Why would Hamas feel confident enough to release such unambiguous evidence of its own depravity? The answer is as simple as it is damning: because they’ve learned they can get away with it
August 4, 2025 15:23
Western newspapers and television screens recently filled with images of two emaciated Palestinian children, presented as proof that Israel is starving Gaza. Yet both were later revealed to suffer from pre-existing muscular diseases. Corrections adding that critical context – where they appeared at all – were buried in small print, long after the damage was done.
Now contrast that with the world’s reaction to the latest grotesque propaganda released by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad: videos of two skeletal Israeli hostages. One is shown digging his own grave in a tunnel. These images were not splashed across front pages. There were no breathless panel discussions. It took days for many outlets even to report them – and with none of the intensity that attended far shakier claims about Israel.
These hostages – emaciated, brutalised, traumatised after 668 days in subterranean hell – simply don’t fit the narrative that much of the media, NGOs, and even some Western governments have spent the past 22 months carefully constructing. In this script, Israel – the victim of a genocidal assault – is recast as its perpetrator. Focusing too much on the fact that the only adults in Gaza showing signs of forced starvation are Israelis would obviously ruin that narrative.
The hostage videos were clearly calculated to torment Israeli families and pressure the Israeli government. But they also raise a deeper question: why would Hamas feel confident enough to release such unambiguous evidence of its own depravity? Why weren’t they worried it might relieve pressure on Israel?
The answer is as simple as it is damning: because they’ve learned they can get away with it. From the live-streamed atrocities of October 7 to the looting of aid and abuse of their own population, Hamas has discovered that neither their crimes, Israeli suffering nor the truth carries much weight in the West. At the extremes, Hamas’s atrocities have been openly celebrated. In the mainstream, the massacres have long faded from memory, and the aid theft, oppression of their own population, use of human shields, and other crimes are being ignored, denied, and now even perversely rewarded.
Recognition of a Palestinian state, once unthinkable without a negotiated settlement, has turned into a diplomatic free-for-all. Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad put it bluntly on Al Jazeera: “Why are all the countries recognising a Palestinian state today? Before October 7, did any country dare recognise a Palestinian state?” He’s unfortunately right.
Some European leaders did finally condemn the abuse of the emaciated Israeli hostages over the weekend, calling for their release. Germany’s chancellor offered a strategy of how to get there, insisting that any ceasefire must be conditional on the hostages’ release. The rest refrained from spelling out any consequences for Hamas if it didn’t free the captives.
They echoed Israel’s long-held view that Hamas must be disarmed and excluded from Gaza’s future. But again, how that is to be achieved without miliary pressure, they did not say. How the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state – a move that has visibly hardened Hamas’s position – helps that goal, they did not say.
Meanwhile, the food crisis in Gaza continues to be cynically weaponised to reinforce the anti-Israel narrative. Yes, Jerusalem has made mistakes. But it alone is blamed, while Hamas’s theft is either downplayed or denied. Media outlets quote anonymous UN sources claiming Hamas isn’t stealing aid, while ignoring both video evidence and the UN’s own data that say otherwise.
According to the UN-2720 dashboard, between 19 May and 1 August, 2,010 aid trucks entered Gaza. Only 260 reached their intended destinations. The rest were intercepted “either peacefully by hungry people or forcefully by armed actors.” Yet the UN continues to contradict its own numbers in public, directing all criticism at Israel. There’s a curious lack of journalistic curiosity about these UN data.
Most Western governments, including our own, display the same wilful blindness. Germany, though, has publicly acknowledged Hamas’s role in aid theft. “The federal government is expressing concern about information indicating that large quantities of aid supplies are being withheld by Hamas and criminal organisations,” it said.
The Western media have also largely ignored the fact that thousands of pallets of food sat uncollected on the Gazan side of the border while Israel was accused of blocking aid. Only after Israel publicly exposed the scandal did the UN scramble to begin distribution. That story, too, should have made global headlines – or at least invited journalistic scrutiny. Instead: silence.
We are living through a moral inversion. Israel is vilified for fighting a war it did not start, and for 20 years did everything possible to avoid – so much so that it may even have contributed to the catastrophic intelligence failure of October 7.
For much of the West, Israelis don’t count. And increasingly, neither does the truth.
