Open Letter to Save the Children

Dear Janit Soeropto –

I hope you and your family are doing well.

We are not. We have been living in horror since witnessing the Oct 7th massacre breaking the ceasefire that was in place. Forensics teams reported that Hamas terrorists split open pregnant women and beheaded their babies, tied parents to their children, and burned them alive, baked a baby in an oven to scream as their mother was raped, and we saw corpses dragged through streets of Gaza, spit on and candies handed out in celebration.

These souls are our brothers and sisters.

Now we wait anxiously for the return of the captives, perhaps as many as 240, possibly more, thirty or so children, including infants. As reports that deal to release the children materialize, we wait in agony.

Witnessing this horror sent me into a state of shock for weeks. My mother, herself a refugee from an Iraq ethnically cleansed of Jews retriggered the generational trauma that lives in me, and many other Jews.

Shockingly, as we grieve this horror, we were immediately bombarded with pro-Hamas cheers of support and hateful anti-Semitic chants across the world, in major western capitals. Protestors brandished swastikas, holding signs like “cleanse the world of Jews”. I do not know how much of this is coming across your screen, but as an social justice advocate, I invite you to get engaged.

The threat of violence, and violence against the Jewish community is frightening and real, not imagined.  Many Hamas supporters surprisingly say that this a proper response to an occupation. And rationalize that raping little girls, abducting paraplegics, and murdering babies is what it takes to liberate Palestine.

Even though Hamas has been public about their massacre, proudly releasing go-pro-videos of its terror, and WhatsApp videos recordings of young men calling their parents to boast and celebrate murder, Palestinian apologists claim that these acts are fabricated, see Yale’s student newspaper and Hanan Ashrawi on television.

In this narrative, Jews are the oppressors and deserving of retribution. Never mind that Hamas that has had autonomy for a decade and half, received billions in aid, only to neglect her people and enrich her leaders.

Videos show Hamas military infrastructure embedded in schools and amusement parks – with the express intent of maximizing the civilian body count for the purpose of drawing our sympathy. Hamas grooms young children to enlist as sacrificial soldiers in their unholy war attempting to destroy the only Jewish state. Weapons caches and rocket launch sites have been uncovered within meters of playgrounds and hospitals. Where is your outrage?

Failure to condemn Hamas, incentivizes Hamas to hide among children.

These facts are muffled as Hamas controls what information leaves Gaza. Using carrots and sticks in the form of jobs and violence, they control what we see. In such an environment, how can anyone discern fact from fiction?

Your operatives in Gaza are likely facing these same circumstances and are either Hamas sympathizers, or fear reprisal. Is Save the Children aware of this?

Regardless, the public is misled.

To date, Save the Children’s Twitter has said little to nothing about the children that Hamas  killed, beheaded or kidnapped. Your organization made a generic rejection of violence on Oct 8^th – following the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, was silent for several more days, and chimed in a few days later with a valid concern over escalation.

Once the IDF began its response to Hamas-ISIS, Save the Children worried, as we all have, about the fate of Gaza’s children. Still, I do not see any mention of Hamas, nor condemning their recruitment of child soldiers, no mention of Israeli children being held, nor calls for their release. Not once is there any protest of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli children, their displacement, mental health and safety.

Save the Children continues to parrot Hamas’ Health ministry for the death count. A number conflated, making no distinction of combatant and civilian, counts combatants under the age of eighteen as children, and includes people Hamas killed (some, prevented from fleeing, or errant fire).

Since when did a terror group become a reliable source?

This is like quoting Goebbels.

Obscuring Hamas’s brutal tactics creates the impression that Israel is the cause of child suffering in Gaza. Their goal is to dehumanize the Jewish state as blood thirsty monsters to justify a genocide they openly wish for.

We’ve seen this movie before. The Holocaust too was preceded by this same campaign that propagated the idea the Jews were the source of suffering. Useful idiots promoted this propaganda creating the mental framework the Nazi used to perpetrate genocide against us 80 years ago.

Today this idea spreads across universities, media and NGOs, like Save the Children, putting Jewish safety in America under threat resulting in a 400% spike in anti-Semitic attacks in the US alone.

I don’t just fear for my safety, I also fear for the safety and wellbeing of Palestinian children. I am overwhelmed by the grief of this tragedy and loss of Palestinian life. No suffering is ok.

As you plead for a ceasefire and an increase in aid, I ask that you recommit to your mission of promoting human rights, and child safety, ensuring that “children… everywhere are protected” – including the safe return of Israeli child hostages, the wellbeing of Israeli children, including those displaced, and hold Hamas accountable for her war crimes against Palestinians and Israeli children.