Hamas Leaders Divided Over What to Do With Women and Children Taken Hostage in Israel

Hamas leaders are reportedly split over what to do with hostages it snatched during a bloody incursion into Israel on Saturday.

One faction wants to release some of the women and children in the hopes it will undermine global support for Israel retaliatory attacks on the Gaza Strip, according to The Times of London newspaper.

The Times cited information provided by Middle Eastern intelligence agencies that monitor the Islamist Palestinian movement.

Hamas has claimed it is holding up to 150 hostages after the brutal terrorist attacks on Kibutzim in southern Israel. The group has threatened to start executing them in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Gaza.

Hamas terrorists posted disturbing videos that showed fighters taking hostages. Among the videos was a terrified Shiri Silberman-Bibas being abducted with her two young sons.

The Times reports that some members of Hamas are worried that the images of small children and the elderly have caused global revulsion and caused Hamas to be compared with the Islamic State.

"They're even worse than ISIS," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President Biden in a phone call.

Several Americans are among the hostages. Their families pleaded with the Israeli and U.S. governments to work for their release.

“The idea of a prisoner swap now seems very distant,” Patrick Kingsley, The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, told the New York Times.

The U.S. has sent hostage rescue experts to advise the Israel Defense Forces on freeing the hostages and U.S. special operations forces have been placed on alert in a nearby European country, according to two senior U.S. military officials who spoke to The Messenger under condition of anonymity