believed to have been shelved with the outbreak of the war.

→Iran is attempting to “foment unrest against Israel by flooding [the West Bank] with as many weapons as it can,” according to Iranian officials cited in a Tuesday report in The New York Times. Using intermediaries such as criminal gangs and Bedouin smugglers, the Iranian regime is smuggling the weapons—including small arms and advanced weapons such as antitank missiles—primarily through Jordan but also through Syria and Lebanon into Israel and the West Bank. Indeed, as Seth Mandel points out in Commentary, Oct. 7 was intended to involve the West Bank, too: Hamas operatives were carrying maps and instructions for bisecting Israel to connect with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives in the West Bank. The Times report also underlines the folly of regarding the war in Gaza as merely a conflict between Israel and “Hamas” or “the Palestinians”—rather than as the active front in the regional war between Israel and the Iranian Axis.

→On Oct. 15, a Moroccan asylum seeker living in London murdered a 70-year-old British man “because of the conflict in Gaza,” hours after attempting to murder his roommate, a Muslim convert to Christianity, for apostasy, according to British prosecutors in an ongoing trial. The suspect, Ahmed Alid, 45, who follows an “extreme interpretation of Islam,” allegedly broke into his roommate’s bedroom and stabbed him six times with a kitchen knife while shouting “Allahu Akbar.” The roommate survived. After the attempted murder, Alid grabbed another knife and left the house, where he “chanced” upon Terence Carney, a stranger who was out for a walk, and stabbed him to death. Alid told police that he had deliberately chosen an “innocent victim” because “Israel had killed innocent children,” and that he would have killed more people if he had access to more weapons. Alid’s roommate had reported him to police several days prior to the attacks for threatening behavior, but police took the view that Alid had “committed no offense” and did nothing. 

→A National Security Council official leaked notes from an NSC meeting this week to The Intercept that allegedly show the White House is “worried” that Iran “might strike a U.S. target” in retaliation for Israel’s strike on the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus, Syria, earlier this month. The content of the leak (which directly contradicts the assessment a U.S. intelligence official gave to CNN on Monday) and its destination (a publication fusing Qatari and Democratic Party-aligned national security interests with the sensibility of the social media left) offer hints as to its purpose, which is to seed the narrative that Israel is threatening to drag the United States into war with Iran, thus presenting U.S. alignment with Iranian interests in the region as a pragmatic attempt to preserve “peace” in the face of Israeli bellicosity. Iran, however, has already been striking U.S. targets for months via its proxies in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen— yet the White House has offered only token retaliation while maintaining the charade that Iran does not exercise “full control” over its proxies. Thus the new line is: Iran is currently hitting the United States, and the United States is doing nothing, but the NSC is worried that if Israel doesn’t back down, Iran might hit the United States, thus forcing the United States to do … what, exactly?

→The assessment on the street in Iran, however, appears to be somewhat different:

→Headline of the Day: “The Coffin Fits: O.J. Simpson Dead at 76”

That’s from The Washington Free Beacon, mourning noting the passing on Thursday of football star, actor, and celebrity murderer O.J. Simpson from cancer. Simpson, who won the Heisman Trophy as a running back for the University of Southern California and the NFL Most Valuable Player Award with the Buffalo Bills, almost certainly murdered his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, in 1994, but was acquitted in a sensational circus trial in 1995. During the trial, Simpson’s lawyer, Johnnie Cochran, had Simpson try on a pair of gloves found at the crime scene containing the DNA of Simpson, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman, who was also stabbed to death in the attack. Despite the DNA evidence, Simpson visibly struggled to fit the gloves over his hands, leading Cochran to tell the jury, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” Simpson was later found liable for his ex-wife’s death in a civil trial and was also subsequently convicted and imprisoned for armed robbery and kidnapping in a separate case. We’ll leave the final word to the late Norm Macdonald:

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Why I Resigned From the DC Abortion Fund

The landscape of organizations ostensibly working to advance sexual and reproductive health has become mired in antisemitism

By Allison Tombros Korman

On Nov. 17, 2023 I resigned from my dream job at the DC Abortion Fund (DCAF). In the four months since my resignation, the organization seemed to have grown emboldened not just to demand fealty to a progressive litmus test over the war in Gaza, but to use DCAF’s resources, time, and reputation to push out individuals who do not share their perspective, most recently and explicitly signing on to a campaign to call the Jewish musician Matisyahu—known for his peace anthem "One Day"—a “white Zionist” racist. While I wish I could be surprised by this, I’m not. This is the same pattern I experienced at the DC Abortion Fund that led to my resignation.

For the previous 18 months, I had proudly served as the most senior executive at DCAF, a grassroots organization whose core mission is to provide abortion funding in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area. This dream position brought together my 20-plus-year career in sexual and reproductive health and my lifelong personal commitment to social justice. My daughters proudly acted as our “interns,” handing out swag at community events and telling anyone who would ask about their mom’s work, even when it meant enduring verbal and physical harassment from anti-abortion activists. In less than a year at DCAF, I was promoted.

After the tragic events in Israel on Oct. 7, everything changed for the Jewish community and for me. While it was well-known that I was the only Jewish staff member—I staffed all events and fundraisers hosted by the Jewish community—not one person from the staff or board reached out to me in the wake of the rape, murder, and kidnapping of 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children. Their silence mirrored the devastating silence many Jews experienced after Oct. 7.

On Oct. 9, with no mention of the terrible events from two days prior, DCAF’s communications team posted an Indigenous People’s Day Instagram post calling for “land back” and a “Free Palestine.” Jewish members of the DCAF community—volunteers, fundraisers, and me, an employee—alerted the communications team that this was, or was perceived to be, deeply insensitive. The post was removed.

On Oct. 26, the communications team proposed a series of Instagram slides for my review. The “Gaza Carousel,” as the draft was titled, felt deeply one-sided for a reproductive health organization that had not publicly acknowledged the rapes and other atrocities of Oct. 7. Instead, the post focused on the so-called “U.S.-funded genocide” in Gaza and only mentioned the hostages in a single bullet on the final slide. As the former executive director of a national sexual violence prevention program, I could not fathom how if choosing to speak about the war, my colleagues could willfully ignore the devastating violations of reproductive justice that happened to Israelis on Oct. 7. I brought my concerns about the draft to my supervisor, the chair of the Board of Directors. I explained how specific accusations against Jews and Israel on social media were offensive and were used to justify violence against Jews on campus, in local businesses, and across the world. I maintained in that meeting—and until the end of my tenure there—that DCAF did not have the expertise in Middle East policy to weigh in on the war. DCAF had never before issued a statement on international events or foreign policy and I felt we should use the fund’s limited capacity to remain focused on the core mission of providing abortion funding. The board chair agreed that the post should not go up. It didn’t, but my decision to go directly to the chair set in motion a division within the staff that would devolve until my departure.

To rebuild staff unity and in keeping with our organizational values around open communication, the board chair arranged a meeting for me and the comms team to discuss our feelings about what had transpired. I sincerely apologized for any breach of trust caused by bringing my concerns to the chair. No apology was given by the comms team, or prompted by the chair, for sending me a draft I found hurtful and offensive. I made the point that if a similar situation had occurred with another minority group, it would be perfectly reasonable for them to consult a supervisor, but I was told that this was “different.” I was told that “everyone knows when something is racist,” but that the language used in this post was up for debate, as if I, the only Jewish voice on staff, should not be qualified to decide for myself what was or could be deemed offensive to a Jewish person.

As the war ramped up, it was clear that this issue was not going away. Not only was I struggling to process Oct. 7 with friends, family, and my community, I was also navigating the conflict every day at work. As the only Jewish voice in the organization, I was repeatedly put in the position to speak for all Jewish people—an impossible task—or to defend my perspective and why it did not align with that of Jewish Voices for Peace, a group that purports to represent Jews but rejects the basic premise of a Jewish homeland, or similar entities. At the same time, if I advocated for DCAF staying out of this discussion, I was told I was silencing the organization and its staff. I shared my heartbreak about the violence against both Israelis and Palestinians and how, though complex, these feelings could coexist. In return, it was explained to me, often by people with no direct connection to the land or its people, that I needed to understand “context.”

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At the same time, other abortion funds and reproductive health organizations began issuing statements about what was happening in Gaza. These statements contained much of the same offensive nomenclature as DCAF’s draft and some, like ARC-Southeast's letter, went further, calling Zionism—the belief that Israel simply has a right to exist—“a contradiction to Reproductive Justice.” Every member of the DCAF staff except me signed on to a letter to the board advising them that they would be participating in a walkout in support of Palestine. The letter noted, “We are using our collective power as DCAF workers to show up for Gazans and call for an immediate ceasefire, as well as liberation for Palestinians ... we cannot ignore the mass violations to human rights and sexual and reproductive health outcomes that we’re seeing out of Gaza.” Remarkably, the letter neglected any mention of health outcomes for the Israeli survivors of rape or assault, or for the hostages.

In an effort to work collaboratively and keep focused on our primary objectives, we agreed that establishing social media procedures was a critical next step. On Nov. 14, I and the communications team sat down to decide what, if anything, DCAF would be posting about the war and to ensure there were not more situations like that which occurred around the “Gaza Carousel.” I recognized that my colleagues felt strongly that DCAF should weigh in on this discussion, and in an effort to compromise, I agreed to a process that would allow DCAF to uplift existing content from trusted partners in the field, but not create original content, as this would be beyond our expertise. We agreed to abstain from using nomenclature that could be distracting or divisive to our community, such as the “Free Palestine” hashtag or calling Israel’s actions “genocide.” We developed a system to review and discuss potentially controversial content related to the war before posting, starting with a small group of reviewers, including me, and escalating to a vote by a mix of board and staff.

The following morning, I circulated the notes from that meeting to DCAF leadership and members of the Board. At 3 p.m. that day, I was alerted by a Jewish DCAF volunteer that the DCAF Instagram feed featured graphics from The Washington Post about deaths in Gaza with commentary overlaid, specifically that “collective punishment is the tool of fascists” and that what was happening in Gaza was “a prime and top-of-mind example of said collective punishment.” I immediately flagged this for the communications team and asked if perhaps the content was posted inadvertently since it violated the norms we had established in the meeting the previous day. Surely, equating the actions of the entire State of Israel with fascism was a perspective that needed to be discussed as potentially controversial. They assured me the post was intentional (they later stealthily removed it).

Immediately, DCAF received angry messages from Jewish members of their community. The messages criticized DCAF for being so one-sided on the issue. They were furious that DCAF, who claimed to deeply value reproductive justice, had remained silent on the rapes of Israeli women. They stated that as Jews, they felt abandoned by and isolated from the organization.

By Nov. 17, I could barely get out of bed. The last five weeks had wrung me out, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I had been iced out by my colleagues for my unwillingness to get on board with their specific perspective. They canceled meetings with me and when they had to be in meetings with me, they kept their cameras off. I had been told that I was wrong to feel that specific language was harmful or offensive, even when I could feel its burn. I felt that I was being forced, at best, to bury my identity at work and at worst, to apologize for or decry it. I had become something of a walking zombie at home, thinking about what was happening at work constantly, trying to see a way through this. My children, with whom we elected to be honest about what I was facing each day at work, had stopped asking if I was OK and instead just carefully hugged me and told me they were sorry.

That morning, after weeks of agonizing over the matter, I realized I could not go back. I called my board chair and left a voicemail in which I tendered my resignation. My board chair texted back to say she understood if I “no longer [thought] DCAF [was] a fit.” I was devastated, but I felt this was my only option. While I remain fully committed to ensuring everyone has abortion access no matter where they live or who they are, I could not stay in an organization that refused to acknowledge my humanity or that of my people.

As painful as it was to leave my dream job, I hoped that my leaving would be a wake-up call for DCAF. I hoped they would realize just how bad things must have been for a Jewish person at their organization to resign from their position. They didn’t. DCAF chose Repro Shabbat, an annual celebration that honors the Jewish value of reproductive freedom, to center “Palestinian liberation” and included only a passing and perfunctory mention of the Israeli civilian hostages, and no mention of the Hamas-inflicted sexual violence on Oct. 7. In mid-March, DCAF signed on to the campaign protesting Matisyahu. These actions confirmed my previous pleas had gone unheard and that I made the right decision to leave.

This experience broke my heart. I’ve spoken with many Jews who are also broken-hearted as they feel pushed out of progressive spaces, specifically abortion funds and other reproductive health organizations. We feel betrayed by and disappointed in our movement for failing to live the values it purports to embody. The erasure of our history as a people that has struggled to survive and the erasure of our current lived experiences is nothing short of devastating. Jews are not asking progressive movements, causes, or individuals to condone or celebrate Israel’s response to Oct. 7. We are not asking for them to identify solely with our suffering. We are asking that if they insist on wading into this conflict, they do so in a way that recognizes our humanity.