One hundred days ago, the world changed. October 7 has proven to be many things: the opening salvo in a brutal war between Israel and Hamas; an attack that could precipitate a broader, regional war; the beginning of a global, ongoing orgy of antisemitism; a wake-up call regarding the rot inside the West’s once-great sensemaking institutions; a possible realignment of our politics.
One of the things it has also been is a test. A moral test that many in the West have failed. That test of moral conscience is a continuing one considering there are still 136 hostages in Gaza. Two of them are babies; close to 20 of them are young women.
Across the Western world, these hostages have faded from view. And when it comes to the fate of the many young women abducted by Hamas and taken to Gaza, the silence from some corners has been deafening.
Today on Honestly, Bari argues that the groups you would expect to care most about these women and hostages—the celebrity feminists who are always the first to speak up in times of crisis, the prominent women’s organizations who protested loudly when it came to #MeToo, Donald Trump, or Brett Kavanaugh, and the international, supposedly “nonpolitical” human rights organizations—have said and done next to nothing about the murder, kidnap, and rape of Israeli girls.
What explains their silence—or worse, their downplaying or denial?
When Michelle Obama, Oprah, Malala Yousafzai, Angelina Jolie, Kim Kardashian—and the rest of the civilized world—saw the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Nigeria by Boko Haram in April 2014, within days they took to Twitter and demanded “Bring Back Our Girls.”
Why isn’t the world demanding the same now?
It’s been one hundred days in captivity: bring back our girls.
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This could be probably the most difficult and horrifying thing I've ever listened to.
The fact that there are women like Michelle Obama that have a voice, who will #bringthemhome if they are from Nigeria but not from Israel, shows a frightening lack of morality and disdain for humanity in general.
My honest wish for people like Obama and so many others is that they never have to see their daughters go through anything like what happened on October 7 and continues to this day. Yet, their lack of compassion and support makes me hate them with a heat of a thousand suns.
There is no place for ceasefire, even with the broken hostages being returned. There is only a reminder that Never Again, means Never. Again.
Destroy Hamas. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. And for anyone that supports them under the guise of "free palestine", their minds have been captured by evil and they should be punished, either by governments or G-d.
I am not a Jew, have no friends or relatives in the Middle East and am surely not the type to post messages and opinions online. The past few months since Oct 7th have changed me. How anyone of conscience can fail to unequivocally and wholeheartedly condemn Hamas for their monstrous cruelty saddens me. This podcast was devastating and very hard to listen to, but I implore all who read this to do so.