IN THE MEDIA
The hypocrisy of international outrage
May 30, 2025 | Justin Amler
Daily Telegraph – 30 May 2025
Once again, the global stage is ablaze with condemnation – not of Hamas, the terror group responsible for the October 7 massacre, but of Israel, a democratic nation fighting to protect its citizens and rescue its kidnapped countrymen and women. A recent joint statement from the UK, France, and Canada, along with a similar one by 24 countries including Australia, criticising Israel’s military operations and humanitarian efforts, is just the latest example of manufactured indignation.
If these nations truly want this war to end, the conditions have been clear since October 8, 2023:
- Hamas must release all the hostages – both the living and the dead.
- Hamas must lay down its arms and give up power over Gaza
That’s it. If those two things happen, the war ends.
Yet in the flurry of statements aimed at Israel, the hostages are barely mentioned. And when they are, it’s often as a brief afterthought. There’s no urgency, no outrage, and no real pressure applied to the group holding innocent people in cages, subjecting them to psychological torment and physical torture.
As for Hamas, these statements don’t demand anything of substance. Instead, they merely “call on Hamas” or “reiterate our message” that hostages should be released – while remaining silent on the demand for Hamas to disarm, even though almost all Western governments have previously agreed this must be the war’s outcome.
Do they really think a not-so-strongly worded statement urging a course of action on terrorists who burn families alive, rape women and massacre children will change their hearts and end this war?
Freed hostage Agam Berger, held by Hamas for 473 days, made this clear to French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot during a meeting in Paris. Diplomatic solutions, she said, won’t work because “it’s us or them.”
No one in Israel – not its citizens, not its soldiers and despite conspiratorial claims to the contrary, not the Government – wants this war to continue. War is hell. It costs lives, shatters families, and permanently scars nations. Yet it is notable that no viable alternative has ever been proposed that would bring home the hostages and end Hamas’ violent rule.
That’s because Hamas continues to reject every deal that does not leave it in control of Gaza, ready to prepare the next October 7 – a reality that the international community ignores.
It’s easy for leaders in distant capitals to sit comfortably and pass moral judgment when it’s not their children being held in tunnels or their civilians racing to bomb shelters. And let’s not pretend any of these countries would show more restraint if terror on the scale of the October 7 attacks came to their doorsteps.
Still, their obsession with a two-state solution in the short term persists, as outlined in their statement. They talk as if it’s a magic elixir that will solve all the region’s problems. But statehood has been offered to the Palestinians numerous times, and turned down. And Hamas actually ruled the closest thing to a Palestinian state that has ever existed for more than 16 years – and used it to prepare October 7.
Yes, conditions in Gaza are dire. But Hamas has been clear that allowing civilians to suffer in order to win international sympathy is part of its plan. The United Nations, instead of confronting this reality, only fuels it with its complicity. It recently rejected a joint US – Israel initiative to deliver humanitarian aid directly to civilians, claiming it “contravenes humanitarian principles”, although this aid is already being delivered! Yet its old, preferred methods have only led to Hamas stealing aid for its fighters on a massive scale and selling it at extortionate prices to pay for its military needs.
Meanwhile, UN officials make outlandish, unverified claims – like the assertion that 14,000 babies would die within 48 hours if aid wasn’t delivered – a baseless and inflammatory fabrication.
The West has lost its moral compass. October 7 – the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust – has already faded from international memory. The world’s attention has shifted from the atrocity that sparked this war to the discomfort of having to watch Israel fight it. But Israel doesn’t have the luxury of forgetting. Not when its citizens are still in captivity. Not when rockets and missiles still fall. Not when every Israeli family, and Jews around the world, feels the impact of this war personally.
Instead of one-sidedly chastising Israel, the world should be asking: Why does Hamas still have money for weapons but not for food? Missiles but not medicine?
Once again, the world has shown its inability – or unwillingness – to recognise evil. And instead of pressuring the perpetrators, it targets the one democracy with no choice but to confront it head-on. Because if Hamas remains in power, the next war is not just possible, it’s inevitable.
