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Hamas has been trading in its long-nurtured victim status in favor of a gloating, sadistic, and would-be murderous image.
By DOUGLAS ALTABEF FEBRUARY 27, 2025 02:18
A WOMAN pays her respects at a memorial set up for the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz in Tel Aviv last week. Hamas has, to no one’s surprise in Israel, made itself completely unpalatable, let alone heroic, says the writer.
(photo credit: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS)
The summer of Gazan love has ended with a thud. The ability to scream about the resistance, about the river and the sea, along with the free-wheeling accusations of genocide, all without accountability, is over.
Hamas has, to no one’s surprise in Israel, made itself completely unpalatable, let alone heroic. It has required its fellow travelers to excuse, contextualize, or defend conduct that, were there no Jews involved, would be universally condemned and despised.
Hamas did it all by itself and to itself. It did it by showing its true colors and straightforward world view, on its own initiative.
The morphing realities and narratives in Gaza
In this regard, the ironies are immense and all but overwhelming. That is because, with its discretionary handling of the return of the hostages, Hamas has just made Israel’s case for why it should be expunged from Gaza, and indeed from history.
What happened to the starving, bereft Gazans? We have morphed from pictures of bedraggled Gazans to pressed uniforms, cheering crowds, and an environment worthy of a Hitlerian rally in the 1930s.
All of this was to show the world that Hamas had won. This in and of itself undercuts the case of devastation that must be stopped, privation that must be addressed, and an all-but-eradicated people that must be rescued.
The face that Hamas has chosen to show the world is not one of “We survived Israel’s onslaught,” but in effect one of “Israel never laid a glove on us.” That, of course, beggars the imagination.
However, it is with its treatment of the returned hostages that Hamas has shown its true colors to any who would look objectively at its doings, and listen to what it is, in effect, saying.
Of course, the images of the returned hostages, particularly the men, speak for themselves. Those of us who are allergic to any analogies with the Holocaust nevertheless found ourselves invoking such comparisons when presented with pictures of some of the released men.
The world clearly saw the heinousness of Hamas, and, by extension, its formerly bereft but now screamingly happy acolytes, as Hamas stormtroopers orchestrated scenes that could have easily devolved into lynchings and certainly had all the feel of them.
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The messaging here was not terribly esoteric: “We could kill you, but this time at least, we choose not to do so. After all, we are awaiting the return of hundreds of our heroes who will wreak havoc upon you in the nor too distant future, guaranteed,” Hamas is clearly saying. “So today, we don’t kill you, we merely give you a final humiliation to remember us by. We toy with you, we force you to be cast members of a ghoulish psychodrama designed, as we conceive it, to humiliate and to debilitate, not to mention frighten. And we show the world the true power and strength of our indomitable resistance.”
Ironically, with each of these non-fatal quasi-execution ceremonies, Hamas has been trading in its long-nurtured victim status in favor of a gloating, sadistic, and would-be murderous image. All of this was a prelude to the ultimate unmasking of the barbarism that Hamas holds dear. That unmasking, of course, happened with the return of the Bibas family.
It matters not what religion, race, or nationality (I am even tempted to add “species”) one is: You cannot look at a picture of the beautiful Bibas boys without a smile, and you cannot consider their deaths and that of their sheltering and loving young mother at the hands of Hamas terrorists, without great pain.
In its ongoing effort to ensure that they are unworthy for inclusion in humanity, Hamas has pointed out that there are fatwas that say that it is okay for Muslims to kill the children of its enemies because this degrades, diminishes, and disheartens the enemy.
Let’s hope that this is in fact a minority opinion within Islam. Regardless, it sure speaks volumes about the worldview of Hamas. And it serves to remind us of the human shield defense that Hamas has been so diligently employing since the war began.
We know that there are no words for this, there is no excuse for this. There is nothing in any civilized society that allows, not to mention extols, the murder of babies.
The great irony of what Hamas has done is to turn the tables on all the numbers that have been negotiated for the hostage return. We, in Israel, have gritted our teeth, suspended disbelief, and have allowed ourselves to release hundreds of despicable murderers and terrorists, knowing that many of them will once again seek to target Israelis.
We are therefore paying a steep and excruciating price for the release of the hostages.
However, with the return of three murdered angelic Bibas souls, I predict that Hamas has just torn off its mask.
For all but the most hardened, debased and Hamas-wannabe supporters, Hamas has shown itself to be loathsome and barbaric, completely lacking in its purported worthiness.
There are moments in life where a single gesture can speak volumes, where a single act can unearth an indisputable reality, and provide irrefutable clarity. The realization, as has now been forensically ascertained, that Hamas members murdered two innocent, cherubic souls, as well as their mother, with their own bare hands, is such an event.
May Yarden Bibas have the comfort of knowing that the horrific sacrifice of his beloved wife and sons will prove to be the vehicle of the avenging of their blood and, please God, an important step in the annihilation of their murderers.
The author is the chairman of the board of Im Tirtzu and a director of the Israel Independence Fund.
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