Hi, friends.

This is an episode of Ask Chaviv Anything, a podcast that focuses on history.

It is Saturday night in Israel, and I have gotten a great many questions by podcast subscribers

to comment on the astonishing scenes that we saw in Gaza in Dira-Al-Balach in central Gaza earlier

today. Three horribly emaciated Israeli hostages brought out onto a stage surrounded by

Hamas gunmen, scenes that have just set Israeli debates on fire. I mean, just the Israeli media, the

Israeli public, everybody you know, everybody you're talking to in Israeli society, in the

Hebrew language, talked about nothing else. And it was a profound moment. It was a moment that

I think is going to be remembered as a pivot. And I wanted to very quickly,

we have a regularly scheduled podcast episode coming out on history on events of 135 years ago

that are deeply relevant to what's happening today, but not actually about what's happening

today. So I wanted to just step in and answer some of those requests to talk about what's

happening. What happened on Saturday? I think that what we saw will tell us a great deal about

what's going on in Gaza right now and also a great deal about what's about what's about

to happen in Gaza going forward in the next weeks, months, and even years. And I want to leave that out

for you. What we learned.

We learned on Saturday, because Hamas built that stage and because of the condition of the Israelis

and because of how Hamas handled that event, we learned a few things and we learned a few things

about Hamas' messages to a few different

audiences that I want to lay out for you. And I think there's an important and profound

conclusion to be drawn. First of all, that there's purposeful starvation of hostages. We learned

that. There's some reports of the Hamas officials saying that it's a response to mistreatment of Palestinian detainees or prisoners in Israeli prisons.

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