Were international NGOs complicit in Hamas crimes against hostages?

We know three of the terrorists’ captives were kept at UNRWA compounds and a hospital. This revelation raises the obvious questions.

Doron Steinbrecher makes her way through a crowd of Hamas terrorists to a waiting Red Cross official during the latest hostage handover last Sunday. Picture: AFP

Of all the images I’ve seen of the latest hostage handover, the image of Doron Steinbrecher is planted in my mind. She looks like a petrified child, not a woman of 31; hair braided like a schoolgirl’s, her face twisted in fear as a surging mass of masked savages surrounds her.

I can’t shake this image of a frightened woman being traded like a slab of meat before the world.

If you watch the video, you can hear the sounds of anarchy. The shouting, the terrorist chants, the mass of bodies moving like a king tide towards Steinbrecher as a man in a Red Cross vest tries to clear a path for her, Emily Damari and Romi Gonen to reach the car that will take them to freedom.

There’s not a single woman to be found in the crowd, only cowards trying to pass themselves off as men. Most of them masked, wearing the infamous green Hamas headband, most in dark sunglasses.

As the shaky footage pans around you can see more than one armed terrorist standing on the roof of the Red Cross vehicles these women scurry into. They were terrorised up to the last moment of captivity while the world watched.

If ever an image summed up the absolute failure of non-government organisations towards these hostages, this comes close, but it falls short of winning the prize.

As details of their time in captivity have begun to emerge, we now know Damari, Gonen and Steinbrecher were kept not only in civilian homes and tunnels but also in humanitarian compounds run by the UN and in the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza – the hospital Israel was criticised for entering. The hospital run by a doctor who also happened to be a senior Hamas operative. It was a terrorist base disguised as a hospital and now we know it was also a place hostages were kept.

To the world’s useful morons, you’ve been had. Hang your heads, every last one of you. It’s so calculated, so defiant. Think about it. You don’t just accidentally hide hostages in a UN compound unless you’re confident you won’t be sprung. This revelation raises the obvious questions.

If these hostages were held in compounds housing the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, what did UNRWA know, and when? If they were held at Kamal Adwan Hospital, what did the World Health Organisation and the Red Cross know? Global terror apologists have loved talking about international law these past 15 months, so a timely reminder that under article three of the Geneva Conventions taking hostages is a war crime. Is UNRWA, in addition to its myriad sins, now complicit in war crimes? Is the WHO?

Under international law, hospitals lose their humanitarian protection when they are “used by a party to the conflict to commit, outside their humanitarian functions, an act harmful to the enemy”.

In this hostage release, the Red Cross was nothing more than a glorified medical Uber service. It abandoned these women and the rest who still languished. But while we’re talking about law and accountability, its own website dispels any doubt.

“Medical establishments and units enjoy protection because of their function of providing care for the wounded and sick. When they are used to interfere directly or indirectly in military operations, and thereby cause harm to the enemy, the rationale for their specific protection is removed. This would be the case for example if a hospital is used as a base from which to launch an attack.” Kamal Adwan Hospital and the others that Hamas turned into terrorist bases have no protection under international law. None.

UNRWA has had nothing to say, at the time of writing, about hostages being held in its compounds. The WHO released a statement that said nothing other than to reiterate that hospitals lost protection when they were weaponised. It did not mention or acknowledge Hamas, it did not address the matter directly. The response was pure politics.

From the beginning, Israel was gaslit like an abused woman. From the outset, the world’s media and the usual suspects here and abroad blindly believed the Hamas Ministry of Health when it made ludicrous claims about Israel bombing a hospital. Within 48 hours the truth emerged – it was a terrible own goal by Palestinian Islamic Jihad that hit the carpark next to a hospital. Most of the media and the usual suspects just lapped it up.

For nearly 15 months the progressive left of politics has happily allowed itself to be kissed with terrorist lies rather than endure the sting of truth. Academe, the arts, the usual suspects who from their cheese and wine nights dispense views on foreign policy without venturing out of their protected enclaves. Is it wilful ignorance, lack of education or an ideological bent so ingrained that changing course is as simple as catching the wind?

This news about where and how Damari, Gonen and Steinbrecher were kept is a smouldering, smoking weapon. It points to what Israel was saying all along. Hospitals in Gaza were turned into military basis, their operations staffed by senior terrorist operatives as were schools.

Yahya Sinwar, the coward, was found with a UNRWA passport on him when he was taken out by a junior bunch of Israel Defence Forces soldiers in October 2024. US-based charity World Central Kitchen fired 62 staff after the IDF exposed them as being linked to terror groups and/or directly involved in the October 7 massacres.

To the fools still talking about peace, who think Gazans want a ceasefire, educate yourselves. Perhaps start with reviewing the response from Hamas and those on the ground to the ceasefire announcement. Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida declared: “Today marks the 471st day since the start of the Al-Aqsa Flood campaign, which ignited the spark of Palestine’s liberation and drove the final nail into Israel’s coffin.”

Footage of toddlers and children, all boys of course, dressed in Hamas military gear and carrying oversized weapons. It’s everywhere. What sane person dresses their child up as a terrorist? You’ve been had, useful morons of Australia and beyond. Ignore my words if you like, but go have a look at what’s being said on the ground and in places such as Qatar and Turkey. This is no peace deal. This is a pause for Hamas to regroup.

People In Tel Aviv demonstrate against the war as the Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza continues. Picture: Chris McGrath/Getty Images

To those who in recent days have pleaded that the situation is nuanced: spare me.

Look at that image of Steinbrecher and tell me where the nuance is. This is the language of cowardice and moral failure. Look at an image of a little boy, dressed as a terrorist and juggling a weapon twice his size, and tell me where the nuance is. It’s wrong. Why is that so hard for so many of you to say?

In her book Power Politics, Booker prize-winning Indian writer Arundhati Roy said: “The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way you’re accountable.”

We’ve seen this image of Steinbrecher. We see the images out of Gaza, a destruction that lies entirely at the feet of Hamas. We now have seen the truth of hospitals turned into terror bases and humanitarian camps used to hide hostages. Even if you deny it, even if you refuse to accept it, staying silent is the ultimate sin of omission.