OPINION: Indifference is worse than
hate
If Jewish dignity is negotiable,
'never again' becomes a devastating lie, writes Hen Mazzig
By Hen
Mazzig February
23, 2025, 11:52 am
There are moments in
human history when evil announces itself so clearly, so vividly, that silence
becomes impossible. Or so one might think.
On February 22, 2025,
Hamas released six Israeli hostages, among them Avera Mengistu and Hisham
al-Sayed—two mentally disturbed men who had spent a decade in captivity. But
this was no act of mercy; it was theatre of the grotesque, designed
specifically to humiliate. The hostages were marched through jeering crowds,
including children, their dignity systematically dismantled for propaganda.
These images—captured, circulated, consumed—were eerily reminiscent of darker
moments from humanity’s recent past, a stark reminder that hatred still
thrives, particularly against Jews.
Just days before this
spectacle, Hamas had committed an atrocity even more appalling. Shiri Bibas and
her two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, were returned to their homeland—but not
alive. Instead, they arrived in locked coffins, without keys, deliberately sealed
to maximize anguish. Their bodies bore the unmistakable marks of brutality,
killed not by the impersonal distance of a bullet, but by terrorists’ own
hands. And when Hamas initially sent the wrong body instead of Shiri’s, it was
not incompetence—it was cruelty layered upon cruelty, a final mockery of
dignity itself.
Then came last night,
when Hamas escalated their dark theater further, releasing a video featuring
two young hostages, Evitar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, both only 23. They were
paraded at the hostage-release ceremony solely to torment them. The Red Cross
representatives, standing just feet away, said nothing, did nothing, choosing
instead silent complicity in the face of inhumanity.
And yet, perhaps the
most troubling part of this tragedy isn’t only Hamas’s brutality; it’s the
global silence that has followed. While millions around the world passionately
marched against military operations in Rafah, chanting “All Eyes on Rafah,” there
was barely a murmur of outrage for Shiri, Ariel, Kfir, Evitar, or Guy. This
absence of empathy is not an oversight—it’s evidence of a chilling truth:
atrocities against Jews have somehow become normalized, easier to ignore,
dismiss, or rationalise.
Consider Avera
Mengistu’s story—3,821 days spent in isolation, each one an eternity of
deprivation and humiliation. Here was a man struggling with mental illness,
stripped of dignity, paraded like a trophy. Or Omer Shem Tov, another hostage
released, forced at gunpoint to kiss the heads of his captors—an image
meticulously designed to degrade, to diminish. Each humiliating photograph,
each viral video released by Hamas, quietly erodes the world’s capacity for
outrage, gradually numbing the collective conscience until violence becomes
routine.
But this cruelty is not
random. It is calculated, precise. Hamas understands the power of
desensitisation. They know that every unanswered atrocity shifts humanity’s
moral baseline downward, normalizing barbarism.
The silence of the world
in response is not neutrality—it is complicity. When atrocities against Jews
elicit only passive indifference, they encourage more brutality. When protests
erupt worldwide over justified military actions, yet remain silent about slaughtered
children, it creates an unmistakable double standard, one that implicitly
declares Jewish lives less worthy of global empathy.
“Never Again”—a solemn
vow forged from the ashes of the Holocaust—once seemed immutable. Yet, as
atrocities against Jews grow more grotesque and are met only with deafening
silence, one wonders if “Never Again” was ever more than mere words, comforting
yet hollow, easily forgotten when the victims become inconvenient.
We cannot allow
humanity’s moral compass to be reset in the face of such brutality.
Silence is complicity;
indifference is enabling. As Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel famously said, “The
opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
We owe it to Avera
Mengistu, to Shiri Bibas, to Ariel and Kfir, to Evitar David and Guy
Gilboa-Dalal—to every victim of this unimaginable cruelty—to speak loudly,
clearly, and urgently.
Because if Jewish
dignity is negotiable, if atrocities reminiscent of our darkest past provoke no
global outrage, then “Never Again” isn’t just a broken promise—it’s a
devastating lie.
