The Hostages, the Silence, and the World That Has Learned Nothing

There was a time, not too long ago, when the world also stood silent. A time when trains departed from European cities carrying men, women, and children to their deaths, and the world looked away. A time when gaunt faces and hollow eyes peered through barbed wire fences, and no one came. A time when leaders mumbled about moral dilemmas, when intellectuals debated the finer points of diplomacy, when governments promised they did not know enough—until the camps were opened and the truth, undeniable, stared back at them. By then, it was too late.

It is happening again.

The images of Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, and Andrey Kozlov should haunt the conscience of every leader, every journalist, every so-called humanitarian who dares to speak of ceasefires while these human skeletons emerge from Hamas’ underground hellholes. Their crime? Being Israeli. Their punishment? 490 days of starvation, torture, degradation. Their bodies, barely clinging to life, tell a story of horror that should have been met with a global outcry. And yet, just as before, the world is silent.

Not all silence is passive. Some silence is an active choice, a calculated political decision to look away, to pretend not to see. Some silence is complicity, the silence of the Red Cross that refuses to demand access to the hostages, the silence of the UN that does not convene emergency sessions to condemn Hamas’s war crimes, the silence of the human rights industry that has spent decades redefining victimhood to exclude Jews.

This is not just a moral failure. It is theatre, orchestrated to perfection, where the world plays its rehearsed role. UNRWA, the organisation that calls itself a humanitarian agency but is in reality Hamas’ most efficient tool, leads the act. The evidence is overwhelming, undeniable, written in the blood of its own victims. Its employees participated in the October 7th massacres, its facilities housed weapons, its textbooks incited genocide. A real humanitarian agency would have been shut down years ago. A real humanitarian agency would not operate as the logistical arm of jihadists. A real humanitarian agency would not demand more funding after it was exposed as an accomplice to mass murder.

Yet what does the West do? It debates whether to pause funding for a few months, issues grave statements of ‘concern’, and then, inevitably, restarts the flow of money. The same nations that would never tolerate this level of complicity from any other organisation—let alone one tied to terror—somehow make an exception for UNRWA. It is not humanitarian aid. It is the West’s protection money, paid in exchange for temporary illusions of peace, for quiet until the next war.

And then there is USAID, the benevolent face of Western charity, ensuring that even as Israel fights for survival, Hamas’ social services remain intact. Because, after all, what would Gaza be without Hamas in control? What would the United Nations do without an eternal Palestinian refugee crisis to justify its own bloated bureaucracy? If peace ever came, if UNRWA were ever dismantled, thousands of careers would vanish overnight. And so, the cycle must continue. The hostages must be forgotten. The terrorists must be excused. The machine must keep running.

This is not ignorance. It is by design.

How do we know? Because the same voices that remain silent about Hamas’ atrocities, that refuse to demand the unconditional release of hostages, suddenly find their tongues when it is time to condemn Israel. There are no calls for restraint when Hamas executes prisoners. No declarations of proportionality when Jewish bodies are paraded through Gaza. No impassioned speeches about international law when hostages are denied food, water, medical care.

No. The outrage is selective. The concern is conditional. The only war crimes that matter are the ones they can falsely attribute to Israel. The only human rights violations worth investigating are the ones that fit the pre-written script, where Israel is the villain and Hamas—the child-murdering, hostage-taking, rocket-firing terror regime—is somehow cast as the aggrieved party.

It must end.

Hamas must be destroyed. Not negotiated with. Not accommodated. Not allowed to ‘govern’ under another diplomatic fiction that will only ensure it re-emerges stronger.

UNRWA must be dismantled. Not suspended. Not restructured. Not given yet another chance to prove that it is anything other than what it has always been: a front for terror, a lifeline for jihadists, the world’s most well-funded antisemitic institution.

The hostages must come home. Not in exchange for Hamas prisoners who will only return to kill again. Not through deals that strengthen the very system that allowed this atrocity to happen. But through the complete, total, and irreversible defeat of the forces that took them.

To those who still hesitate, to those who still speak of dialogue, of coexistence, of reconciliation: What part of 490 days of starvation and torture do you not understand?

The world is being tested, again. This time, there are no trains. No camps. No excuses of ignorance. There is only the choice: to stand against Hamas and those who sustain it, or to stand by and do nothing.

History is watching. And it will remember.