The full range of emotions one experiences on hostage-release days can blindside a person. One expects to be flooded with relief, then perhaps joy, at the sight of a young Jewish woman reunited with her family and friends after over a year in the dark dungeons of one of the most evil forces on earth.

But when Israeli hostages are released by Hamas, Gazans first film themselves hungrily getting in their last war crimes before the coming drought. It is dangerous business, this getting freed by Hamas.

So the emotions begin not at relief but at horror: The price of freedom is one last, live torture session. “Holding hostages is illegal under international law, and it amounts to a form of torture,” said the UN’s own torture expert upon the announcement of the cease-fire deal. Now it can be told.

No one really wants to watch the videos of well-dressed, well-fed, well-made-up Gazan “civilians” boasting of holding Israeli hostages in their homes—talk about now it can be told—but we do, because after the horror comes the relief.

Not before a bit of anger, though. Young Israeli women and old Israeli men are paraded not in front of baying mobs but through them. This part introduces another emotion: disgust. One expects that now that Hamas fighters are wearing their uniforms for the first time in over a year it would be easier to tell them apart from those around them. But somehow everyone in these scenes blends in with one another. When it comes to crowds of people gleefully mobbing an abused woman, what they are wearing isn’t terribly relevant or noticeable.

Arbel Yehud, 29, and Gadi Mozes, 80, looked like they were reenacting the Egyptian pursuit of the Israelites into the wilderness, the captors possessed by regret that these Jews might yet live. Agam Berger, 20, was forced to perform a choreographed stage scene for the leering Hamas men and wild-eyed crowds beyond them.

Once through this last trial, they were handed over to the Red Cross, who also transported five freed Thai nationals: Bannawat Seathao, Pongsak Thenna, Sathian Suwannakham, Surasak Lamnao, and Watchara Sriaoun.

Ah, the Red Cross! Willing participants in the psychotic torment of hostages. Although the Red Cross was unbothered by its role in a public torture passion play, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stepped in. The Palestinian murderers and terrorists being released in return for innocent Israeli hostages could sit on their bus a bit longer, Netanyahu decreed, until he could get assurances that the demonic scenes in Gaza would not be repeated.

To be clear: The process of dragging hostages through the crowds is not just morally abominable; it is legitimately dangerous. You are lucky to survive being freed by these psychopaths. And for the Red Cross to stand there and accede to this is beyond disqualifying.

To watch these scenes, in other words, is to watch the full range of human complicity in unspeakable crimes, and experience the full range of emotions that comes with it.

When the relief finally arrives, then, it’s almost overwhelming. The hostages finally cross from the death cult to the land of the living, the land of their forefathers, of God. The homes waiting to host them in Eretz Israel will feed them and protect them rather than abuse them and hold them against their will. They are transferred from the Red Cross into the hands of medical professionals who will treat them and heal them instead of pretending they don’t exist. The guns and uniforms around them are now their own.

And the drones, too. It was announced earlier today that the terrorist who kidnapped Naama Levy, one of the hostages released this past weekend, had been killed in a targeted IDF strike four months ago. This information had been kept under wraps until Levy was free, for her own safety.

Future hostage releases will probably look different from what we saw today. They will seem humane. Let us not forget that such humanity had to be demanded.