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Why There Is No Peace: Ordinary Palestinians Celebrated the Death of the Bibas Family
Ariel and Kfir Bibas. Photo: Hostages and Missing Families Forum
The most harrowing moment of the hostage releases so far came on the morning of Thursday, February 20, when the tragic fate of the Bibas children and their mother was all but confirmed.
From the outset, the faces of Shiri Bibas and her two red-haired sons became emblematic of the horror unleashed by Hamas on October 7, 2023. The footage of a terrified mother, desperately clutching Ariel, 4, and his baby brother Kfir, as a mob of armed Palestinian civilians closed in, made one thing clear: on that day, no Israeli was too young or too innocent to be spared.
Although Hamas’ disgusting tactics during the hostage exchanges had already shocked the world, what followed was worse.
Infinitely worse.
There were four black coffins — one each for Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas, and for Oded Lifshitz, who had also been kidnapped from Nir Oz (of course, we later learned that Shiri’s body wasn’t even in that casket). Behind them, the macabre scene was complete: an antisemitic mural, crudely depicting Israel’s prime minister as a blood-sucking vampire, loomed over the stage. It was the final indignity, as Hamas desecrated even the bodies of its most defenseless victims.
The international media covered Thursday morning’s appalling spectacle as they have all the others. While Israeli networks refuse to broadcast these grotesque propaganda displays, Western outlets continue to oblige.
It is difficult to imagine these same outlets uncritically airing the staged performances of any other terrorist group banned in their own countries.
But when Israel is the victim of terrorism, double standards always seem to apply.
For weeks, we have called out the media’s insistence on drawing a false moral equivalency between Israeli hostages — civilians kidnapped during Hamas’ massacre — and Palestinian prisoners released as part of the ceasefire agreement. Most of these prisoners are convicted terrorists, serving multiple life sentences for mass-casualty attacks stretching back to before the Second Intifada.
The worst media offenders have been Sky News, CNN, and the BBC. Last Thursday, Sky News stayed true to form, referring to the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz as having been held in “Hamas custody.” As though an 85-year-old man, a mother, and her two children had been detained under some form of legitimate due process.
This, just days after Sky referred to Palestinian prisoners—many of them convicted terrorists—as “hostages.”
This time, however, it was what the media didn’t say that was most revealing.
In past hostage-prisoner exchanges, major media outlets have not been shy about indulging Hamas’ propaganda. CNN reported that Hamas had gifted hostages’ families “memorabilia,” including an hourglass ominously meant for the mother of a hostage still held in Gaza — an implicit threat on his life.
The New York Times, for its part, described Hamas’ weekly ritual of torturing and humiliating Israeli captives as mere “theatrics” and even claimed the group had “toned down” its cruelty in the last exchange.
Last Thursday, the Times refrained from suggesting Hamas had toned down its performance. Instead, like so many other publications, it failed to acknowledge the full horror of what unfolded.
Thousands of Palestinian civilians gathered to witness the scene. Men perched on plastic lawn chairs, smoking hookah pipes. Families — mothers in headscarves, fathers cradling toddlers — watched from the crowd. There was music. There was singing.
It was not just the presence of the four coffins that made the spectacle an echo of the savagery of October 7. It was the festive atmosphere — the casual, almost celebratory way a community gathered to watch a terrorist group display the bodies of murdered Jews. It is a society so desensitized to terroristic violence that even the sight of coffins holding two dead babies did not shock and did not horrify.
Quite the opposite. It was a cause for celebration.
The mothers and fathers of Gaza brought their children to watch. To gawk. To clap. At the sight of dead Jews.
Mainstream media outlets barely acknowledged the sheer depravity of the spectacle, offering only the most muted references to the macabre show in Khan Yunis.
Sky News, for instance, summarized the scene with an almost clinical detachment: “Four black coffins were displayed on a stage” before being “put into vehicles and driven away as masked members of Hamas and other factions looked on.” It’s a bizarrely sanitized description for what was, in reality, a horrifying public exhibition of murdered civilians.
CNN at least had the journalistic integrity to acknowledge the “propaganda backdrop with slogans in Arabic, Hebrew, and English” — but conspicuously failed to mention the crude mural of Netanyahu as a blood-sucking vampire looming over the coffins.
ABC News cropped its accompanying photo so that only one Hamas terrorist remained in the frame, reducing the entire event to just two paragraphs — one of which described a Red Cross official “signing documents” as part of the so-called handover.
References to the crowd were fleeting. If mentioned at all, it was merely as “crowds gathered,” with no photographs to accompany the words. One of the most honest assessments came from an AFP report, but even then, it was buried in the final paragraph:
“Large speakers blasted chants, as children and youth pressed themselves around a table where fighters displayed a large automatic rifle and its long ammunition belt, as well as anti-tank mines.”
Yet not a single major news outlet thought it relevant to report that Hamas had invited families to watch –and that they eagerly did, gathering with music and celebration. Not a single journalist spoke of the carnivalesque atmosphere. Not a single reporter noted the chilling detail that all four coffins were the same size, as though a child-sized casket would have made the heartbreak too explicit.
Israel has been repeatedly criticized for its supposed lack of a “day-after” plan for Gaza, for failing to put forward a roadmap that would lead to Palestinian statehood.
But Thursday morning’s gruesome display — more even than the horrors of October 7 — provides the most unflinching answer to that demand: Israel cannot be expected to build a future alongside those who see the murder of its civilians as family entertainment.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post Why There Is No Peace: Ordinary Palestinians Celebrated the Death of the Bibas Family first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”
He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.
Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.
But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.
He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”
He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.
He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.
He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.
He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”
Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.
“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.
SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY
Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.
Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.
Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.
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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly
US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.
A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.
Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.
On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.
BREAKING: PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS CONFRONT “ISRAELI” AMBASSADOR DANNY DANON AT THE UNITED NATIONS
1/5 pic.twitter.com/4G1VYEMGzV
— Within Our Lifetime (@WOLPalestine) September 14, 2025
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.
US activist group plays soccer with Bibi’s mock decapitated HEAD right outside NYC UN HQ
Peep shot at 00:40
Footage posted by INDECLINE collective just as UN General Assembly about to kick off
‘Following the game, ball was donated to Palestinian Genocide Museum’ pic.twitter.com/TQ84sgZhKr
— RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2025
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.
WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”
“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.
“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.
JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel
Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.
The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.
While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.
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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis
Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot
Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.
“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”
Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.
“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.
Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.
She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.
The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”
Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”
The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.