Israel has been transformed because of the horrific events of Oct 7, 2023.
How could a society not be changed by such a catastrophe?
Israelis continue to reel from the massacre.
How can they not?
Very recently, witnessing the transfer back into Israel of some of the kidnapped victims of Oct. 7, 2023, adds even more to the tearing out of the hearts and souls of Israelis.
Nothing could have prepared Israel for the heart wrenching experience of watching the coffins of the Bibas children returned to their home. Kfir was 9 months old when he was kidnapped, his older brother, Ariel, was all of 4 years old.
The country watched and waited for confirmation that it was indeed the two young boys and their mother in the coffins labeled with their names.
Finally, the medical examiner announced that the bodies of the children were, indeed, Kfir and Ariel.
Later however the medical examiner told the country that the body that was supposed to be their mother Shiri — was not!
They couldn't say who it was — just who it was not.
Neither was it the body of any other of Israel’s kidnapped victims. Israel’s forensic team has a DNA data bank of every single victim of the massacre and the hostage taking.
As the hostages, both alive and dead, returned home, Israelis and lovers of Israel were simply stunned.
They fumed as Hamas manipulated the media turning barbarism into a Hamas extravaganza exploiting the kidnapped victims.
It was all a part of a larger Hamas game playing out for the Arab and Muslim world and for their supporters in the West.
When the two youngest hostage coffins were paraded and celebrated in Gaza, even, and at long last, the International Red Cross took exception saying that Hamas should not exploit the bodies of dead children for their propaganda.
In the end the International Red Cross took possession of the bodies, transferring them to Israel, to home.
Additional information has come from the medical examiner’s office.
They revealed that the boys were terribly brutalized and murdered in November of 2023.
The examiners spoke of the brute force that was used to murder these innocent children.
The examiners also told us that Hamas switched coffins and the pictures of the children.
The IDF said that they knew where the bodies were buried — but could not get to them.
Pained Israelis watched and listened — pained lovers of Israel watched and listened — as the bodies of these victims were returned.
Hamas put them in locked black coffins. The International Red Cross covered them in white sheets. Israel moved them into simple white pine coffins draped with Israeli flags.
Everyone, every decent person, Israeli and otherwise asked — who brutalizes and murders infants? To what end did Hamas murder these innocent children?
The video from Oct. 7 shows a petrified Shiri clutching her two red-haired children, Ariel and Kfir, ripped from their home and kidnapped by civilian Gazans — not Hamas or Islamic Jihad terrorists.
To brutalize and murder children, even the children of your enemy is beyond the conceptualization of most people. Oct. 7 taught us that we, the good people of the world, are disconnected from the foundational brutality and fundamental inhumanity that Hamas and their followers have towards Israelis and Jews.
What we witnessed on Oct. 7, 2023, is not dissimilar to the many stories of Nazi leadership who held pet animals in high regard yet murdered Jews because they were considered subhuman.
Karl Koch, the commandant of Buchenwald then Sachsenhausen and finally Majdanek, is said to have cried when his treasured dog died.
The same Koch who ran a Death Camp that murdered thousands of Jews. In the end, Koch was relieved of his responsibilities at the camp after a break-out of Soviet prisoners of war.
He was tried by the Nazis for a slew of horrific acts as commandant including disgracing the SS. The Nazis executed Koch by firing squad only days before the Americans liberated Buchenwald.
How is it possible that someone so cruel can show such emotion for an animal? How is it possible that this contradiction exists?
Hamas claimed, and still claims, that they did not harm children or rape women.
We know that to be an untruth.
It was Hamas who filmed and posted live videos of their massacre. To their world, Hamas presents a myth. They deny the atrocities because the reality, the brutality, is too difficult for most people to digest. It is true — Hamas raped and murdered children.
Nazis, for their part, were trained to view Jews as vermin and subhuman.
Hamas echoed the exact same indoctrinating message.
Brutalize and murder the Jews regardless of age or sex because Jews have no human dignity, because Jews are subhuman.
How else can a people be motivated to so casually and callously murder innocent children like Ariel and Kfir Bibas?
Micah Halpern is a political and foreign affairs commentator. He founded "The Micah Report" and hosts "Thinking Out Loud with Micah Halpern," a weekly TV program, and "My Chopp," a daily radio spot. Follow him on Twitter @MicahHalpern. Read Micah Halpern's Reports — More Here.
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