Dark heart of Gaza goes far deeper than West realised

As the freed Israeli hostages tell the world about their horror stories of their time in captivity, it’s clear there are few truly innocent civilians.

Shiri Bibas, 32, and her children nine-month-old Kfir and four-year-old Ariel were taken hostage in the October 7 attacks in 2023.

Freed hostage Yarden Bibas was kept in a cage underground. Like some kind of animal, he was shackled and caged in one of Hamas’s many terror tunnels. Infrastructure built on the ignorance of the West, paid for with billions in stolen foreign aid.

Yarden was starved. Kept alone. Taunted regularly about the fate of his wife, Shiri, and their two small boys.

Others now freed from Hamas captivity have testified that to shut him up, Hamas first told Yarden that his wife and children were alive and in Tel Aviv. His captors tried to force one hostage to tell him that Shiri and the children were dead. After she refused, they coerced someone else and he told him, leading to Yarden’s emotional breakdown, which was then filmed and used as a propaganda video.

It is the very depth of human depravity. And in terms of the detail of the past 15 months, we are only just scratching the surface.

Let me repeat this. Yarden and other hostages were kept in cages. Reading that, my chest tightened. Cages. A favoured tool of Islamic terrorists.

In 2015, ISIS filmed the killing of a captured Jordanian pilot. He was placed in a cage and set on fire. That same year in Nineveh, northern Iraq, five men were placed in a cage that was then lowed via crane into a lake.

A man purported to be ISIS captive Muath al-Kasasbeh, a Jordanian pilot, is seen standing in a cage as he meets his grisly end. Picture: SITE Intelligence Group

These horrific, terrifying murders were filmed and of course then broadcast to the world. Terror is their currency.

It’s true, Hamas is ISIS. It’s true, Hamas is still in control of the Gaza Strip. It still has the overwhelming support of two million Gazans. I’ve seen no evidence to the contrary.

With all the atrocities Hamas has committed, self-documented, all the horrors, of all the lies it has told, all the evil it has employed and deployed, with all the words written about Gazans deserving freedom, the images, footage and interviews coming out of Gaza since the ceasefire began two weeks ago show a strong and continued alignment.

I have watched, in dismay to be honest, interview after interview of Gazan civilians – men and women – proudly boasting of some kind of “victory”, and that the next step is to wipe out Israel.

Many stared defiantly into the cameras, boasting about how they hid hostages themselves. These innocent civilians.

Returned hostage Liri Albag was filmed, pale and swollen, wearing an ill-fitting pretend uniform and what looked like a dog collar in a Hamas propaganda video released on January 5. After 15 months as a hostage, she has told the world there are no innocent Gazans.

“Dad, there are two million terrorists there, make no mistake. I sat with children aged eight and four who were cursing the Jews.”

Is this a people radicalised ­beyond redemption?

Is it a case, as journalist Douglas Murray has theorised, that in the 18 years since Hamas took control of Gaza, it created a generation, a people lost in sociopathy. A cult so deeply rooted in hatred that it cannot divorce itself from a fundamentalist identity whose sole reason for existing is the destruction of the Jews.

So, what of it, Australia? As the post-ceasefire environment and its challenges begin to dominate the central point of focus for countries in the West, the conversation about what is a stark and obvious clash of values must be an honest one.

Our government has said Hamas can have no role in a ­future Gaza. This is obvious and true.

But for now, at least, it may as well be saying Gazans can play no role.

Does the West think Hamas is going to politely step aside? Do they think Gazans are going to say: “Yes, you’re right, countries with Judeo-Christian values. We shall assimilate.”

Remember, not a single country in the Arab League will take Gazan refugees. Since this war began, Egypt has kept its border with Gaza sealed tight.

I write this, of course, as the daughter of a migrant. Our family, like many of yours, proudly made Australian values our own, without abandoning our Italian heritage.

Not a single statement from Penny Wong or Anthony Albanese has acknowledged a clash of cultures. They were so quick to tell Israel, a sovereign nation, to ease up as its citizens were being slaughtered, abducted and held in underground cages.

The more we learn about the hostage experience, the more ashamed of our ignorant government I become. They cannot bring themselves to admit that some cultures and values are not aligned with our own.

Here’s a simple example. In Iraq, as of January 21, it is legal for a man to marry a nine-year-old girl. Let’s reframe this: government-sanctioned child rape under the guise of “religious custom” is now legal in Iraq. The country’s religious authorities have the power to rule on family affairs including the marrying of children. This cultural norm is ­incompatible with Australia’s values. If you disagree, thanks for self-identifying as someone who should be deported.

The Hamas charter is quite specific around its view on women. Article 17 specifies that the primary role of women is to “manufacture men”. Gazan women have one of the lowest ­labour market participation rates in the world, at about 22 per cent; the global average is 50 per cent.

None of these are observations about race or nationality; they are about culturally accepted norms, and it is relevant because Hamas “governs” Gaza, and too few have been clear-eyed about what this means for the ­future there, and for any refugees our government might wish to welcome.

Back to Yarden Bibas. In a statement this week his family said he is constantly asking where his wife and children are. They have no answers.

Yarden Bibas with his son Kfir, the youngest hostage taken in the October 7 attacks in 2023.

Someone knows where Shiri and her babies are. The picture of Shiri, holding Kfir and Ariel close to her chest, a look of utter terror on her face as they’re dragged from their home at Nir Oz that morning; I’ve seen it a hundred times, maybe more. But this week, as I was doom-scrolling looking for updates on their fate, I noticed the way baby Kfir’s hand is clutching at his mother’s neckline. He’s held tight against her chest. Such an intimate, precious thing for a baby to do speaks to a sense of comfort and security. His little hand, clutching at his mum, Shiri’s face contorted in terror. A heart-rending juxtaposition.

I feel that something about their fate seals our own. Morally, I mean. The fact no country acted to secure their immediate release. The fact that the Biden administration, the British government and our own didn’t have the political will or capital to secure their release. It speaks to the extent of our own moral ­demise – our pathetic weakness.

Australia is one of the few governments to have opened its doors to Gazan refugees. If and how well they have been vetted remains murky. Again, no Arab nations will accept them. Broadly, the region wants to go forward and without conflict. The Abraham Accords (legacy of Donald Trump’s first term in office) speak to this, as does this week’s announcement of $US10bn worth of trade and strategic deals between Italy and Saudi Arabia.

The challenges are legion. DeNazification of Germany took years after World War II. Even though most Germans were done with Hitler’s Third Reich by this time, nearly 10 million Nazis remained among a population of 70 million. The danger was they would regroup and re-emerge.

History remains the very best of teachers, and the world, especially Australia’s government, would be wise to study hard.