In the latest incident involving the Israeli hostages held by Hamas that has drawn widespread outrage, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Thursday that a body that Hamas returned as part of the hostage deal was “an anonymous, unidentified body” rather than that of Shiri Bibas, the mother of two children that were also killed. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to avenge the hostage deal breach, describing the incident as a “cruel and malicious violation” of the ceasefire agreement.

This development followed a morbid display put on by the terrorist group on Thursday, when they handed over the bodies of Bibas’s sons, 4-year-old Ariel and 10-month-old Kfir, as well the body of 84-year-old Oded Lifschitz, among a massive, celebratory throng of terrorists. While Hamas claimed that Bibas and her children were killed as a result of an Israeli airstrike, the IDF announced Friday that a forensic examination determined that the children were murdered by Hamas “with their bare hands” a number of weeks after they were kidnapped during the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

“This is, without exaggeration, the conduct we expect from animals,” wrote the National Review’s Noah Rothman.

The incident calls into question how long the current ceasefire between Israel and Hamas will last. Adam Boehler, who serves as the U.S. envoy for hostages, called the handover of the wrong body “horrific” and a “clear violation” of the ceasefire deal. Referring to Hamas, Boehler remarked, “If I were them, I’d release everybody or they are going to face total annihilation.” Currently, six more Israeli hostages are set to be released on Saturday.

The incidents come amid further terrorist attacks targeting civilians in the Jewish state, when three parked commuter buses exploded in Bat Yam, outside of Tel Aviv on Thursday with nobody on board. The buses had recently finished their routes, and Mayor Tzvika Brot remarked that it was a “miracle” that nobody was killed or injured.

During Friday’s edition of “This Week on Capitol Hill,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) observed that Hamas’s conduct paints a stark picture of the ongoing threat the terrorist group is to Israel.

“Hamas is an evil regime, and that was on literal parade this week for everyone in the world to see it … with the parading [of] the little coffins of children that they murdered,” he commented. “I mean, this is good versus evil, light versus darkness, civilization versus barbarism, as Prime Minister Netanyahu said in the immediate aftermath of the October 7th massacre. The world is recognizing this, and even leaders in other Arab countries are having to disclaim this because it’s so brutal and in-your-face.”

“We have to eradicate this threat,” Johnson insisted. “President Trump said very clearly, if all the hostages were not released by Saturday last week, that there would be hell to pay. And now we’re all awaiting the next developments and to see what happens there. It’s a terrible situation for Israel and for freedom-loving people around the world, but it shows you exactly what we’re up against.”

Simcha Rothman, a member of the Israeli Knesset, also joined the show and emphasized the inhumanity displayed by Hamas.

“What does it take to murder with your bare hands a 10-month baby just because he’s Jewish?” he asked. “What does it take? What does it take for such a group to go and chant and cheer when they see a coffin of two children murdered just because they’re Jews? That is the evil that we are dealing with. That is the evil that the world must deal with. … President Trump understands that we cannot have those people near our borders planning the next attack. Like what? We could have woken up to a morning with five or 10 buses in the rush hour explod[ing] in the streets of Israel — only a miracle saved us from this. So we were almost having this talk with thousands more Israelis dead and injured today. So this is what we are dealing with. This is why we must win for us and for the entire world.”

Meanwhile, 64 hostages still remain in the clutches of Hamas, and it remains unclear if a second phase of the ceasefire agreement will go forward.

“I really hope that Israel will not retreat from any place in Gaza,” Rothman contended. “The deal is bad enough. To have a deal with the devil, to have a deal with [these] modern-day Nazis. … We are all happy to see the hostages back, but to have this deal is bad enough to give away the place that they will sit and plan the next attack and kidnap the next group of people. That’s something we cannot have, we must not have. We have to go the way President Trump says. Give back all the hostages at once, or we will break the gates of hell over you. This is the only way we will be able to get more hostages.”

Rothman concluded by arguing that in order to secure the peace of Israel, all of the Hamas terrorists that were released during the first phase of the hostage agreement will have to be dealt with.

“We have to make sure that we can either eliminate those terrorists from being a threat or get them back in prison or kill them,” he maintained. “We cannot live with this kind of threat. No freedom-loving and life-loving nation will live with this evil presiding just meters away from the families of citizens and from the heartland of the Jewish people.”