With the return of the hostages and, minimally, an extended ceasefire, maybe it’s time to look back on some features of the war.

Since Hamas made such a point of raping Israeli women, I predicted that babies would be born to female Jewish captives and Hamas would parade these children around as future shaheeds. While there definitely have been reports of torture and sexual abuse, I have not heard of any child born to the Israeli women during their time in the Gaza dungeons. Another point: many of the captives claim that Hamas tried to get them to convert to Islam. They talked to them endlessly about their religion and offered more food and better conditions for converting. Not one left his or her Judaism. Actually, a fair number of the hostages reported upon release that they increased their religious observance. Some reported an intense closeness to God while in the bowels of hell in Gaza. While Hamas has plenty of supporters at Harvard, its terrorists apparently did not study there:

“Hi, I just killed your family, tortured you and dragged you back to Gaza, where I am starving you while chaining you to a small cage. Would you like to join my religion that makes me do all of these things to you?”

One fellow said that he was given a small radio in order to hear the call to Islamic prayer. He was able to rejigger it to hear Galgalatz, the official radio station of the IDF.

So while many of the captives came out speaking Arabic, none converted to Islam. Rather, some put on kippahs or made it clear that they wanted to make blessings over food or keep the Sabbath. It is not a surprise that one finds faith to keep himself/herself together during the most painful and challenging times in one’s life. One fellow said that to keep sane, he started to talk to a crack in the wall. After a few more iterations of inanimate objects, he began to speak to God. When I saw him, he had his head covered in a kippah.

Another thing that did not appear in Gaza was........

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