Israeli soldiers up north near the border with Lebanon, July 10, 2025. Photo courtesy of Ayal Margolin/Flash90.

By MITCHELL BARD

One day, religious scholars may study the fate of the indigenous people of the Land of Israel and how, like the Native Americans of North America, the Jews were exterminated. The epitaph might read: They displayed greater morality than their enemies.

For nearly two years now, Israeli hostages have been starved in the neighboring Gaza Strip. Where were the NGOs? How many demanded that food be delivered to the captives, held for nearly two years now, ever since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks and massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023?

Double Standards

There were no pictures of emaciated Jews to splash on the front page of The New York Times to attract sympathy. Last week, there was indeed such a photo, but did you see it on the cover? Yes, if you read the New York Post. What if such images had shown Palestinian civilians? Would they not have been plastered across every outlet with captions accusing Israel of war crimes?

How many foreign countries and NGOs have contributed to the victims of Oct. 7 or the families of the hostages? Is the United Nations rebuilding homes in the kibbutzim that were razed? Are Doctors Without Borders tending to the Israeli women and girls who were raped, or the kids who saw their parents slaughtered in their homes? The International Red Cross, tasked with protecting hostages, has done nothing more than be complicit in the Hamas propaganda shows when some were released.

We all saw the footage: a skeletal Israeli hostage being handed a can of food by a Hamas terrorist whose arm did not match the emaciated one of 24-year-old Evyatar David. That single image said everything: Israel doesn’t starve Gazans. Hamas does. If Hamas is not stealing food, as Israel insists and NGOs deny, then why did the terrorist in the video look well-fed?

Different View

I wonder how many Jews would have advocated feeding German civilians during World War II if they’d seen pictures of starving children. Would they have called it “justice”? By self-flagellating, some Jews believe that the world will stop blaming Israel for starving Palestinians or at least not attribute such cruelty to “the Jews.” Maybe they’ll also stop blaming the Jews for killing Jesus, too.

Indicative of the chasm between the views of Israeli and diaspora Jews, the latest Israeli Democracy Institute poll found that only 7% of Israeli Jews are “very troubled “ by reports of famine and Palestinian suffering.

Yes, everyone should let their conscience be their guide. But should anyone be surprised if the Jewish state ignores the non-Jewish (and sadly, sometimes Jewish) diaspora? Israelis did not elect foreign Jews to speak for them, and they do not feel responsible for assuaging their guilty feelings. Israelis haven’t been silent about humanitarian needs in Gaza; they just have a better understanding of their neighbor.

“Not every Palestinian is a terrorist,” moralists intone. True, but how many Gaza civilians participated in the massacre on Oct. 7? When the frightened and injured hostages were brought into the Strip, did the masses help or beat them? When hostages were paraded in stage-managed releases, did the crowd offer comfort or hurl abuse? How many civilians hid these captives in their homes, making them work in their households or abusing them in other ways?

Polls over the years reveal overwhelming support for “armed struggle” and Hamas’s goals. The mastermind of the massacre would have been elected president if elections had been held. After Oct. 7, Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank celebrated.

Is It Reasonable?

The footage of the hostages should have driven one truth home: If the roles were reversed, the Palestinians would not feed a starving Jew. Watch the videos of young Palestinians at summer camp being trained to kidnap Israelis and slit their throats. Read the Hamas Charter and look at the Palestinian maps where Israel is replaced with Palestine. The rhetorical recognition of a Palestinian state by the fools in Whitehall and the Élysée Palace will not lead to independence, only a reinforcement of the terrorist belief that they can achieve their goals through violence. The two-state crowd may delude themselves, but Palestinians would slaughter every man, woman and child in Israel if given the opportunity.

What about those former Israeli security officials who call for an end to the war? They have gravitas. They have voted, served and sacrificed. They should be taken seriously; however, like everyone who wants the war to stop, they don’t offer any reason why Hamas will release the hostages. If Jerusalem withdrew every soldier tomorrow, is there any reason to believe the hostages would be freed? Israel’s leverage would be gone. Even if Israel accepted a deal, why would the terrorists holding the soldiers let them go, knowing that Israel will kill them immediately afterward? Israel might get some of the hostages and bodies returned; is that worth the cost of leaving others behind? This would mean that no more soldiers would die for what the former officials say is little gain. Israelis, not diaspora Jews, must decide.

Don’t Forget!

Most of the hostages are barely clinging to life. The footage confirms what many feared: Time is not on their side. Every moment spent “consulting” or waiting for the next round of negotiations is a death sentence. Hamas knows this. And yet, the Israeli delegation keeps shuttling in and out of Cairo and Doha as if they’re discussing tariffs, not human lives.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that more pressure will bring the hostages home, as if the Israel Defense Forces have been waltzing around Gaza for nearly two years. He’ll never admit that he was wrong. Even if the Israeli military rescued the hostages tomorrow, most would be corpses.

Now, reportedly, Netanyahu has decided on the reoccupation of the coastal enclave. Critics of disengagement forget that when Israel controlled Gaza, Israelis weren’t secure. To the contrary, Israeli forces had to defend the 9,000 settlers from terrorist threats every day. Between September 2004 and August 2005, some 500 rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel. On the eve of the Sukkot holiday on Sept. 29, 2004, two Israeli children, ages 2 and 4, were murdered by a Kassam rocket fired at their home in southern Israel by Hamas terrorists.

As is too often the case, Israel has no good options—certainly, none that will satisfy the hordes of critics who would act no differently if put in a similar situation.

Morality Moment

Eventually, Gaza will be rebuilt. Billions will pour in. But just like after 2014 or 2009 or 2005, the concrete won’t go to schools or hospitals. It will go to constructing tunnels. The Islamic extremists there—whether Hamas or Sons of Hamas—and in the West Bank will not be concerned with infrastructure or improving the welfare of their fellow Palestinians. They will simply resume planning the Final Solution to the Jews of Israel.

What will diaspora Jews do then? Will maintaining the moral high ground save them from those who believe their god sanctifies the slaughter of Jews?

The Jewish epitaph may read: “We were more moral than our enemies.”

But let’s pray it doesn’t also say: “And so, we died.”