The false equivalence between hostages held in Gaza and prisoners held by Israel is being laid bare as videos of freed Palestinian prisoners vowing terrorist retaliation go viral on social media.

“Israel has paid a terrible ransom to get the October 7 hostages back: we have freed the monsters who will raise the next generation of October 7 terrorists,” a former Israeli spokesman, Eylon Levy, remarked on X.  

Mr. Levy’s comment referenced a widely circulated clip of a newly released father and son enthusiastically pledging to orchestrate another civilian massacre in Israel. The footage shows the unidentified Palestinian father, with his arm wrapped around his child, gleefully telling the camera: “Do you see my son? He will come to you again like on the seventh of October!”

Similar videos have surfaced this week. Another clip depicts a Palestinian man draped in a keffiyeh promising that “there will be no more Israel” — a result he describes as “God’s promise.” He adds: “This is only the beginning and not the end. We will return and will not rest.”

The man was identified by Arab-Israeli journalist Yoseph Haddad as a Palestinian doctor named Azmi Al-Dawahidi, who was released from Israeli prison as part of the hostage and prisoner exchange phase of the ceasefire agreement.

“Dr. Azmi Al-Dawahidi just walked out of Israeli prison and within minutes, he exposed exactly who he is,” Mr. Haddad wrote. “This isn’t a doctor committed to saving lives. This is a terrorist who wore a white coat as a cover.” 

The clips capture just a few of the 1,950 Palestinian prisoners — including 250 serving life sentences — released by Israel in exchange for 20 living hostages and the remains of 28 more held by Hamas since the October 7, 2023, massacre.

Among those released were individuals convicted of heinous acts of terrorism. Several prisoners had been serving life sentences for their roles in deadly suicide bombings and shooting attacks that killed Israeli civilians. Others were convicted of planning and executing attacks on buses, at restaurants, and during public gatherings. 

The bloodlust of the released prisoners contradicts the sympathetic profiles shared by mainstream media. Media watchdog group HonestReporting called out the whitewashing of the prisoners’ serious crimes, highlighting several outlets that published one-sided profiles of the terrorists and their families while omitting details of their offenses.

Moreover, some outlets, including the BBC and the New York Times, appeared to draw a moral equivalence between the Israeli civilians kidnapped by Hamas and the convicted terrorists released by Israel. A front-page article in the Times on October 13, for example, described the swap as an “exchange of hostages.”

ABC News reportedly corrected an article containing similarly misleading phrasing after being alerted by HonestReporting. The Times has not issued a correction.

“Even as the guns fell silent, parts of the press continued their war on truth,” HonestReporting wrote. “The BBC and The New York Times managed to tarnish what should have been a moment of unity and relief, replacing empathy with false equivalence and accuracy with ideological bias.” 

While the agreement required Hamas to produce all 48 hostages by noon on Monday, the terror group failed to deliver the remains of all the dead on time. As of Wednesday morning, Hamas had provided only seven bodies. One casket delivered on Wednesday contained a Palestinian, not a hostage.