Day 476 - Excruciating dilemmas as murderers set to be released

The Times of Israel Daily Briefing

The Times of Israel

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4.4 • 864 Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 20-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world.

Senior analyst Haviv Rettig Gur joins host Amanda Borschel-Dan for today's episode, a special Friday Focus on the painful issue of the release of Palestinian security prisoners as part of the hostage release-ceasefire deal.

Tomorrow, another four hostages are set to be released from Gaza -- presumably women and presumably alive. Alongside the Israelis' release, however, up to 200 Palestinian prisoners could also be released, according to the current formula of 30 Palestinian prisoners for every civilian and 50 for every female soldier.

Rettig Gur takes on this complicated and emotional subject through looking at the history of terrorist hostage-taking and previous so-called exchanges of the abductees and Palestinian prisoners -- including those who were serving multiple life sentences.

We speak about the most memorable exchange of prisoners, which came in 2011 when captured soldier Gilad Shalit was released from Gaza as 1,027 security prisoners were freed from Israeli prisons. However, Rettig Gur postulates that the blueprint for that abduction came much earlier.

For news updates, please check out The Times of Israel’s ongoing live blog.

Discussed articles include:

Convicted terrorists to be released are ‘an open wound’ for victims’ families

Subscribe to The Times of Israel Daily Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves.

IMAGE: Palestinians celebrate the release of some 90 prisoners set free by Israel in the early hours of January 20, 2025 upon their arrival aboard a Red Cross bus in the Palestinian West Bank town of Beitunia, on the outskirts of Ramallah. (Zain JAAFAR / AFP)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Times of Israel's daily briefing.
0:11.0	Today is Friday, January 24th, Day 476 of the war.
0:17.2	Amanda Borschal Dan here with our senior analyst, Javiv Rettigur, for a schmoozy Friday focus.
0:23.1	Thanks for joining me, Javiv, and where am I finding you today?
0:26.4	Hi, Amanda. I'm in a small town called New York City.
0:29.8	I've heard of it, yeah.
0:30.9	I've discovered there's quite a few Jews, and in fact, the Jews here invented the bagel.
0:36.9	So, important facts.
0:38.8	That is a fake truth, but we'll let you have that one.
0:42.5	Wait, wait, hold on.
0:43.2	That is a fake truth.
0:44.7	Fake truth, fake.
0:46.0	The bagel was not invented in New York?
0:47.7	Fake news, I think.
0:49.5	I mean, speaking as a former Canadian resident,
0:52.6	obviously you can't beat the Montreal bagels, but we'll let you have a pass on this, Chaviv.
0:57.8	Okay. And now we all have to go look it up. Okay. Yeah. So, Chaviv, tomorrow on Shabbat, another four hostages are set to be released from Gaza, and they're all presumably women, presumably alive, but as of this recording,
1:13.6	we currently don't know who they are or what their statuses. And alongside that, we currently
1:19.8	don't know how many Palestinian security prisoners will also be released. In stage one of the
1:25.3	deal, the current formula is 30 Palestinian prisoners for every
1:30.2	civilian and 50 for every female soldier. We don't yet know the formula for male soldiers, which
1:37.5	would be in the potential phase two. So, Kaviv, this is really complicated, a very emotional subject.
	...

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