On Saturday, Hamas gunmen paraded three skeletally thin Israeli hostages for a propaganda video in which they were forced to thank their captors before their handover to the Red Cross. One of the hostages, Eli Sharabi, returned to Israel to learn that his wife, Lianne, and their teenage daughters, Noiya and Yahel, had been murdered on October 7.

It was heartbreaking and grotesque. Other hostages are reported to have spent their captivity bound, tortured, deprived of food and denied medical care for shrapnel wounds and other injuries. Some have barely seen sunlight in almost 500 days.