On Tuesday, in reports that truly defied belief, we heard that
Hamas has beheaded babies.
A horrified i24NEWS journalist Nicole Zedeck told cameras near the Gaza Strip: 'I'm talking to some of the [Israeli] soldiers and they say what they've witnessed as they've been walking through these different houses... babies — their heads cut off. Families completely gunned down in their beds. This is nothing that anyone could ever have imagined.'
How is it that Hamas has defenders? How does barbarism have any place in our modern age? How could those who think the ‘Palestinian cause’ righteous ever defend this unprovoked carnage?
A post-Holocaust world that vowed ‘never again’ has, this weekend, witnessed Jews ripped from the safety of their homes and places of business.
Hamas is now threatening to
execute one hostage for every strike by Israel that comes without warning — executions they vow to film and release.
Who among us hasn’t heard the pleas of mothers, fathers, siblings, husbands and wives, begging for the safe return of their loved ones and felt their abject fear?
I think especially of the women and girls of Israel, going about their day as we might in the West, and try to conjure the surreality of being snatched by armed militants, beaten and stripped and made to walk through the streets while men spit and jeer, subjected to atrocities too obscene to print.
This is ISIS-level terror, moving from hard targets — planes, buildings, stadiums, subways — to a mass extinction event, innocent civilians picked off one-by-one.
The horrors accrue: A young Israeli couple managed to stash their 10-month-old twins in a hidden shelter before terrorists broke down their door and shot them to death, the babies miraculously surviving.
Blood-curdling
video of a terrified, weeping Shiri Silberman-Bibas and her babies — one aged 3, the other nine-months — being taken hostage at gunpoint.
The testimony of Gaya Kalderon, a 21-year-old student living in Tel Aviv, who told reporters that her entire family was abducted from Nir Oz in southern Israel.
‘I was terrified to wake up Saturday morning and receive messages like, “The terrorists are in my bedroom”, she said. ‘Now I can’t do anything.’
Her 16-year-old sister, father and 10-year-old brother were all taken.
How is it that Hamas has defenders? How does barbarism have any place in our modern age? A post-Holocaust world that vowed ‘never again’ has, this weekend, witnessed Jews ripped from the safety of their homes and places of business.
MAUREEN CALLAHAN: How in hell could anyone defend these monsters?