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How the Gaza Ceasefire Agreement Highlighted Hamas’ Depravity
People stand next to flags on the day the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages, Oded Lifschitz, Shiri Bibas, and her two children Kfir and Ariel Bibas, who were kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, are handed over under the terms of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
The differences between Hamas and Israel can be seen not only in how they fight, but also in how they cease fighting.
More specifically, the terms of the ceasefire agreement, the first stage of which is now ending, are very revealing. All of the possible explanations cast a very negative light on Hamas — and thereby on its supporters.
Hamas was soundly battered during the war that began with its October 7th massacre in Israel. The other inhabitants of Gaza paid a very heavy price for that attack, which the majority of them supported.
While Israel had profoundly degraded Hamas’ capacity by the time of the January 2025 ceasefire, it had not eliminated Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza. Furthermore, it had only succeeded in freeing, or retrieving the bodies of, a small proportion of the hostages that Hamas and other Islamist factions in Gaza had taken from Israel.
This undecisive outcome, combined with external pressure to reach a ceasefire agreement, explains why neither party was in a position to dictate terms unilaterally. Nevertheless, the terms were remarkably lopsided in favor of the Palestinians.
Given that Hamas and Gazans bore many more fatalities and the overwhelming majority of the infrastructural damage and internal dislocation, Gaza appears to have had a much greater interest in the ceasefire itself, than did Israel.
Israel’s main incentive was the return of hostages taken on October 7. However, the asymmetry of the agreement is manifest in the number of convicted Palestinian criminals and terrorists released compared to the number of innocent Israeli hostages.
In the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, 33 Israelis (or their bodies) were to be released. In exchange, Israel agreed to release between 1,800 and 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were lawfully convicted of crimes including mass murder and terrorism.
What explains such asymmetric terms in favor of the losing side? There are a few possible and overlapping explanations. They all reflect badly on Hamas.
The first possible explanation is that Israeli (and other) hostages in Gaza face much greater threats than do Palestinians in Israeli prisons. The latter are not in a life-threatening situation. They are not liable to execution at any moment. They are not kept on starvation diets, nor housed in unsanitary conditions in humid tunnels without light, or adequate ventilation. They have access to medical care (as Yahya Sinwar, architect of the October 7 attack, himself had when he was an Israeli prisoner).
There have been reports of some Palestinian prisoners being subjected to abuse, but even if those isolated examples did happen, there are important differences. Not least among these is that such abuse is illegal under Israeli law, with disciplinary action being taken at least sometimes. By contrast, abuse is the norm for hostages in Gaza.
However, to the extent that Palestinian prisoners are abused, the asymmetric terms of the agreement suggest a second explanation, namely that Hamas cares less about the welfare of Palestinian prisoners in Israel than Israel cares about hostages in Gaza.
The same is true about the valuing of lives. According to this explanation, Israel values the lives (and even the bodies) of its citizens and residents (of all religions) more than Hamas values the lives of Gazans.
The third possible explanation is that while Israel is a democracy ultimately accountable to an electorate, Hamas, as an authoritarian regime, is not answerable to Gazans. Even if there is some truth to the criticisms that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been unduly influenced by his own interests in weighing up the interests of the hostages relative to the goal of defeating Hamas, he is still inordinately more accountable to Israeli public opinion than Hamas is to Gazan public opinion.
There is nothing surprising in any of these possible explanations. It did not take the October 7 massacre, and the atrocities of that day and the many months since, for us to know that Hamas is indiscriminate in its violence. Instead, these events provided further and more horrifying evidence of what was already known.
We also already knew, from Hamas’s methods of waging war in multiple conflicts with Israel, that it cares very little about Gazan deaths. Indeed, it may attach positive strategic value to those deaths. Similarly, it is — or should be — no surprise that Israel is a democracy, and Hamas a repressive theocratic regime that treats its own citizens viciously.
What is dismaying is how many people, including in Western countries, have failed to draw these conclusions. Despite all the evidence, both in war and in ceasefire, they continue to side with the repressive theocracy of Hamas over the democracy that is desperately defending itself against an enemy that combines a medieval mentality and morality with modern munitions.
David Benatar is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town, and currently Visiting Professor at the Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto.
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Gal Gadot Discusses Hope for Peace in Israel, Says ‘War a Defeat for Everyone’ in Harper’s Bazaar Spain Cover Story
Gal Gadot on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar España’s March 2025 issue. Photo: Harper’s Bazaar España
Israeli actress Gal Gadot is on the cover of the March 2025 issue of Spanish Harper’s Bazaar, and in her cover story for the magazine, she discussed wanting an end to the Israel-Hamas war that began a year and a half ago.
The Petah Tikva native, who stars as the Evil Queen in the live-action remake of the Disney classic “Snow White” debuting next month, also told Harper’s Bazaar España she longs for a swift return of all the hostages that Hamas-led terrorists kidnapped during their deadly rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and took back to the Gaza Strip. The mother of four and “Wonder Woman” star said she hopes for an end to the Israel-Hamas war that would result in a “diplomatic agreement that allows all parts of the table to live a good and prosperous life.”
“I know it sounds cliché, but just as they are teaching us to hate, growing antisemitism, we can also teach us to love,” said Gadot, 39. “I want to believe that love is the force that moves the world. War is a defeat for everyone. Hatred is horrible. It’s toxic to the outside and to the one who hates it.”
Gadot was then asked by the publication if her faith in love conquering all has diminished at all in light of the atrocities experienced by Israel during the war, and how it has impacted Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip under Hamas control. “We can’t afford to lose hope because, if not, what do we have left?” replied the actress, who lives in Los Angeles with her family. “They say it’s always darker before dawn, so I hope that this terrible place we are in now really leads us to the change we all seek. The light will win.”
On Wednesday, the bodies of former Hamas hostages Shiri Bibas, 32, and her two sons – Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 10 months old – were buried in Israel after being returned days earlier as part of the Gaza ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel. Gadot posted about their burial on her Instagram Story and images of Shiri and her two red-headed young boys. “Today, Shiri, Ariel and Kfir will be laid to rest,” Gadot wrote. “The heart is heavy, and the pain is unbearable.”
Gadot has spoken on social media several times about the hostages abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, including one post that highlighted 19-year-old Israeli Liri Albag. In September 2024, she talked about how her life has been impacted by the terrorist attack in October 2023.
“I feel like there’s the life until Oct. 7 and the life after Oct. 7,” Gadot said. “Oct. 7 was a turning point for the entire Jewish community around the world. No one has ever expected or thought that such a horrific thing could happen to our people — could happen in general in the world in 2024. There’s not a day that goes by without me thinking about the hostages and the fact that we’re even here now talking [while] they’re there in Gaza in the tunnels in this hellish reality. That breaks my heart.”
Gadot shared on social media in December 2024 that during the eighth month of her pregnancy last year with her forth daughter, Ori, she had to undergo emergency surgery to treat a blood clot in her brain.
The post Gal Gadot Discusses Hope for Peace in Israel, Says ‘War a Defeat for Everyone’ in Harper’s Bazaar Spain Cover Story first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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BBC Blasted for Gaza Documentary Hiding Palestinian Interviewees’ Antisemitism, Hamas Ties
The BBC logo is seen at the entrance at Broadcasting House, the BBC headquarters in central London. Photo by Vuk Valcic / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The BBC chose to remove the documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone” from its iPlayer streaming platform on Friday pending an internal investigation following a raft of criticisms regarding multiple links to Hamas and inaccurate translations obscuring participants’ antisemitism.
On Feb. 17, the broadcaster debuted the film, which features a 13-year-old narrator (now 14) named Abdullah Al-Yazouri, who viewers identified as the son of Dr. Ayman Al-Yazouri, a man who works as Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture. Pro-Israel researcher David Collier said that the boy and his father come from the same family as Hamas founder Ibrahim Al-Yazouri.
“The child of Hamas royalty was given an hour on a BBC channel to walk around looking for sympathy and demonizing Israel,” Collier said. “They followed this family for months. There is no way on earth they did not know who this family was. How can the BBC possibly justify trusting anything else in the entire documentary?”
In addition, Hatem Rawagh, a cameraman who worked on the documentary, has praised Hamas and the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel.
Uncovered by the Arabic division of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA), Rawagh wrote online on Oct. 7 in reference to the Yom Kippur war that “whoever missed Oct 6 [1973] in Egypt … Oct 7 is happening [now] in Palestine.” The next day he shared a video from Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades which showed a view from a head camera attached to one of the terrorists who shot a rifle and killed an Israeli near the Gaza border. Rawagh wrote, “You are going to come back to this video a million times.”
Amjad Al Fayoumi, another cameraman who worked on the documentary, has likewise advocated for Hamas, posting a salute to the Oct. 7 attacks and sharing “resistance” videos which featured terrorists, rockets, and Israeli funerals.
The cost of the documentary has also come under criticism. “The BBC needs to account for every penny spent on this documentary — £400,000 is a lot of licence-fee payers money,” said Danny Cohen, former director of BBC television. “They should be transparently told where their money went and whether any of it reached the hands of Hamas.”
The documentary has further received backlash for its mistranslations of “Jew” and omissions of “jihad.” The Telegraph reported that on at least five occasions the Arabic word for “Jew”— “Yahud” or “Yahudy” — received the translation “Israel” or “Israeli forces” or was removed altogether.
At four minutes into the film, a woman says, “The Jews invaded our [area],” but the subtitles say, “The Israeli army invaded our area.”
Later in the documentary, the subtitles describe a woman as saying “we’re used to seeing flashes of lightning in the sky. But now it’s real missiles. We’re happy that for once the rockets aren’t falling on us.” However, according to CAMERA, she really said that “at first, when we would see these [flashes], they would be flares, by the way. From the Jews. But now they turned out to be [real] missiles.”
In an interview with another woman, the documentary claims she described the Oct. 7 terror attacks as the “first time we invaded Israel — it was always the other way round.” CAMERA noted that the correct translation of her statement is “we were invading the Jews for the first time.”
Near the film’s conclusion, a woman discusses the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, that “his face was covered and his weapon was ready, prepared for battle.” The correct translation of her statement is reportedly “ready for jihad.” She later says, according to the subtitles, that “the video shows that he was fighting and resisting Israeli forces. He wasn’t hiding.” CAMERA said that the accurate translation of her words is “he was engaging in resistance and jihad against the Jews. Not underground.”
Alex Hearn, the co-director of Labour Against Anti-Semitism, said that “it is this whitewashing that keeps viewers ill-informed about the nature of Hamas, and promotes sympathy for their deadly ideology. This documentary signifies the institutional failure behind the BBC”s reporting of the Israel-Hamas conflict.”
Orly Goldschmidt of the Israeli embassy in the UK said that the mistranslations do not allow “viewers to see how children, and Palestinians at large, have been taught to hate ‘Jews’ from a very young age.”
A spokesperson for the BBC said in a statement that “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone” features “important stories we think should be told — those of the experiences of children in Gaza. There have been continuing questions raised about the program and in the light of these, we are conducting further due diligence with the production company. The program will not be available on iPlayer while this is taking place.”
Investigators are supposed to deliver a report about the documentary to the BBC on Thursday, the results of which will be made public that day or on Friday.
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Hamas Spokesperson Rebukes Terror Group Leader’s Comments to New York Times Expressing Regret About Oct. 7
An aerial view shows the bodies of victims of an attack following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip lying on the ground in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
After the head of Hamas’s foreign relations office in Qatar told the New York Times in an article published on Monday that he would not have supported the Palestinian terrorist organization’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel if he knew what kind of destruction it would bring to Gaza, a Hamas spokesperson rebuked his statement and said it does not represent the views of the Islamist group.
“If it was expected that what happened would happen, there wouldn’t have been Oct. 7,” senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk told the Times, claiming he was not privy to the exact details of the planned invasion of southern Israel.
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people, kidnapped 251 hostages, and perpetrated mass sexual violence against Israelis during their Oct. 7 massacre. Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Abu Marzouk told the Times that it would be “unacceptable” to say Hamas won the Gaza war given the level of destruction the conflict caused in the coastal enclave. According to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), about 20,000 Hamas terrorists were also killed in the war, suggesting the group lost a significant portion of its fighting force.
Referring to Israel, Abu Marzouk said, “We’re talking about a party that lost control of itself and took revenge against everything … That is not a victory under any circumstances.” However, he added, “Hamas’s survival in the war against Israel was itself a kind of victory.”
Abu Marzouk did not mention Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
Abu Marzouk’s comments marked a departure from previous statements by Hamas officials regarding the Oct. 7 attack. Less than three weeks after the onslaught, for example, Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’s political bureau and a spokesman for the Iran-backed terror organization, told Lebanon’s LBC TV that the terrorist group will repeat its massacre of Israelis “again and again” to bring about the Jewish state’s “annihilation.”
Months later, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon, Ahmad Abd Al-Hadi, told Lebanon’s Annahar newspaper that the terrorist group would carry out its brutal Oct. 7 invasion of and massacre across southern Israel again if it could travel back in time.
Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem echoed such support for the Oct. 7 atrocities in a statement that was quickly put out to counter Abu Marzouk’s latest comments.
“Hamas is committed to its resistance weapon as a legitimate right, and there is no discussion about that as long as there is an occupation of our Palestinian land,” Qassem said. “The statements attributed to Mousa Abu Marzouk do not represent Hamas’s position.”
The spokesperson argued that “the occupation’s aggressive and destructive behavior is the cause of the destruction in Gaza” rather than the actions of Hamas. “The Oct 7 epic marks a strategic turning point in the Palestinian national struggle,” he added. “Dr. Abu Marzouk has emphasized that the blessed operation of Oct. 7 was an expression of our people’s right to resist and their rejection of the siege, occupation, and settlements.”
Qassem also claimed that Abu Marzouk’s comments were “incorrect and taken out of context,” with the Hamas statement taking a shot at the New York Times: “The interview was conducted a few days ago and the published statements did not reflect the full content of the answers.”
Some observers have argued that Abu Marzouk’s answers to the Times regarding the Oct. 7 attack were likely part of a public relations strategy to boost its perception in the West.
Khalil Sayegh, co-founder and president of the Agora Initiative, which aims to create “a shared vision for Palestine and Israel,” wrote on X that Hamas “is still emphasizing to the Arab world that Oct. 7 was a great victory” and that the purpose of the Times interview was “to mislead the American public to believe that Hamas regrets their decision on Oct. 7.”
“Don’t fall for Hamas’s lies,” Sayegh added.
Since the Oct. 7 attack, Hamas leaders have consistently expressed their satisfaction with the attack and their view that the terrorist group has achieved victory in the war.
After the Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal was reached last month, Hamas leader Khalil al-Haya said in a speech that “what occurred on Oct. 7 — a miraculous military and security achievement by the elite Qassam Brigades — will remain a source of pride for our people and resistance, passed down through generations.”
Then, on Feb. 15, at the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, Qatar, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan spoke about expanding the resistance against Israel. He argued that “the region’s basic tool is its ability to slap Israel whenever it wants, and do this at a high level, and we proved this on Oct. 7.”
At the same forum, Hamdan referred to “the victory in Gaza” and said that “Oct. 7, 2023, was a historic achievement and an astonishing success that gave Palestinians a sense of confidence.”
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal last year, then-Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar said he was glad about the position in which Hamas had put itself and Gaza, with no indication he regretted anything about starting the war. “We have the Israelis right where we want them,” he reportedly said.
The Journal also reported that Sinwar sent a message to Hamas leaders in Doha in which he referred to the civilians who died in Gaza as “necessary sacrifices.”
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