Human rights activism can be a wonderful thing.
Last week, right around the time that The New York Times and other international media outlets published front-page photos of a Gazan toddler with a congenital birth disorder, claiming that he was a victim of an Israeli starvation policy, dozens of American rabbis staged demonstrations in Washington and New York calling for increased food aid in Gaza and an end to what they called the government’s ‘blockade’ of the enclave.
Amid reports of growing hunger in Gaza, there is truly a need to raise a voice for action to prevent possible famine and starvation, and Jews have always been at the forefront of such social activism.
Over the weekend, Israelis were also stunned by the images that Hamas released of hostages Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David, held in Gaza hell for 667 days.
As harsh as the Braslavski video was, the one showing David was a shocking wake-up call for anyone who was under the delusion that Hamas was attempting to keep the hostages in reasonable condition for an eventual deal that would see their release.
In the video, David could be seen crossing off the days that he had not received any food on a makeshift calendar. Shirtless, all of his ribs and bones were visible through his skin. He was shown shoveling dirt with a shovel, whispering that he had been ordered to dig out his own grave.
The images of David recall those of survivors of the Holocaust when the Allies liberated them in 1945 – walking ghosts.
Speaking at the Hostage Square in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, David’s brother made the Holocaust link more acute. “The Israeli and Jewish voice must echo this across the world: ‘Never again’ is today,” he said in an appeal in English.
Hamas attempted to rationalize David’s condition by labeling the video: “He eats what we eat.” But, like a bungling kidnapper who films a ransom note and inadvertently captures the name of the hotel where he’s holding his hostage, a video image of a captor handing David a cup of liquid reveals a meaty forearm belonging to an apparently well-fed man.
The big lie technique devised by the Nazis is alive and well in 2025 as implemented by Hamas, and much of the world is falling for it.
Yesterday, there was no photo of David or Braslavski on NYT's front page, despite the compelling image and storyline that would make it a natural leading headline. (See the New York Post as an example of how this should have been done). There is a photo, however, of aid being parachuted into Gaza by Jordan, which follows the narrative line that NYT and many in the West have built that focuses solely on Palestinian suffering.
Likewise, it’s unlikely you’ll find any demonstrations in New York or Washington by rabbis or any other proud human rights activists deploring the treatment that David, Braslavski, and the other 18 assumed living hostages are subject to by Hamas.
There’s apparently a different standard when the victim is an Israeli. As philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, three times as many people have been killed in Sudan’s brutal civil war, but world outrage remains focused on Israel, a country whose borders were breached, its people savagely attacked, and – as exposed on Saturday – its hostages deliberately starved.
“In Sudan, the death toll is at least three times that of Gaza,” the WSJ wrote in a X/Twitter post promoting the op-ed. “Yet no one on American campuses, or among the Greta Thunbergs and other ‘progressive’ extreme leftists, cares,” Lévy was quoted as saying.
Human rights activism can indeed be a wonderful thing. But when it’s selective, it’s not worth the megaphone the slogans are being shouted through.
'The world's silence about starving Israeli hostages is as deafening as its hypocrisy.'
As US New York Rep. Ritchie Torres wrote on Sunday, “The world’s silence about the deliberate starvation of Israeli hostages at the hands of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad is as deafening as its hypocrisy.”
Maybe if the Jewish world and Israelis accept David’s brother’s appeal to be just as deafening in shouting, “Never again is today,” this will drown out the silence and provide a glimmer of hope that the Holocaust that the hostages in Gaza are enduring will soon come to an end.