Colours of rage

The terrible reality of abuse of the hostages must spur us to get them all home

On Saturday 8th February, in the year 2025, Jews were paraded by genocidal maniacs. Paraded to the world’s media and forced to smile. Emaciated, unable to walk unaided, in ill-fitting sweat clothes specially printed with ‘prisoner’ IDs. Like the real Squid Games. The villains in green not pink.

Ohad Ben Ami was kidnapped from his home on October 7th 2023 along with his wife Raz. She was released in that November. Ohad was kept in Hell. When he was released pro-Palestinian accounts spread the lie that he was an IDF Commander and a big ‘prize’. Ohad is the accountant for his Kibbutz and was stolen to Gaza in his underwear. This was a deliberate lie, one intended to draw breath from the shocked gasp that reverberated around the world when Ohad’s sunken cheeks and frame appeared on our screens. One intended to divert and confuse and justify the abuse he suffered.

Eli Sharabi was marched onto stage in front of a banner that said “We’re the flood”. The reference is to the name Hamas gave their barbaric invasion of Israel - the ‘Al- Aqsa Flood’. The terrorists murdered Eli’s wife and daughters, butchered the family dog. That was after they kidnapped Eli and his brother Yossi, who was later killed in captivity. Lianne Sharabi originally came from the UK and she and her daughters were British citizens. Their names should be known in every household in the land. It is to our eternal shame that they are not.

We should all know that Hamas came into their home and while they lay huddled together shot them to death. We should know.

Eli didn’t know.

Hamas scripted a speech for him, told him his family were seen in Tel Aviv. Encouraged him to say why he was excited to go home. “I feel very, very happy today to return to my family and friends, to my wife and my daughters.” The cruelty is so evil, I can barely comprehend it.

Or Levy is a young man in his early thirties. He went to dance with his wife, his first and true love, at the Nova festival. They had only been there for 9 minutes before the rockets started coming. Or and Eynav headed for a bomb shelter. There they huddled with 27 others until hordes of Hamas came and threw grenades and sprayed bullets. Eynav was murdered and Or kidnapped. In the confusion he never knew what happened to his beloved. Until he returned. His 3 year old son Almog told him “Daddy you took a long time to come back.”

The three men had lost half their body weight. They were starved. Hung up by their legs. Chained. One only walked for the first time on the day he was released. He had to learn how to use his feet again. They were strangled, beaten, burned. The hostages were supposed to be the terrorist’s grand plan, their prize assets. Yet they treated them with malice and brutishness. Part of the strategy with the men could have been to weaken and humiliate them deliberately as psychological warfare. To show well-fed gun-wielding Palestinian terrorists in contrast to frail and thin Israelis. All it did was expose the lie of famine and reveal who was actually starving in Gaza.

Hamas is always speaking to many different audiences, often with opposite messaging. To Arab countries a show of strength and intimidation. To the West an exploitation of sympathy. To Gazans a signal of dominance. The releases have been challenging to satisfy all those needs and Hamas finally succeeded in displaying for the West the true psychopathic nature of their organisation. In a way they could not ignore. Though some still are determined to look away and continue the narrative of victimhood. It is becoming more difficult with every abused innocent.

The shock of seeing Jews so skeletal immediately evoked those haunted images of survivors in concentration camps. We just saw the 80th commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz. A camp that my husband Adam’s great grandparents were murdered in. To pause for one second on the thought of his cousin Tsachi being subjected to the tortures that the released hostages endured is to walk on emotional shards of glass. My jaw clamps and my body starts to shake. I have cried enough tears of sorrow and fury. There is only white, red and black rage now.

For those monsters in green.