Bodies of Babies—Tears, Rage, and the Future
Israeli shock and sorrow over Hamas atrocities—including misrepresented caskets of murdered hostages—fuel fierce calls for military action amid debates over political solutions for Gaza
It was no surprise, but it was a shock.
Israelis knew deep down that the Bibas babies and their young mother had been murdered by Hamas monsters. But knowing that and seeing the caskets are viscerally different.
They knew, yet they were shocked. Groups of Israelis, small and large, huddled together, many sobbing, on a cold, rainy winter day.
Some were shouting, their anger directed at Hamas but also at their own government for failing to rescue the hostages—especially the babies.
And then, in yet another Hamas travesty, it emerged that the casket said to contain the remains of the mother held an anonymous corpse instead, adding to the anger and sorrow among Israelis.
It will take a long time for Israelis to calm down and consider political answers that go beyond another large-scale military operation in Gaza.
Non-stop broadcasts on four Israeli TV news channels featured interviews with relatives of hostages still in Hamas captivity, freed hostages, and experts. Otherwise, hardened TV news reporters broke down in tears.
Israeli TV viewers were spared seeing the disgusting Hamas “ceremony” of parading the caskets through a crowd, including Gaza children, under a grotesque billboard portraying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a vampire. The display was so appalling that it drew rare criticism from world figures, even from a senior UN human rights official.
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That marked one of the few times that a UN person has mouthed the word “Hamas” in a negative context since the Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7, 2023, when terrorists killed more than 1,200 Israelis and hauled more than 240 off to Hamas tunnels in Gaza, including Ariel Bibas, 4, his baby brother Kfir, 9 months, and their mother, Shiri, 32, and the fourth casket, with the remains of 84-year-old Oded Lifshitz, a great-grandfather and kibbutz pioneer.
Little wonder, then, that many Israelis—relatives of hostages, supporters of Netanyahu’s government, and even ex-Israeli army generals—clamored for an Israeli military operation to wipe out Hamas once and for all.
The only difference among the various demands for military action was the timing. Some said the military should move immediately, while others said the invasion and extermination should wait until all the hostages are back home.
It will take time for tempers to cool here if they ever do. The trauma of the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom will likely depress and anger Israelis for decades. Some said all along that there should be no negotiating with despicable, subhuman terrorists who rape women, burn men, then drag their broken bodies to an inhuman fate underneath Gaza, to be joined by babies, mothers, and 80-year-olds. (Last spring I wrote here that Qatar should be forced to hand over the Hamas leaders it’s hosting.)
Angry calls for military action are understandable, not only because of the horrible reality of seeing those caskets but also because the Israeli government has presented only the military option for cleansing Gaza of its Hamas rulers.
The reality on the ground tells a different story. Gaza is mostly rubble. Tens of thousands have been killed, about half of them terrorists. Hamas tunnels have been destroyed. Yet there are still Hamas terrorists around, enough to put on despicable parades at the expense of freed hostages, both dead and alive.
There’s a mathematical and logical concept called “the point of diminishing returns.” That’s where more action along the same path produces fewer and fewer results, and the cost becomes greater than the results. Gaza is clearly at that point. More destruction and killing will not eliminate Hamas, though it deserves to be eradicated.
There’s another concept: “When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” That has been Israel’s strategy up to now—more and more military action. Israel has repeatedly failed to come forward with a workable plan for Gaza the “day after” the war.
It took US President Donald Trump to shake the bushes. With a fantastical, unworkable plan to ship the Palestinians out of Gaza, primarily to Egypt and Jordan, and turn the territory into an American tourist haven, Trump lit a fire under Mideast rear ends.
First to jump was Egypt, which could face destabilization by Islamist militants among the Gaza refugees that Trump foresees. Egypt called an Arab summit and then came out with a plan to rehabilitate Gaza at a cost of tens of billions of dollars.
Egypt proposed administering Gaza with a Palestinian leadership independent of both Hamas and the West Bank’s Palestinian Authority. Militant groups in Gaza, like Hamas, would keep their weapons, but they would be under the supervision of Arab forces led by Saudi Arabia.
Showing political sophistication that outstrips Israel’s automatic rejection of practically everything, Hamas leaders declared they did not insist on ruling Gaza. They also floated the idea of freeing all the remaining Israeli hostages together in the next phase of the cease-fire.
Both declarations are less than credible, but they put Hamas on the right side of the equation for a change. Taking part in a political solution is so much better than rejecting it out of hand.
So far, Israel’s leadership, still hamstrung by its reliance on extremists who not only want to level Gaza and deport its residents but even renew Israeli settlement there, has not commented officially on the Egyptian plan.
There are reports from Cairo that Trump would support the Egyptian blueprint. If so, that might force Israel to go along, shifting its strategy from all military to at least partly political—the only way this long, bloody war can really end.
