People Love Dead Hostages

“It is impossible to overestimate the impact of the formation of Israel on Jewish identity”

-The Future Tense, Jonathan Sacks

We recently marked 500 days since October 7^th, and another pantomime from Hamas. Traumatised Jews forced to pose on a podium, before they were finally released back into Israel. Only this time, the display was also complemented by a grotesque line of coffins comprising the dead hostages.

At long last, a few minutes of sympathetic press coverage. At long last, a few moments that Israel would not appear a genocidal monster, and instead Palestinian “government”, for all its masquerading, would reveal itself as a ragtag band of deranged gunmen. 

Naturally, it would not be newsworthy without some evenly applied distortions. Tareq Abu Azzoum of Al Jazeera English commented that the initial “captives” seemed “well-dressed” and “completely in very good condition”. Reports later revealed that the emaciated hostages had lost a third of their body weight during their months of torment, and showed signs of heart problems.The BBC had similarly little compunction about equating hostages, who had committed no crime bar belonging to the Jewish people, to Palestinian prisoners convicted of serious offencesincluding murder.

Nonetheless, the Bibas tragedy marked a moment of acute empathy. As their coffins returned from Gaza, hardened reporters teared up on live television and even Al Jazeera broadcast a guest discussing the ‘spectacle of death’.

Indeed, the ordeal bore strong reminiscence to a book penned in 2021 by American author Dara Horn. Provocatively titled ‘People Love Dead Jews’, Horn criticises a fascination with Jewish deaths that divert attention from Jewish life. How could a deserted Jewish town in the Far East accrue so much scholarly interest whilst Tel Aviv’s sand dunes-to-skyscrapers story was ignored? Not to mention the outsized Jewish contribution to innovation in medicine and technology. How could Anne Frank be venerated and Auschwitz enjoy a blockbuster traveling exhibition whilst Israel suffers preposterous demonisation? Why are Jews cherished as victims of anti-Semitism yet unwanted for their vitality? Why do journalists, like Guardian writer Owen Jones, go so far as to claim that Israel’s hi-tech enterprise and democratic culture are none but an attempt to tout as a ‘vanguard of White European civilisation’ in the Middle East, ignoring Israel’s many contributions to the world in favour of denigration?

The past 16 months provides a further tragic validation of Horn’s argument. 

Deaths of Israeli hostages have been a source of great satisfaction amongst anti-Zionist polemics. If there is anything better than bloodied Palestinian children to show how wicked Israel and its government is, it is the tacit abandonment of Israeli citizens to die in Gaza. The accidental killing of three hostages by Israeli gunfire garnered especial delight. Channel 4 teased that this episode might ‘finally sway’ a callous ‘Israeli [public] opinion’ in a way that ‘two months of bombing never could’. After all, what do Channel 4 care about neutralising threats to Jewish life?

Israel’s critics are convinced that the Jewish state thrives off killing Palestinians, while sunning itself as the New York of the Levant. In the particular case of Jones, he paused his online diatribe to recount the “tragic fate of the Bibas family” and its implications as a “grave war crime for which there is no justification”. As soon as the subject matter turned back to the living however, Jones resumed his attack, claiming that Israelis will wish to “avenge” their deaths through “mass slaughter” of Palestinians.  

As a resident in Israel for over half a decade, having walked across the country and served in its army, there seem to be two important scores to correct. 

The notion that Jewish sovereignty can only exist as an outpost of American or European culture is as detestable as it is false. Most Israeli Jews do not in fact originate from the west, and the mosaic of its history and culture reflect a dynamic unique to this area of the world. As the late Rabbi Sacks articulated, “Jewish existence which in today’s diaspora may appear random, arbitrary and disconnected, in Israel takes on coherence. There the Bible comes alive against the backdrop of its own landscape and its own language, once again a living tongue…”.

I would not expect the press and the pundits to laud Israel’s every policy decision implemented during this prolonged and bloody conflict. I am, however, of the opinion that the character of theJewish people and where they come from should be a key driving force in the future of this strip of land, even if driving this vision of being a free people in its own homeland comes with difficult decisions in a difficult neighbourhood.

Therefore, whilst it is commendable for comforters to console amidst the Bibas coffins, the corpses of October 7th, or the tragic spectacle of skeletal hostages frogmarched by masked Islamists… that is far from enough.

What about solidarity when Israel must act in order to afflict defeat on craven enemies? What about crediting the heroism, the altruism, and the vision that the Jewish psyche has borne since October 2023? Would even a single non-Jewish news outlet report on the resilience of hostages staying true to Jewish faith and heritage during their harrowing ordeal?

Perhaps such vision is in short supply in the West. How many first-world countries proudly tell the story of who they are and where they come from in 2025?

Hamas, it is true, make, little equivocation about their ultimate drive. “No migration except to Jerusalem” ran the triumphant slogan during their recent farcical handover ceremony, presumably a reference to President Trump’s relocation plan. I respect their and their religion’s connection to the holy city, which dates to the 7th Century. I also know my Bible well enough to appreciate that both Isaiah and Zechariah envisioned it as a place of worship for all the nations.

However, this still leaves me with one thought. We never asked for this war, violence, and struggle. We would happily end it tomorrow. It is up to our neighbours end their savagery, and for Israel and her allies to both reject a culture that consigns Jewish identity to oblivion. Only then will the vision of peace in the Land of Israel have a hope of becoming a reality.