A healthy society embraces life.
A sick society worships death.
How does one adequately mourn a baby of barely 9 months, who was just beginning to crawl and eat solid food? How does one mourn a 4-year-old who loved Batman and had sparkling eyes that carried with them an intense thirst for knowledge? Or a terrified mother who would do anything to shield and protect her children?
Why has the world forgotten about the babies burned in ovens in front of their parents on Oct. 7, 2023? Or about parents brutally executed in front of their children?
What does this say about our world that their posters are not ubiquitous? What does this tell us about our civilization when the sympathizers of Hamas talk about our “settler-colonialism,” “open-air prison,” “occupation” and “resistance”?
We know these are all words to conceal a Nazi-like hatred that indoctrinates young Palestinian Arab children to grow up to want to strangle young Israeli Jewish children with their bare hands.
We remember the Gaza disengagement plan of 2005, when many Jewish organizations had convinced themselves that the coastal enclave was going to become “the Singapore of the Middle East.” And we remember the elections on Feb. 20, 2006, which resulted in the rise of the now-deceased Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh, and then the 2007 coup in Gaza, where non-Hamas members were thrown off of rooftops.
We recall the delusion that led up to it with the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, when much of the world, including many Jews who were naive, felt that whitewashing and venerating a master terrorist, PLO chief Yasser Arafat, would somehow lead to peace.
We saw the hubris that the Israeli army and intelligence services had prior to Oct. 7, when they dismissed reports of what looked like military drills in Gaza—reports that came from mostly female spotters. Many of those women were brutally murdered as a result.
How does one countenance the years since the “pay for slay” program was unveiled by the Palestinian Authority, paying out approximately $300 million annually to the families of “martyrs” and “prisoners” who have murdered or attempted to murder Jews? How does the world countenance the sleight-of-hand that the P.A. has just established, where they purport to have eliminated this fund but have simply transferred payments under another name, “The Palestinian National Foundation for Economic Empowerment”?
How has the world allowed Hamas fighters to hide behind their own civilians in hospitals, mosques and schools supported by the United Nations? Why has the international community countenanced for decades that so many employees associated with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) are simultaneously affiliated with Hamas?
Why have we been speaking about the hate education that Palestinian children have been receiving from UNRWA schools and textbooks for 32 years and have been summarily dismissed? Why has the P.A. been showing the toxic messaging from the Palestinian version of “Sesame Street,” where these young children have been indoctrinated for a generation-plus that Jews are evil?
Why are terrorists convicted of multiple life sentences being released from Israeli prisons, some as millionaires?
Why are the people of Gaza, and Judea and Samaria, erupting in gleeful celebrations when murderers, such as Ahmed Barghouti, operational commander for the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, have been serving 13 life sentences in Israel for multiple involvement in terror attacks in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem; Kahlil Jabarin, who fatally stabbed Ari Fuld, a 45-year-old father of four at the Gush Etzion junction in 2018; Zakaria Zubeidi, a former commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, and Iryad Jaradat and Ahmad Dahari of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who have planned and executed multiple terrorist attacks?
Why are young children dressed up in the fatigues of Hamas, and taught to emulate and honor these mass murderers as exalted heroes?
Why have we allowed this to fester for 32 years since the signing of the Oslo Accords?
It has been difficult to witness the disproportionate formulation of this deal, but we know we have had no choice but to try to get every single hostage out of the nightmarish hell of the subterranean tunnels lying beneath the dirt of Gaza.
We send our young men and women into battle with the knowledge that no one will be left behind.
A healthy society embraces and loves life. A sick society embraces and worships death.
This week, Jews around the world had to go to sleep with the images of two beautiful redheaded children—Kfir and Ariel Bibas—and their mother, Shiri, in the forefront of their minds.
Let them never be forgotten.
Sarah N. Stern is the founder and president of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), a think tank that specializes in the Middle East. She is the author of “Saudi Arabia and the Global Terrorist Network” (2011).
