Hamas’ new crime against family, amplifying suffering and trauma, is beyond evil
The images of Naama Levy being dragged into Gaza on October 7 have haunted me. But there is another photo that points to an atrocity we must call for what it is.
Naama Levy was held underground, isolated in terror tunnels for so long during her time as a hostage that when she finally emerged, she questioned whether she was alive.
The images of Naama being dragged into Gaza on October 7, 2023, have haunted me, if I’m honest. As a woman, as a human.
Her ankles are cut and bleeding. There’s blood, too, on the bottoms of her pyjama pants that speaks to the unthinkable. Her dirty, bleeding hands are bound behind her back as a Palestinian terrorist shoves her into the back of a small, black SUV. In other images, this armed barbarian gloats over her as if she’s some kind of trophy.
His name was Muhammad Abu Aseed, and he’s dead now. Aseed was taken out by the IDF several months after October 7. He’s dead and Naama and her friends are alive, finally home after being released in what can only be described as a Hunger Games-style ceremony of sorts that Hamas staged in the centre of Gaza.
It looked like Terrorism, the Musical. Brought to you by a deranged death cult, proudly sponsored by the UN and the Red Cross, complete with a rather fancy-looking stage and set, music, and one especially bizarre moment in which a woman gently throws what looks like confetti on the heads of masked Hamas henchman.
The four young women, Naama, Daniella Gilboa, Karina Ariev and Liri Albag wore ill-fitting khaki outfits that looked as if they were bought on Alibaba.com. It was stage-managed insanity. In responding to criticism of its role in the spectacle, the Red Cross has said it does not control what happens. A great time to remind everyone that during the Holocaust, a letter from the Red Cross after an inspection of Auschwitz in 1944 “was not able to discover any trace of installations for exterminating civilian prisoners”. The same Red Cross that did not visit a single hostage taken on October 7.
Late in the week, more hostages were freed. Agam Berger, 20, Gadi Mozes, who is 80, and Arbel Yehoud, 29. Along with them, five Thai workers also taken hostages. The fullness of what they have endured won’t be known for some time and, of course, the question we are all asking: Where is the Bibas family? Shiri, Yarden, Ariel and Kfir. What of their fate?
If anything has pointed to the grotesque failure of the international community during this war, it’s that nobody in power in the Biden administration, the UK, here in Australia, nobody cared enough to secure their release. Remember, 82 hostages were released in November 2023 as part of an initial ceasefire. Why did nobody demand those babies were among them? Kfir was just nine months old. He was probably still being breastfed.
If there’s one thing the arrival of the Trump administration has proven without any doubt, it’s that it is possible to force a deal. It was possible all along. All it took was strength. Alas, there was none to be found. Only simpering apologists, too scared to stand up to evil and say: “Nothing happens until those babies are freed.”
Were the Bibas family taken at random, or where they targeted? On December 18, the day I flew from Sydney to Tel Aviv, a report was published that points to the latter. It identifies a systemic pattern in which families were targeted in the murderous onslaught, and has given it a name: kinocide.
Researchers at the non-profit Dovra Institute for Gender and Sustainability studies were the first in the world to identify the sexual brutalisation of women that is now the hallmark of Hamas’s atrocities. Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy is an expert in international law who is globally known for her work in gender equity and human rights. She is also the founder and chair of the Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas against Women, Children and Families.
The study is entitled: Kinocide: The Weaponisation of Families, and Dr Elkayam-Levy has described this work as the most traumatising she has ever been involved in.
It took researchers months of harrowing, detailed documenting and capturing of evidence and testimony (a good deal of which came from Hamas itself), the results of which identified a clear and deliberate pattern. Parents mutilated and or executed in front of their children; children abducted in front of their siblings; homes torched, with families still inside; the deliberate separation of families during and post-abduction.
The researchers believe this was a calculated, strategic assault on the concept of family, via acts that were not just about killing, but about shattering the very bonds that bind us. To amplify and magnify suffering and trauma.
For what are clearly my many and varied sins, I have read this report. All 79 pages of it. I got up from my desk and walked away, multiple times. The testimony, it’s too much. It’s too much.
“I see (my sons) in their underwear, bloodied from head to toe. I wouldn’t wish upon any mother to see her children in that condition …Koren looks at me and says, ‘Mom … Dad is dead. They killed Dad. Dad is dead. Why didn’t they kill me? Why didn’t they kill me?’ ”
“The terrorists opened the doors, shot, and threw in a grenade that exploded. The last thing my dad said was that he lost his arm, and then my mom died on top of me … I just stopped my breathing and lowered it down as much as I possibly could. I didn’t move. I was terrified, and I didn’t make any noise … And I prayed for any God, I didn’t really care which God. I just prayed for a God that they won’t find me.”
Page after page of meticulously captured evidence. Fathers, mothers, siblings, and grandparents, systematically killed, brutalised, maimed or injured in front of one another, a pattern documented in at least 10 different communities.
Reading through it, it’s very clear that this is more than just a chronicle of evil, a ledger of the unspeakable acts that were committed. It is, in the authors’ words, a call to action, demanding that kinocide be recognised as a unique crime, born of a unique evil.
Some of you have said to me over the past year, what of the children in Gaza. Indeed, what of them. The harm done to them; the children killed in this conflict? Devastating. Their blood is on the hands of Hamas. Hamas doesn’t get to start a war, rain hell down upon Israel, then play the victim when it is forced to pay the price.
Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel said this: “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
I’ve been to Nir Oz, where the Bibas family home sits quietly in ruins. The children’s toys are strewn across the lawn. There’s a beautiful, shady mature tree in the front yard. The Hamas video of a terrified Shiri, clutching her babies, trying desperately to shield them as they’re dragged off into Gaza, simply for being Jewish? I’ve stood where that was filmed. Closed my eyes. Tried to imagine what it was like for her. I feel the whole world is waiting with held breath to learn of their fate. It’s too much, too much.
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