This week, the world witnessed one of the most macabre displays of cruelty in recent history, adding insult to injury to the horrors we all saw on Oct. 7, 2023. In the heart of Gaza, Hamas staged a grotesque ceremony, parading the bodies of four murdered Israeli hostages — 32-year-old loving mother Shiri Bibas and her two gorgeous children, Ariel (4) and Kfir (9 months), along with 83-year-old peace activist Oded Lifshitz — before the cameras, flanked by masked terrorists brandishing assault rifles alongside cheering Gazans.

To be clear, this was not about returning remains to grieving families. It was a calculated, sadistic performance deliberately designed to inflict maximum pain and suffering on those who had spent over 500 days praying for the safe return of their loved ones. It was barbarism incarnate, a pageant of death, an orgy of evil, orchestrated by men who claim to represent God but whose actions reveal them as the ultimate desecrators of His name.

There was no tactical necessity for this display. The hostages were already dead. Hamas could have simply handed their remains to the Red Cross quietly, as any group with even a shred of human decency would have done.

Instead, they turned the return of these four innocent victims into a piece of monstrous theater, ensuring that every Israeli, every Jew, and, frankly, every person with even a shred of humanity felt a knife twist in the open wound of their anguish. The intention was clear: to deepen the grief, to prolong the suffering, and to display their utter contempt for human life.

Contrast this with the core principles of Judaism, the foundation of all monotheistic faiths — including Islam. The Torah teaches that human dignity (kavod habriyot) is paramount.

As the medieval commentator Rashi famously notes at the beginning of Parshat Mishpatim, the Torah’s placement of civil and social justice laws immediately after the Revelation at Sinai highlights that ethical treatment of fellow human beings is not secondary to divine worship — it is its very manifestation. How we treat others is a direct reflection of our relationship with God.

In Jewish tradition, even the remains of one’s enemies must be treated with dignity. The Torah commands (Deut. 21:23) that those executed for capital crimes must be buried immediately and respectfully — “For he that is hanged is a curse unto God.”

Rashi, citing the Talmud (Sanhedrin 46b), explains that every human being is created in the image of God (tzelem Elokim), and leaving a body hanging is a desecration of God’s dignity. The analogy is that of a king whose twin is publicly hanged — onlookers might mistakenly assume it reflects upon the king himself.

And if the Torah demands respect even for the worst criminals, how much more so for innocent civilians, for women, for children?

But Hamas, and by extension radical Islam, operates on an entirely different value system. To them, human life is expendable — both the lives of their enemies and their own. They strap suicide vests to teenagers, use hospitals as shields, and celebrate mass murder as divine service. Their god is not the Merciful One; it is a bloodthirsty idol that revels in human misery.

And yet, they dare present themselves as a religious movement. How can an organization that parades corpses and blasts triumphant music over coffins claim to be a messenger of God?

How can a movement that holds hostages for political leverage, tortures them, and then defiles their bodies speak in the language of faith?

This is not religion. It is a grotesque mockery of faith, an abomination in the eyes of any true believer.

Then there is Qatar, the supposed ‘mediator’ between Hamas and Israel, but in reality, the host of Hamas’s leadership and the financier of their operations. Qatar would have the world believe it is an “honest broker,” a neutral party seeking peace.

But what honest broker would facilitate such a monstrous display? What mediator with even a shred of integrity would stand by while the bodies of slaughtered children were exploited for propaganda? Where is their outrage?

Even the United Nations, an institution notoriously biased against Israel, was appalled by this latest act of barbarity. UN human rights chief Volker Turk condemned the handover, calling the display of bodies “abhorrent and cruel” and declaring that it blatantly violated international law.

“Under international law, any handover of the remains of the deceased must comply with the prohibition of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, ensuring respect for the dignity of the deceased and their families,” he said in a statement.

The truth is that Qatar is not a mediator. It is an enabler. It is the financial and political patron of Hamas, providing them safe haven in Doha’s luxury hotels while their foot soldiers in Gaza carry out atrocities.

If Qatar had any real interest in peace, it would not be shielding Hamas leadership – it would be expelling them. If Qatar had any concern for human life, it would be pressuring Hamas to release hostages alive rather than supporting their murder and the humiliation of their corpses.

Qatar’s duplicity must be exposed, and real consequences must follow when this war is finally over. Their assets in the West should be frozen. Their privileged status as a US non-NATO ally must be revoked. And the US military base in Doha should be relocated to a Gulf state that genuinely seeks to consign radical Islam to the dustbin of history.

If the world truly wishes to rid the region of radical Islam, Qatar must be forced to choose a side: civilization or barbarism. There is a sickness in our world, and it has many enablers. Hamas is the disease, but its financiers, apologists, and media cheerleaders are the vectors.

And in the face of this evil, there can be no moral equivocating. There is no ‘both sides’ when one side parades the corpses of murdered babies as trophies. There is no ‘cycle of violence’ when one side revels in death while the other seeks to protect life.

The return of the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz should have been an occasion for solemnity and mourning. Instead, Hamas turned it into a grotesque spectacle, a final act of cruelty inflicted upon those they had already murdered.

The world must take note. This is what radical Islam represents. This is the true face of Hamas, and the many in Gaza who love them and support their vile ideology.

And those who stand by, those who refuse to call out this evil, those who continue to treat Hamas as anything other than the monstrous death cult that it is — they are also complicit.

Editor’s note: The Israeli military said on Friday that one of the bodies released by Hamas that was supposed to be Shiri Bibas did not belong to any of the hostages held in Gaza. Bibas’s status is currently unknown.

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