You want Middle East peace? Hamas wants bloodshed

Hamas knew the six hostages were close to being rescued, so it blew the hostages’ brains out. Some of you will call this justifiable resistance. You’re afflicted with a sickness that horrifies most of us.

Protesters carry staged coffins covered with Israeli flags to represent 27 hostages killed in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip during a rally in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Hamas knew the six hostages were close to being rescued. It knew that for these six, at least, freedom was close. So Hamas blew the hostages’ brains out instead. These six hostages, two women among them, were summarily executed, shot in the head to ensure they never saw daylight or their loved ones again.

It was done in cold blood. Just as the massacre of October 7 last year was committed in cold blood. Some of you will call this justifiable resistance. You’re afflicted with a sickness that horrifies most of us.

Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov and Carmel Gat – they were taken because they were Jewish. Held captive because they were Jewish. Murdered in cold blood because they were Jewish. Because homicidal maniacs want to wipe Israel from the map and obliterate the Jewish people. Don’t be mad at me for saying so, it’s written in the Hamas charter. It’s where “From the river to the sea” can be found, many times. Go see for yourself, it’s spectacularly easy to find.

A woman stamps her painted hands behind a sign as Israeli anti-government demonstrators protest calling for action to secure the release of hostages held captive since the October 7 attacks.

This past week I found myself shifting between anger and despair. I’m not Jewish. I’m not Israeli. But, as many of you have, I have seen myself in those hostages, in the dead and slaughtered. My vibrant, beautiful young niece and nephew and their friends; my mother and aunty; my brother. How can a person with sober mind not see this evil for what it is and have a piece of their heart ripped out?

I wonder if they knew what was about to happen, before they were executed. If they knew that days earlier the Israel Defence Forces had rescued Bedouin Muslim hostage Qaid Farhan Alkadi and brought him back to his two wives and children. If they knew how many people around the world were hoping for their return when Hamas took them and executed them in the same network of tunnels below the city of Rafah. All eyes on Rafah? Spare me.

Hamas has since confirmed what the IDF initially reported about these murders. That Hamas knew help was close, so it ordered the executions of Hersh, Eden, Carmel, Ori, Almog and Alexander. It has threatened to send more hostages home in coffins, and in the days following the executions released videos of the dead, filmed right before they were murdered. Eden had been starved. When she was shot in the head she weighed just 36kg.

This is the embodiment of evil. This is Hamas. Its members aren’t human, they are monsters.

This is also, in case you’ve forgotten, a proscribed terror group that the Australian Greens refuse to condemn and, via that omission, stand alongside. Let me repeat that. Even after this, the Greens can’t bring themselves to condemn Hamas and its brand of Islamic extremism. Careful where you place your vote, Australia. Careful.

In all the reaction and outcry, it was the response from the Global Imams Council, the peak body representing Sunni and Shia Muslims around the world, that spoke loudest to me, at least. Its statement on Sunday clearly lays the blame for all this carnage, and not at the feet of Israel.

“We hold Hamas directly responsible for the deaths and suffering of all innocent lives lost since October 7, as their actions have not only brought death and destruction upon the region but have also led to immense suffering for the Palestinian people. Hamas’s reckless and inhumane tactics, using civilians as shields and exploiting their plight, have only escalated the cycle of violence and undermined the cause of justice and peace. Moreover, we recognise that the regime in Iran shares equal responsibility for these tragedies, as its continued support and endorsement of Hamas’s actions perpetuate violence and instability in the region.”

This is just one part of a statement that contains more moral clarity than anything our own government has said in 11 months to every simpering academic, every morally lost, intellectually lost university student parading around in a keffiyeh. Read this statement, I dare you.

Anti-government protests have engulfed Israel as people call for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strike a peace agreement.

Even the worst of the worst such as Canada’s Justin Trudeau have expressed horror at cold-blooded executions. So what? The words come at no cost. The cost of a media statement after such a horrific event? Literally, not a cent. It would be electorally more expensive at least, to say nothing.

From the first moment this nightmare began there has been a clear right and wrong, yet so many have been afraid to be honest about it. What is it about moral clarity that has frightened them? What are they afraid of losing? What does it profit a person should they gain the world but lose their soul? So many have lost their souls in the mire of moral obfuscation and false equivalence. Again, what are they afraid of?

Respectfully, Foreign Minister, when you didn’t go to the site of the Nova massacre, did you not realise the message you were sending? Prime Minister, when you agreed to re-fund the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East despite overwhelming evidence of its involvement in the October 7 massacre, did you not realise the tacit approval that granted? Britain, during a seismic period of social fracturing, has decided this week to limit arms sales to Israel. It may as well send Hamas a note that says: Execute whoever you like, we’ll just stand here and look the other way.

It actually doesn’t matter what anyone believes because the truth is writ large in action. You want a ceasefire? Hamas does not. You want peace? It wants bloodshed. Hamas chief and dead man walking Yahya Sinwar said so himself in hundreds of verified messages seen by The Wall Street Journal earlier in the year. He wants the blood of Palestinians to fuel his deranged power play.

You want a two-state solution? Hamas does not. I don’t understand why so many refuse to believe what Hamas openly states in its charter. No Israel, no Jews and no Christians. Hamas has rejected every offer of ceasefire since the war began. Every one.

Back in April, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Hamas to accept what he described as an “extraordinarily generous” ceasefire proposal from the Israelis. Of course it didn’t. And it will not.

Palestinians under Hamas are subjugated and abused, to a degree brainwashed, some have argued, living under sharia law. Women are second-class citizens, their lives legally worth half that of a man’s. They deserve freedom. Democratic rule. Hope and a future.

In what’s probably a symbolic move more than anything, the US Justice Department finally has announced criminal charges against Sinwar and others over October 7. The action also names Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah as accomplices. It’s something. It’s not enough but it’s something.