Two weeks after Hamas promised to return all the hostages, an Egyptian technical team with heavy equipment has been allowed into southern Gaza to help recover 13 bodies still missing, including two Americans — a grim reminder that the job of bringing our dead home is far from finished. This is not charity; it is a necessary, sober recovery mission for the victims of brutal terrorism and a duty to grieving families who deserve closure.
Israel authorized the Red Cross and the Egyptian specialists to operate beyond the IDF’s yellow line, but officials stressed these teams are purely technical and unarmed, under close Israeli oversight as they dig through the rubble left by Hamas’s reign of terror. Make no mistake — Israel controls the security picture and is rightly insisting on strict parameters for any foreign presence on its doorstep.
Hamas claims it can’t find all the bodies because the carnage and destruction buried them, yet the world should not accept obfuscation and delay from a terror organization that used human beings as bargaining chips. This is the same group that masterminded mass slaughter and hostage-taking; sympathy for civilian suffering must not become cover for letting killers dodge responsibility.
The United States is watching closely — President Trump publicly warned Hamas to return the remains within 48 hours, and U.S. officials, including Secretary Rubio, have pressed the issue with Israeli leaders and families. Hamas has returned only a fraction of the remains despite Israel’s substantial concessions in body exchanges, which underlines who is negotiating in bad faith.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s firm insistence that Israel will determine which forces or teams are allowed in Gaza is not an arrogance but a necessity for national security; no sovereign nation should cede control of its borders or battlefield oversight to outside actors when its citizens’ lives and dead hang in the balance. Any international proposal that ignores Israeli control risks creating a repeatable vulnerability for terrorists and a security nightmare for the region.
Patriots should stand with Israel and with the families who demand answers. Washington must keep pressure on Hamas and on any intermediary that tolerates delay, and America should back every credible, tightly controlled effort to recover remains and return them to their loved ones promptly.
This moment exposes how crucial tough, uncompromising leadership is — not platitudes from diplomats who prefer process over results. Conservative Americans know the value of strength, and strength brings results: bring the dead home, destroy the networks that enabled this atrocity, and ensure no future politician or peace plan ever treats our security as negotiable.
