Victims of Hamas barbarism

OPINION:

For over 15 months, I have had the photograph of a little redheaded boy propped up on a table next to the desk in my office. Everyone has been charmed by the mischievous smile of this child and shocked by the bold label at the top of the image that says: “Kidnapped.” It is the image of Ariel Bibas, the then-4-year-old Israeli-Argentine child taken into Gaza, along with his then-9-month-old brother and their mother, by the barbaric Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023.

The picture of little Ariel has served as a reminder and a hope. It served to remind me every day of the hostages held and terrorized by Hamas, and it provided me with the hope that the hostages, including Ariel, might come home having been released from their horrific ordeal.

On Thursday, my hopes for Ariel were shattered. Hamas, in another of its shameless public relations stunts used to psychologically torture Israelis and Jews around the world, let it be known that Ariel, his younger brother and their mother were dead. They claimed that responsibility for their deaths is Israel’s because, allegedly, they were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Of course, there is not the slightest proof that they died in such an airstrike. In fact, on Friday, Israel reported that a forensic analysis revealed that two children were killed “by [the Hamas] terrorists” who apparently used their “bare hands,” and the body of their mother was not returned.

My wife and I have several grandchildren; one of them is just a little younger than Ariel would have been had he been allowed to live. Just like Ariel, our grandson Rafi has an impish smile and is quite a mischievous child. But unlike Ariel, Rafi is a child blessed by good fortune. He has lived a sheltered and happy life and has the opportunity to live a fulfilling life in the midst of a loving family. Ariel has been deprived of all of that.

The comparison between the good fortune of our grandson and the horrors to which Ariel was subjected has been a source of the most profound consternation to me. The announcement of his death has brought a surprising amount of sadness. This little boy, whose photo has adorned my office for so long, became a kind of companion. Knowing that he is dead at the hands of violent fanatics is immensely disturbing and profoundly sad.

This death is not, however, the only tragedy involved in the short life of Ariel Bibas. The world’s indifference to his suffering is an even greater tragedy in many ways.

This tragedy is highlighted by an exchange that my wife had with a group that proclaims itself defenders of children. Shortly after the barbaric Oct. 7 attack, my wife decided to call one of the foremost child advocacy groups to ask that they intervene and help the kidnapped children. Contacting a group allegedly devoted to helping children seemed particularly appropriate since, on its website, this group announces that it “is an outspoken champion for every last child.”

However, when she spoke with a representative of the organization, that person offered a nuance to its outspokenness. She indicated that the organization would decline to help the children who had been kidnapped from Israel because the organization does not get involved in political matters.

For an organization that professes to be involved in saving children in trouble spots around the globe, it could be asked why making an effort to save Jewish children would be deemed political. Perhaps the answer is contained within the question. We are talking about Jewish children. To so many in the world, Jews are among the privileged Whites who are not deserving of assistance, even in their moments of dire danger, even when it involves innocent children.

This can be ascribed only to a kind of latent antisemitism, and little Ariel, suffering in the tunnels of Gaza, was on the receiving end of this soft antisemitism. No one from the world of do-gooders came to his rescue or even to inquire about his welfare, nor the welfare of the other children, the women and the elderly held as hostages. Israelis tied themselves into knots trying to balance saving Ariel and others with removing the Hamas threat. Still, the humanitarians worried about the starving Gazans — who actually seem well-fed in recent videos disseminated by Hamas — not about the victims of Hamas barbarism.

This terrible failing, a failing echoed by the Red Cross and by virtually every other human rights advocacy organization outside Israel, is much worse than a kind of antisemitism. It is an absence of decency; it is a lack of humanity.

As I look at the sweet face of the now-deceased Ariel Bibas and I think of the absence of concern for him and for all the other victims of Hamas, I am struck by how lacking in compassion our world is and especially how lacking in genuine compassion are so many of those who so loudly proclaim their compassion.

May Ariel’s memory be a blessing and also a lesson, which echoes the lofty but hypocritical motto of the organization that my wife contacted, that truly every child, including Jewish children, is worthy of concern and assistance in moments of suffering.

• Gerard Leval is a partner in the Washington office of a national law firm. He is the author of “Lobbying for Equality, Jacques Godard and the Struggle for Jewish Civil Rights during the French Revolution,” published by HUC Press.