There is a grotesque irony at play when a terrorist group — one that has held civilians incommunicado for nearly two years — dares to set “conditions” for their care.
That is precisely what Hamas did on Sunday, declaring it might now coordinate with the Red Cross to deliver aid to the hostages in its custody, provided Israel meets certain demands.
Evyatar David, forced to dig his own grave.
It is a proposition so perverse that only the morally exhausted could entertain it. A terror group, which for 660 days has refused humanitarian access, filmed a visibly starving Israeli hostage, Evyatar David, digging what he says is his own grave. The man appears skeletal. The captor’s arm in frame is healthy. It was psychological torture staged for the camera, a snuff-film spectacle meant to provoke despair. It succeeded.
The footage, Hamas’s second hostage video in as many days, sparked rare Western unity. Britain, France, Germany, and the United States all issued statements condemning it. But words are cheap. Real outrage would demand real consequences.
Instead, the international community — having finally winced at the barbarity — now listens, almost deferentially, as Hamas outlines its terms for “cooperation.” These include Israel halting airstrikes and opening humanitarian corridors — to a group that has exploited every lull in fighting to regroup, rearm, and reimpose its medieval tyranny upon a suffering population.
Let us be clear: Hamas is not negotiating. It is extorting. And its leverage, grotesquely, is human life.
According to Israeli officials, only 20 of the 50 remaining hostages in Gaza are believed to be alive. Their families, represented by The Hostages Families Forum, have received virtually no information. Many do not even know if their loved ones are dead or barely clinging to life. That is the cruelty of this prolonged captivity: not only the act of kidnapping, but the cold, calculated silencing of their existence.
What is unfolding is not merely a humanitarian crisis. It is a war crime — ongoing, broadcasted, and without apology.
And yet the world continues to treat Hamas as if it were just another actor in a regional dispute, instead of the genocidal Islamist militia it plainly is. What other entity would film a man preparing his own grave and call it negotiation?
To pretend there is moral symmetry between Israel and Hamas — to pretend, as some do, that both sides bear equal responsibility for this horror — is not only naïve but obscene. Israel has allowed fuel shipments into Gaza in recent days to prevent full-scale famine. Four tankers of U.N. fuel have entered to keep hospitals, bakeries, and public kitchens running. And yet even as Israel does this, it is castigated in some quarters for not doing enough.
Meanwhile, Hamas — flush with Iranian funds, stocked with food for its own operatives, hiding beneath hospitals, and blocking aid from reaching its people — is spared the same scrutiny. Six more people reportedly died of starvation or malnutrition in Gaza on Sunday, bringing the total to 175, including 93 children. What passes for a government in Gaza is not managing a crisis; it is weaponising it. It starves civilians so it can shame Israel on the world stage.
And the West, wedded to false narratives of balance, looks on with hand-wringing impotence.
The idea that Hamas would now allow the Red Cross to deliver aid to hostages — if only Israel halts airstrikes — is grotesque. These hostages are not combatants. They were not prisoners of war captured on the battlefield. They were children, grandmothers, students — abducted from their homes and music festivals and kibbutzim in a frenzy of unprovoked butchery last October. Their continued captivity is a stain on every institution that claims to defend human rights.
Yet the UN, instead of leading a moral reckoning, seems content to issue bland statements and call emergency meetings. A special session at the Security Council is scheduled for Tuesday. One wonders what will come of it — another sternly worded resolution calling for restraint from “both sides”? Another listless appeal for calm?
What these hostages need is not diplomacy. They need rescue. What Hamas needs is not engagement. It needs defeat.
Western democracies must recognise that Hamas is not a legitimate interlocutor. It is a death cult masquerading as a resistance movement, and its tactics — starvation, human shields, hostage abuse — are those of terrorists who place no value on life. Every concession made to it, every pause in combat, is merely time bought for Hamas to dig more tunnels and prepare more propaganda.
Israel has a duty to protect its citizens, including those languishing in Gaza’s basements and tunnels. The Red Cross, whose neutrality is premised on access to all captives, must demand unconditional entry. And the West must stop lending moral cover to a group that parades cruelty before the cameras and calls it diplomacy.
Evyatar David, emaciated and forced to dig what he believes to be his own grave, is not just a victim of Hamas. He is a victim of the West’s failure to treat terror like the cancer it is. The world watched, again. The question is: will it act?
