According to the news wire service, Israel Ambassador nominee Mike Huckabee said hostages must be released.

Does he mean the 2.2 million Palestinian hostages held in Gaza or the 12,000 Palestinians held in 13 Israeli concentration camps without charges or trial dates for years?

Among the thousands of Palestinians (some Christians, yes, I said Christians) held in Israeli jails without due process, must also be released. So now Mikey, as a professing Christian, how will he work on that one?

Since Huckabee said during his presidential campaign in 2015 that "There is no such thing as Palestinians," I assume he was referring to only the Israeli hostages. Huck spends a lot of time on Twitter. He thinks he's very funny and slick. The fact is he is boring, dull, and Islamophobic, and he will put you to sleep.

If Huckabee is genuine about the welfare and safety of ALL hostages—not only about the Israelis—he should also have called a ceasefire and a hostage swap deal. The hostages are one of the most sticking issues between Hamas and Israel.

Just for the record, before October 7, the day when Palestinian fighters broke the illegal siege on Gaza, Israel held 5,200 Palestinian hostages for years without charges or trial. Now Israel is holding 12,000 hostages, among the hostages are also women and children. That runs contrary to Israeli law and international law.

Huckabee should know that holding Palestinian men, women, and children without trial or charges was one of the reasons that sparked the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7, 2023. Palestinians did not wake up on October 7 and say, "Let's go kick some Israeli asses in the Israeli colonies around Gaza.

" It was a spontaneous response to the Israeli repressive policies and inhumane treatment of Palestinians for over 7 decades. Geneva-based UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk stated recently that:

“There is a staggering number of men, women, children, doctors, journalists, and human rights defenders detained since 7 October, most of them without charge or trial and held in deplorable conditions, along with reports of ill-treatment and torture and violation of due process guarantees, raises serious concerns regarding the arbitrariness and the fundamentally punitive nature of such arrests and detention.”

Former Gov. Huckabee will benefit immensely from reading the testimonies gathered by Chief Volker Turk's office and other entities that indicate a range of appalling acts—such as waterboarding and the release of dogs on detainees, amongst other acts—in flagrant violation of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, rather than trying to appease the pro-Israeli lobby before his confirmation hearing.

Both my late father and my late younger brother were held hostage for 18 months by the IDF in 1948 and 1982, respectively. They were not combatants.

They were innocent bystanders and were taken for no crime committed, only for being Palestinian. My late father went back from Lebanon to his village in Palestine to look for his mother and older brother right after the Nakba because they were separated.

My younger brother was visiting our mother in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon shortly before the 1982 Israeli invasion and subsequent occupation of Lebanon when the IOF took every male Palestinian of fighting age hostage.

Luckily, he was released after 18 months of captivity through a POW exchange. Had the PLO not captured 9 Israeli soldiers during the occupation of Lebanon, my brother would have remained in the Israeli concentration camp in south Lebanon for God knows how long.

There is nothing that makes the families of hostages happier—be they Palestinian or Israeli—than seeing their loved ones be freed and back home.

Mahmoud El-Yousseph is a Palestinian freelancer for Islamicity.com, ColumbusFreePress.com, and theuglytruth.xyz. He can be reached at [email protected].