It feels like a moral injury, the screaming double standard world leaders apply to Israel and Ukraine

While disdain for US President Trump finally motivates European leaders to address the scourge of Putin, these same leaders have criticised Israel for defending itself just as Ukraine is trying to do. It shouldn’t be one or the other, it should be both.

Emily Damari underwent corrective surgery this week after being among the first hostages to be released by Hamas. Picture: AFP

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Two months into 2025 and one thing has become very clear to me. The world as we know it has been tipped on its head. When I say “the world”, I don’t just mean the tangibles: the alliances, the structures and guardrails we have relied upon, consciously or otherwise. I mean the political systems. The values. The things unspoken that have underpinned who we are and how we view life. Truthfully? This tipping has been in motion slowly, by degrees, and in plain sight for some time. The rules are broken, all bets are off.

Two unrelated sets of circumstances on opposite sides of the world this week landed me in this place. Watching them unfold in parallel delivered a moment of clarity, wrapped in a indignant rage, if I’m honest.

Emily Damari, who was shot at the Kfar Aza kibbutz on October 7, 2023, before being taken hostage by Hamas.

First, freed hostage Emily Damari had surgery this week. You might be familiar with her story. I bet many would recognise her broad smile, dark cascading wavy hair and the mangled left hand missing two middle fingers that has become an unintentional symbol of defiance and survival around the world. Damari was shot at close range by Hamas while being taken hostage on October 7, 2023, from the Kfar Aza kibbutz in southern ­Israel. I’ve been there. It was a grey and joyless day. So close to Gaza you can see it from the fences that failed to protect that community from near-annihilation.

The year 2023. So long ago. So many hostage murders ago. Oceans of global hypocrisy ago.

This week I read about Emily Damari and what happened to her when she was taken to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza in the days following her abduction, just as I have read about the other hostages and what Hamas did to them. Just as I have pored over pages of evidence and first-hand testimony of sexual brutality the likes of which is barely comprehensible. Just as I have watched Western democracies stand by and do nothing to aid Israel and nothing to help free the living or bring back the dead.

Damari tells of how she was shot in her left hand and right leg trying to protect her dog, which Hamas slaughtered regardless.

Before her “surgery” in Gaza, she describes lying on a table in an operating room, next to a corpse. A man peers over her and says, “I’m Dr Hamas”.

I encourage you to read her story for yourselves, to sit in the ­distress of it. We owe it to her, and the others.

As I read her testimony, I could see in my mind’s eye this young woman being “sewn up like a pin cushion” in a hospital that was weaponised and used as a military base. Staffed by doctors who doubled as Hamas terrorists. All of it gave me a strange feeling of suffocation. Of rage in the face of the West’s self-deception and betrayal of Emily and every other hostage murdered and living. This awful, undeniable hypocrisy.

The three released Israeli hostages exit a van before boarding an Israeli Air Force military transport helicopter near Reim in southern Israel. Picture: AFP

The United Nations wants us to believe that UNRWA didn’t know that Emily Damari and other hostages were being held in this hospital. That they didn’t know al-Shifa hospital was weaponised and being used as a military base.

Do not ask me to swallow the lie that those in the (mostly) grifting NGO industry, whose existence depends on conflict in perpetuity, didn’t know she was in there. They all knew something, and they all did nothing. What if any trust in this corrupt, vile, dishonest organisation has been blown to pieces? Yes, the world is on its head.

For reasons I can’t quite articulate, Damari’s story was a reminder that there are still 65 hostages in Gaza, half of whom are corpses being held for ransom. A reminder that even after the barehanded slaughter of the Bibas children, even after the documented sexual violence, the world is tolerating Hamas, the world is still affording Hamas the privilege of negotiation. This maniacal death cult should be wiped from the planet. But no, the world is on its head. No coalition of the willing here. If ever there was an example of how the world’s moral axis has been flipped on its head, this is it.

Which brings me to Ukraine.

At the same time that Emily Damari was preparing for corrective surgery, and sharing her testimony, the Oval Office was host to Trump versus Zelensky; round one. It was bare-knuckle diplomacy, filter and BS free before the entire world. In that way, at least it was refreshing. No niceties, certainly nobody playing pretend. Everything’s changed. People were breathless. Trump has turned it all on its head; the opinions were coming in hotter than August in Sicily.

I’ve said before that I am Trump agnostic; call me a highly interested and engaged observer, at this point, not willing to make a call but very willing to watch and learn.

In the aftermath of “UFC does the White House”, suddenly, there’s a coalition of the willing. There’s talk of troops on the ground. Even our Prime Minister, like the kid on the outer who doesn’t want to be left out, didn’t rule out sending Aussie troops along for the ride.

Vladimir Putin is a monster and needs to be stopped. Ukraine’s sovereignty must be protected. None of this is in contention.

But here’s the part where everything has been tipped over. The fact that the US President wants to end the war is actually, admirable. It should be the only goal.

I’ve watched people breathlessly say that Trump is the problem and look, maybe he is, but let me poke the bear and ask why countries that for the duration of this conflict have been interested observers have all of sudden scrambled to action? Is the response about defending Ukraine or hating Trump? Why have they waited until now to act?

It’s true that Trump’s style and approach to governing has turned the political establishment on its head. Personally, I think that’s a good thing. He will be judged by his actions and achievements and, ultimately, American voters.

Let me now ask the other obvious question; why have these same leaders never done anything other than criticise Israel for defending herself in the same way that Ukraine is trying to defend itself? In nearly 18 months, they’ve done nothing but criticise and undermine Israel.

Everything is upside down. It feels like a moral injury, this inability to explain the screaming double standard. It shouldn’t be one or the other, it should be both, but it’s not. Why not?

I’ve said it before because it’s true. Israel is treated like a gas-lit abused woman. It’s your fault. You made me angry. You deserve that black eye. Do as you’re told.

It’s like the depth of evil that befell Israel nearly 18 months ago, the hell that descended, has fallen quietly and swiftly from our memories. Like a deadweight dropped silently into the ocean at night.

In some ways I feel this past week has dragged me back in time to those last months of 2023, when we learned that the world was fine with raping women if they were Israeli, if they were Jewish. That taking hostages was a war crime, but not if they were Jewish or Israeli. When we saw the UN deliver a masterclass in how to tacitly ­support terrorism and mask it as ­diplomacy.

To think that after everything the world knows and has seen of the demonic evil embodied by Hamas that it is still not prepared to do anything other than lecture Israel is a moral failure of unprecedented scale. To think that it has taken the disdain for President Trump to motivate Europe to address the scourge of Putin’s agenda defies belief.

Right from wrong. Liberty and freedom. These were once universally cherished and defended. Now, there is a subjectivity applied that shames us all.