“Pro-Palestinians” Are Condoning Atrocities and Inciting Genocide

Time to stop tolerating the intolerable.

Chanting “700,” pro-Palestinian activists in New York fete Hamas attack. (The Times of Israel, October 9, 2023)

To be “pro-Hamas”—or, for that matter, “pro-Palestinian”—means to be “pro” the ongoing atrocities and attempted atrocities.

On Thursday, Hamas handed over the bodies of Kfir, Ariel, and—ostensibly—Shiri Bibas, and Oded Lifshitz. Israel’s Abu Kabir Forensic Institute now reports that Kfir and Ariel were “brutally murdered” by their captors late in November 2023, the month following the kidnapping of all four of these people from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023. On that day of October 7, Ariel was four years old and Kfir was nine months old.

Hamas claimed in November 2023 that the Bibases were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Abu Kabir informs us that this is a fiction.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, spokesman of the Israel Defense Forces: “The terrorists did not shoot the two young boys—they killed them with their bare hands. Afterward, they committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities.”

The institute also found that the body of Shiri—the boys’ mother, kidnapped at age 32—was not in the coffin that bore her picture. Instead, the coffin held an unidentified Gazan woman. At the time of writing, Shiri’s fate is unknown. (See the update at the end of this article.)

The mother and the two boys were kidnapped, as footage from the event makes clear, not by trained Hamas terrorists but by a horde of Gazan civilians. In another clip, another horde can be seen carrying off, and pummeling, Yarden Bibas, husband of Shiri and father of the boys. As part of the current ongoing hostage deal, Yarden was freed on February 1.

As of November 2023, Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir were being held in Gaza by a small Salafi faction called Al-Mujahadeen. But before the coffins were handed over to Israel on Thursday, it was Hamas that displayed them on a stage to Gazan crowds in a “grotesque ceremony” with a “celebratory atmosphere.” Above the coffins was a photo of the three Bibases and Oded Lifshitz—kidnapped, then also murdered by Hamas that November at age 83. Above that was a hidedous banner showing Benjamin Netanyahu as a bloody-fanged vampire, reflecting the hideous mindset of those who concocted it and put it there.

Another news item from Thursday and Friday concerns an attempted, but failed, mass bus bombing in Israel that would have killed “hundreds of civilians.”

The Israeli security establishment’s initial assessment is that “the plan for the attack came from Iran, and was carried out by Hamas terrorists from the West Bank.” The mass murder was supposed to occur on Friday morning, but three of the bombs exploded prematurely on Thursday evening in parked, empty buses.

The current “pro-Hamas” and “pro-Palestinian” demonstrators on US campuses, in a Jewish New York City neighborhood, and elsewhere are in favor of all these outrages unless they publicly denounce and dissociate themselves from them—which, of course, they don’t. Presumably, neo-Nazi demonstrations would not be tolerated as these demonstrations often are. But Hamas, and Palestinian Arabs in general, are the same as neo-Nazis and Nazis in having a genocidal anti-Jewish ideology.

Since October 7, 2023, several articles have pointed out the intertwined relationship—indeed, the identity—between Hamas and the Gazan population. A particularly informative piece on that topic by Israeli journalist Nadav Shragai was posted in English translation on Thursday. On October 7 itself, Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank erupted in celebration. Surveys since that day have consistently shown large majorities of both Gaza and West Bank Palestinians endorsing the massacre.

Does this mean you should be “anti-Palestinian”? No; but being truly “pro-Palestinian” would mean making it conditional on their undergoing a comprehensive reform. If you’re “pro” the way they are at present, then you’re upholding hate and vicious aggression.

Having been living in Israel for 40 years, I won’t presume to say what the US and other Western countries should do about the “pro-Palestinians” now advocating and demonstrating in their midst. But if you’re capable of being horrified by the “brutal murder” of a four-year-old and a baby, among other atrocities and attempted atrocities, you shouldn’t regard such advocacy and demonstrations as acceptable.

Update, February 22: Shiri Bibas’s body has now been returned. She too was “brutally murdered,” along with her four-year-old and ten-month-old sons. Shiri’s parents, Yossi and Margit Silberman, were also murdered at Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7—three generations slain by savages. No “pro-Palestinian” has denounced or even criticized the atrocities, or dissociated him or herself from them.