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I was poised to go on a live broadcast of WION, an English-language Indian television network, last week to discuss the war against Hamas. But before my turn to speak came, I was startled by the program host’s introduction to the segment. He spoke of images that were shocking the world and the world’s outrage about them, and gave what might be termed a trigger warning for those about to see them for the first time.
As I soon learned, he wasn’t referring to the evidence of the indescribable atrocities committed against Israeli civilians by the Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7. Nor was he even talking about the impact of the war that followed that attack on civilians in the Gaza Strip, who are being used as human shields by those very same terrorists.
Instead, the pictures that really upset him (and, apparently, others throughout the world) were those depicting Palestinians who had surrendered to the Israel Defense Forces. The pictures show the men, all of military age, who had either given themselves up or been captured (most of whom were Hamas operatives), reportedly after having been forced to exit the terrorist organization’s tunnel network.
Images of defeat
The men, heads hung low, are kneeling and stripped down to their underwear with their hands tied. The images are redolent of defeat. Those who not so long ago gloried in the unspeakable suffering inflicted on Oct. 7 as Hamas succeeded in murdering more than 1,200 men, women and children, as well as the rape and torture of the victims and the kidnapping of more than 200 others, were now reduced to the status of helpless captives. The bravado they displayed in the aftermath of the assault on Israel was gone. On their faces could be seen the impact of their defeat, and perhaps, the realization that the calculations of their leadership that those who once ruled Gaza could wage war on Israel with impunity were wrong. While Hamas’s senior leaders live in luxury and safety in Qatar, the terrorist rank-and-file is now paying the price for their folly.
To anyone familiar with the history of warfare in the last century, the sight is hardly unique.
Similar pictures depict those Japanese soldiers who surrendered during World War II as well as other combatants in various wars, especially against terrorist groups. When facing those who are indoctrinated in a cult of fanatical hatred against their enemies and who are likely to attempt to continue to kill even after surrender, stripping prisoners down and ensuring that they are not still armed or wearing booby-trap explosives is simply common sense. The alternative is to risk letting members of a group committed as a matter of faith and political objectives to destroying the State of Israel and slaughtering its population, kill Israelis who believe their opponents have already given up.
Are such images humiliating for those in the pictures? Of course. But if you’re angry about the wounded pride of members of a barbaric terrorist group, then maybe you’re the one who has no moral compass, not the Israelis.
The segment about this issue was not the most elevated discussion in which I’ve participated. I challenged the premise of the host, Mohammed Saleh, about this being an outrage and tried to remind him of the context. He tried to talk over me while the images being shown as we spoke were clearly part of an attempt to depict the Israelis as the villains of the story. Saleh seemed to have trouble grasping the concept that Palestinians could be anything but victims in any interaction with Israel. Nor did he seem to understand that what Palestinians and their sympathizers were protesting was not genocide but the natural consequences of the war they had started.
But he wasn’t alone in his interpretation. Indeed, publications and broadcast networks around the world shared his point of view. Predictably, so did The New York Times, which describedthe capture of military-age men in areas that most civilians had largely abandoned weeks ago as “mass detention of Gazan men.” The photos were treated as evidence that the IDF was rounding up innocent bystanders as part of a policy of cruelty to poor, oppressed Arabs rather than merely what happens to those who are presumed to be combatants when they are caught by an army conducting a mopping-up operation in areas formerly held by terrorists.
It is true that some of those captured turned out not to be members of Hamas, although most of them were. Any that the IDF determined were not part of the Islamist terror movement were subsequently released. Conspiracy theories floated on social-media sites about those so detained about the prisoners being killed or subjected to torture are easily debunked.
But for all of the ruckus made over the photos—compared to the widespread and utterly false accusations of genocide being hurled at Israel by those who sympathize with Hamas or just hate the Jewish state—the contretemps over these images is small potatoes. After all, taking pictures of captured Palestinians in undershorts is a very small offense compared to the charges based on the unreliable, inflated statistics about casualties supplied by Hamas that assert that all those killed in Gaza are civilians, the majority of them being children.
Those numbers—which, as in past conflicts involving Hamas, likely have little relation to reality—as well as the pictures and video of the devastation inflicted by the war on Gaza are ammunition for those determined to vilify Israel. They also buttress the demands from left-wingers both inside and outside the Biden administration for a permanent ceasefire that would allow Hamas to remain in control of at least parts of Gaza not yet taken by Israel and to essentially let a group bent on the genocide of Jews to get away with mass murder.
But the anger about the photos of the captured Palestinians is still significant.
Hypocritical outrage
The main reaction on the part of much of the international community to the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust was not so much indifference as it was outrage that Israel would use military means to ensure that such a horrific crime could not be repeated.
That so many people who cared nothing about the slaughter of Jews by Hamas two months ago, and ignored the widely distributed photo and video evidence (largely compiled by the terrorists themselves on GoPro cameras to publicize the humiliation of their victims) of those crimes, remains deeply shocking to Jews. So, too, is the hypocrisy of feminist leaders and organizations that seemed uninterested in the Palestinians’ deliberate use of rape—against women, children, and, as new reports come out, even men—as a weapon of war.
These crimes against Jews were ignored or quickly forgotten in the rush to deprive Israel of the right to defend itself. It soon became clear even to many Jews who had always been critical of Israeli policies or who sympathized with the suffering of Palestinians that the protests showed that something deeply troubling was behind the outrage about the fighting in Gaza.
Those chanting for a “free Palestine” from “the river to the sea” weren’t advocating for peace or a two-state solution. Their position was that Israeli suffering was unimportant because the Jewish state had no right to exist and should be “decolonized.” If that meant more Oct. 7-style atrocities, then so much the worse for the Jews, who were supposedly guilty of possessing “white privilege” and oppressing “people of color.” The fact that this conflict has nothing to do with race—and that the Jews are the indigenous people of Israel and that the majority are “people of color” who immigrated from other parts of the Middle East and North Africa—counts for little among those who buy into intersectional myths and think the Jewish state should be erased and its people subjected to genocide.
Jews are no longer ‘dhimmi’
But the pictures of Palestinian prisoners do touch a nerve throughout the world, and the reason for that goes far to explain why Palestinian Arabs—with the support of much of the Islamic world—persist in their century-old war against Zionism.
It is hardly surprising that images of Jewish suffering do not move the not-insubstantial percentage of the world’s population that thinks the Jews are not entitled to sovereignty or the right of self-defense in their ancient homeland. But what they really can’t stand is the idea that Jews are no longer homeless or at the mercy of a hostile world, as they were before the establishment of modern-day Israel in 1948. The notion that a despised minority, against whom the virus of antisemitism continues to incite unthinking hatred and demonization, are now powerful enough to defeat their foes is difficult for them to swallow.
This goes beyond sympathy for the Palestinians. They are trapped in an irredentist mindset that not only prevents them from accepting the multiple offers of statehood and peace Israel has made over the years but causes them to see a refusal to accept the Jewish state’s legitimacy and permanence as inextricably linked with their national identity.
The photos of Hamas prisoners are, by the standards of war photography, nothing particularly unusual or outrageous, and certainly not evidence of abuse. The documentation of their detention is certainly preferable to the silence that Hamas continues to adhere to about the fate of the hostages they have not yet released of whom no proof of life in any form has been forthcoming.
Yet the photos do seem outrageous to those who, whether Muslims or not, see Jews as what the Islamic world traditionally referred to as dhimmi. In Islamic societies, the dhimmi were “protected” residents of a country but treated as inferior to Muslims. Indeed, the photos provoke anger because they show that Hamas, which rightly anticipated that their atrocities would spark a surge in antisemitism rather than a backlash against them, is losing the war they started against the Jews. Their humiliation is evidence that their understanding of the world has been turned upside-down with the Jews no longer relegated to the status of a despised and powerless minority.
The anger about the images of Palestinian prisoners is not a reaction to evidence of Israeli crimes. Instead, it is more proof that the anti-Israel protests that have proliferated in the United States and elsewhere are motivated largely by antisemitic motives, whether rooted in modern leftist theories or historic religious hatred. Rather than a sidebar to the debate about the war, the anger about the photos shows us just how deep intolerance for Israel and the Jews runs.
Originally published in JNS.org.
Dov Jacobs says
Frontpage is First Class, as always.
Snuffy Carter says
About two years ago El Salvador did the same thing to the drug gangs after arresting them – scores of arrested criminals were pictured in a max security prison, stripped down to their boxers, as they sat in groups on the floor with their hands tied behind their back – but there was no outrage from anybody in the Western media – maybe because the gangs in El Salvador were not killing Jews, thus the liberal media didn’t care about protecting these criminals.
Luz Maria Rodriguez says
Sorry but there was outrage reported by American media. They attacked Prez Nayib Bukele for the manner in which he treated the subhuman monsters. Since American media is decidedly and openly leftist, i immediately dismissed their criticism of Bukele as completely and easily predictable.
My response is one of simplicity: no one should care even one iota for removing subhumans, that is, those humans who present with reptile traits of prehuman Neanderthrals. They do not merit living among those of our modern civilization. In fact, they have amply demonstrated they run completely counter to modern civilization with its law, morality, ethic, emphasis on health and peace. The psychotic monsters of MS 13 and Hamas remove themselves from consideration for modern civilization by their absence of conscience. Kill them all including their supporters, cheerleaders, and leaders/planners.
Jeff Bargholz says
Yes, the MS-13 subhumans are so evil they make the Mexican cartel scumbags look like Saints. President Nayib Bukele has reduced crime in El Salvador drastically with his gang boy prison. The humiliation of the subhumans is an added benefit, although as you wrote, the world would be better off if membership in MS-13 carried an automatic death sentence. It’s not like they could hide. They’re all covered with tattoos from head to feet.
DC says
THE problem that conservatives suffer from is…………they care what Leftists and Islamists think.
This is a waste of time and energy.
Do what needs to be done and IGNORE what the Left complains about.
Of course we should provide concrete evidence of the Left’s atrocities so they can’t own the debate.
BUT……….their objections should be discarded for the pollution that they are.
Chief Mac says
The poor babies were ashamed to be stripped to their underwear. While the fact of seeing fat hairy Islamofascists hardly thrills anybody it is far better than the fates of hundreds of their hostages
Jeff Bargholz says
Yes, I’ve never seen so many man boobs in one place and hope I never do again, but that photo sure is funny. Those jihadis deserve to be humiliated and the IDF would be stupidly remiss in its duty if it hadn’t stripped them down to search for weapons.
I notice most of those pussies have their heads bowed in submission and weakness even though they weren’t forced to. And nobody develops a set of man boobs if he’s been suffering, as those subhumans always claim they are. It took a lot of “humanitarian” donations to grow those repulsive things.
Hannah Katz says
But look at those starving Palestinian men in the photo! They are practically skin and bo…… Okay, they are mostly fat slobs. Aggressive young men of military age who got their tails kicked by a superior force.
They tend to suffer from a superiority complex, and cannot stand evidence of their incompetence.
Jeff Bargholz says
You beat me to it! There’s enough lard in their man boobs alone to grease a thousand cars.
Jeff Bargholz says
I see somebody thinks man boobs are sexy. Why else down vote me?
Got man milk?
Intrepid says
Take away the nifty green head shematas, the bullet proof vests and the AK47s, strip them down to their shyte stained undies, and waddya get?
“Islamic Man boobs on parade.”
Perfect.
Toni says
That last comment made me laugh out loud!!
Jeff Bargholz says
Ahh, you beat me to it too! They look like the Paleosimian version of Thai lady boys. All apologies to Thai lady boys. They’re freaks but at least they aren’t fat, ugly and genocidal.
goob says
From photo appears IDF stripped them of their training bras, also.
Jeff Bargholz says
More like double D size! They need “bros” like in that Seinfeld episode.
Kevin says
I’m sure most of these thugs were caught with no uniform on therefore according to the Geneva convention can face immediate execution for being spies.
However- a better use for them is to chain them together and clear all booby traps, IEDS, mines, and other traps their co-terrorists have set up.
staffsgt7 says
a lot of talk without the truth of what islam teaches, and its history of not only deleting the Jews, but also the Christians, Hindus, etc – all non-moslems. Take note how all disappear, over time, from those islamic lands that were conquered in the same way they attack not only Israel but our troops, the crimes that have increased in the EU, UK, the USA and probably in other countries that you are afraid to see.
Jeff Bargholz says
A lot of Rohingyas have been relocated to Indonesia as fake refugees, and the Indos hate them just as much as everybody else does, even the Moslem Indos. Wherever those Rohingya pussbags go, they bring their supremacist and criminal attitudes with them.
They’re probably on the fast track to be settled here by the Jihad Joe administration.
RickyTickySavvy says
…cry me a river! The only way to make this pic less troubling would be to have the prisoners lined up against a wall and…
BettyO says
The only outrage I heard was directed at the propagandists who claimed those poor Palestinians were so starved and ill-treated by their Israeli oppressors.
Here was a photographic display of fat slobs obviously never deprived of a meal.
Freedom says
These prisoners are being treated much better than how the innocent citizens of Israel were treated on Oct. 7th.
AnnR says
“Are such images humiliating for those in the pictures? Of course. But if you’re angry about the wounded pride of members of a barbaric terrorist group, then maybe you’re the one who has no moral compass, not the Israelis.”
I don’t think those terrorists are humiliated because they are in their underwear. They have way too much hatred in their DNA, in their very essence, and in their very souls to feel humiliated about being photographed in their underwear. They are humiliated ONLY because they are don’t have women and children over which to wield their disgusting, vile, animalistic, terror. How ANYONE could look at that photograph and feel any sympathy at all for their “humiliation” is beyond my comprehension. Even if they had been stripped naked, it should not evoke one ounce of sympathy or even a thought that those animals are being humiliated. In fact, I would rather see a photo of them executed en masse. I’m not Jewish, so maybe I shouldn’t weigh in, but I am: those men do not deserve to live one extra minute on this earth. In a perfect world, they would have been executed on sight. One does not need a court of law to determine their evil acts. One only needs eyes to see.
Jeff Bargholz says
No, they fat, oleaginous slobs are definitely humiliated to be treated that way by the Jews they hate so much. So much for their misplaced superiority complexes.
Darwin Akbar says
Islamic law permits victorious Muslim warriors to humiliate and degrade their prisoners, which is why Hamas was more than happy to drag bound, terrified Israeli women and children through Gaza and permitted the general public to spit and abuse them. These images were then broadcast throughout the world as evidence of a great Islamic victory over the infidel.
These photos of Muslim captives, bound on their knees in their underwear were intended to send a symbolic message to the same Muslim world that celebrated the humiliation and defilement of Jews by Hamas- that if you mess with us, you, too, will find yourself dead or a bound and humiliated prisoner.
As an aside, I don’t recall these same people critiquing Israel raising the same revulsion to the images of the citizens of Gaza berating and spitting on captive or even dead Israelis. I should note that when Stalin paraded 30,000 German POWs through the streets of Moscow, the citizens of the USSR were expressly forbidden to do anything but watch in silence. When the Palestinians’ behavior fails to measure up to the standards set by Stalin, there is something seriously wrong with them.
Jeff Bargholz says
Good point about Stalin.
Sir Peter says
The WION interviewer’s name says it all. A Muslim Hamas sympathiser. Screw him
chaya says
I think it was educational to see how very well fed they were and by contrast the hysterical American call for more food, more food for them. When they had all that candy to toss around the streets. . They received 100 million from Biden twice. And they had to steal food from trucks? Whats going on here to produce this ravenous hunger? And these ugly chubby bodies? Is it that rape beheading and burning people alive works up the old appetite?
ed says
Doesn’t look like any of them has ever missed a meal
John Blackman says
there is no point in appealing to a moral compass when you don’t know what one is and wouldn’t know how to possess one . america and the miscreants who are in charge of everything in america are morally bankrupt borne out this week by the blight on american education witnessed when the university quota were being grilled in congress where they voiced support for hamas . the women if that’s what they are voiced what protesters at the sydney opera house screamed ” gas the jews ” different words but same sentiment . even our poor excuse for a human being prime minister could barely cough up the words condemning hamas and our foreign minister coughed up 20 million to give the fakestinians to waste on more rockets and tunnel building . none for israel . but then that’s what leftists do , support for victims nowhere to be seen .
Christopher Watson says
As the writer points out quite eloquently these men, possibly Hamas terrorists, were stripped because these animals do not normally conform to what civilized men do after surrendering. They may carry explosives and explode them while being searched. After this, they will be taken and interrogated. They will NOt be killed, they will Not be raped, they will NOT have parts of their sexual organs RIPPED off, they will NOT be paraded through Jerusalem or Tel Aviv . They will spend some in prison, they will be fed, they will be clothed and they will be released to see their families again. Those who are not thought to be terrorists will be released. They are much luckier than the 1200 Israeli young people who were killed and mutilated at the pop party.
Verneoz says
“Hypocritical outrage” is the perfect description. Of course, if these prisoners had been white men, there would have absolutely no outrage. It’s not the sympathy & love that these hypocrites have for the Hamas murderers & rapists. It’s the obvious hate they have for the Jewish victims of the Hamas murderers and rapists.
Annie says
I wholeheartedly agree with the above posts. I had to laugh when the picture of the pudgy ‘starving’ men was revealed. Frankly, they could stand a few days of fasting to deal with the bloat.
I assume by now they have ‘crashed’ coming off the cocaine like stimulants they took to heighten their enjoyment of butchering Jews. It certainly kept that other ‘master race’ smiling as they slaughtered 6 million.
WhiteHunter says
The surrendering or captured terrorists should have been grateful that they were allowed to keep their shorts on, for modesty, instead of being stripped buck-naked to pose for the photo, and that they know that they will live.
…and that they knew the Israelis wouldn’t castrate, torture, and shoot them in the head after gouging their eyes out, or behead them in YouTube videos, as they do to captured or hostage Jews or Americans. Or roast their newborn infants to death in microwave ovens, as they and their friends did on 10/7.
They were ordered to strip to their shorts and sit crosslegged and handcuffed, instead of “surrendering” fully dressed–either with a suicide vest under the shirt, or in a hijab burka impersonating a woman–for obvious, and absolutely necessary, security reasons. They were treated much better, and more “humanely,” than they deserved.
So they felt “humiliated”? Tough sh*t!
CowboyUp says
There were very few Japanese POWs, because very few of them allowed themselves to be taken prisoner. The ones we took alive were usually either too injured too weak from starvation to resist, or out of grenades. And that still took an American willing to put his life at grave risk to capture them. After the Marines lost their third or fourth medic trying to treat Japanese wounded on Guadalcanal, they treated Japanese wounded with bullet or bayonet.
Because of the Bushido code, and that the overwhelming majority of the Japanese soldiers lived up to it, including their treatment of prisoners, so it was pretty much no quarter in the Pacific Theater.
Many people can’t really fathom that other cultures can have such radically different values and beliefs. I see it in people’s assumptions about tribal warrior cultures too, even by many of the modern descendents of those cultures.
Eliyahu says
People are apprehensive about showing ANYTHING that offends Islamic bullies due to their FEAR. One of mankind’s most damaging vulnerabilities, fear brings on a wide range of self-inflicted problems for most people, save the most courageous. Fear is what transforms otherwise good people into monsters, promotes hate and everything bad in the world. Leftists worship tyrants primarily out of fear – fear to challenge, fear to think differently, etc. Its what promotes the “herd mentality” aka “groupthink.”
The answer to fear? Deal with it! So I endorse posting pictures of Hamas captives EVERYWHERE – especially in the areas of Pro-Hamas demonstrations. LET THE TYRANTS HAVE THEIR TANTRUMS WHILE THE FEARLESS “SHOCK & AWE” ACTIONS OF THISE WHO ARE BRAVE WILL SET EXAMPLES FOR THE REST (OF THE HERD)….