There are moments in human history when evil announces itself so clearly, so vividly, that silence becomes impossible. Or so one might think.
On February 22, 2025, Hamas released six Israeli hostages, among them Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed—two mentally disabled men who had spent a decade in captivity. But this was no act of mercy; it was theatre of the grotesque, designed specifically to humiliate. The hostages were marched through jeering crowds, including children, their dignity systematically dismantled for propaganda. These images—captured, circulated, consumed—were eerily reminiscent of darker moments from humanity’s recent past, a stark reminder that hatred still thrives, particularly against Jews.
Just days before this spectacle, Hamas had committed an atrocity even more appalling. Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, were returned to their homeland—but not alive. Instead, they arrived in locked coffins, without keys, deliberately sealed to maximize anguish. Their bodies bore the unmistakable marks of brutality, killed not by the impersonal distance of a bullet, but by terrorists’ own hands. And when Hamas initially sent the wrong body instead of Shiri’s, it was not incompetence—it was cruelty layered upon cruelty, a final mockery of dignity itself.
Then came last night, when Hamas escalated their dark theater further, releasing a video featuring two young hostages, Evitar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, both only 23. They were paraded at the hostage-release ceremony solely to torment them. The Red Cross representatives, standing just feet away, said nothing, did nothing, choosing instead silent complicity in the face of inhumanity.
Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa Dalal
And yet, perhaps the most troubling part of this tragedy isn’t only Hamas’s brutality; it’s the global silence that has followed. While millions around the world passionately marched against military operations in Rafah, chanting “All Eyes on Rafah,” there was barely a murmur of outrage for Shiri, Ariel, Kfir, Evitar, or Guy. This absence of empathy is not an oversight—it’s evidence of a chilling truth: atrocities against Jews have somehow become normalized, easier to ignore, dismiss, or rationalise.
Consider Avera Mengistu’s story—3,821 days spent in isolation, each one an eternity of deprivation and humiliation. Here was a man struggling with mental illness, stripped of dignity, paraded like a trophy. Or Omer Shem Tov, another hostage released, forced at gunpoint to kiss the heads of his captors—an image meticulously designed to degrade, to diminish. Each humiliating photograph, each viral video released by Hamas, quietly erodes the world’s capacity for outrage, gradually numbing the collective conscience until violence becomes routine.
But this cruelty is not random. It is calculated, precise. Hamas understands the power of desensitisation. They know that every unanswered atrocity shifts humanity’s moral baseline downward, normalizing barbarism.
The silence of the world in response is not neutrality—it is complicity. When atrocities against Jews elicit only passive indifference, they encourage more brutality. When protests erupt worldwide over justified military actions, yet remain silent about slaughtered children, it creates an unmistakable double standard, one that implicitly declares Jewish lives less worthy of global empathy.
“Never Again”—a solemn vow forged from the ashes of the Holocaust—once seemed immutable. Yet, as atrocities against Jews grow more grotesque and are met only with deafening silence, one wonders if “Never Again” was ever more than mere words, comforting yet hollow, easily forgotten when the victims become inconvenient.
We cannot allow humanity’s moral compass to be reset in the face of such brutality.
Silence is complicity; indifference is enabling. As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel famously said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
We owe it to Avera Mengistu, to Shiri Bibas, to Ariel and Kfir, to Evitar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal—to every victim of this unimaginable cruelty—to speak loudly, clearly, and urgently.
Because if Jewish dignity is negotiable, if atrocities reminiscent of our darkest past provoke no global outrage, then “Never Again” isn’t just a broken promise—it’s a devastating lie.
