As regular readers know, Hamass was scheduled to hand over to Israel four murdered hostages and among them are easily the two most heartbreaking: Kfir and Ariel Bibas. Sixteen months ago, these ‘Bibas Babies’ were nine and four years old, respectively, when they were abducted by Hamass during the October 7, 2023 pogram. Their bodies were allegedly handed to Israeli authorities overnight, although there is always a non-zero chance that Hamass is wrong or lying and it will turn out it is not their bodies. But while we don’t think Hamass is particularly trustworthy in general, when they essentially admit to a war crime, we tend to believe them.
We don’t focus on the children to shortchange the lives of the older murdered hostages returned to Israel: their mother, Shiri Bibas, and an unrelated man, 84-year-old Oded Lifshitz. But taking such young children hostage and causing their death—and regardless of the mechanics of how they died, their blood is on Hamass’ hands—is the most obviously indefensible. For instance, there is no reasonable scenario one can imagine where a person could argue that someone needed to defend themselves against Kfir or Ariel with lethal force. And naturally they couldn’t be guilty of any crime justifying death just because they are so young. As we wrote about the death of Shalhevet Pass:
There is no reason to intentionally murder a baby, unless you believe that there is something about that child that makes him or her inherently evil. They don’t kill Jews because of anything they have done to them. They kill them out of irrational hate—simply because they are Jews.
Naturally, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to his people about these events and we thought you would want to watch it. It’s in Hebrew, but this video has subtitles in English:
🚨 Prime Minister @netanyahu makes an address regarding the return of the murdered Hostages.
— Kosher🎗🧡 (@koshercockney) February 20, 2025
English translated subtitles. pic.twitter.com/s01TPhr1iJ
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Listening to it, we are reminded of another speech about dead children: When Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke gave a eulogy after terrorists bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and argued that this cruelty should awaken everyone to the evil of racism and the necessity of opposing it and we think it is worth quoting his words at length:
These children-unoffending, innocent, and beautiful-were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.
And yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity. And so this afternoon in a real sense they have something to say to each of us in their death.
They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. They have something to say to a federal government that has compromised with the undemocratic practices of southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans. They have something to say to every Negro who has passively accepted the evil system of segregation and who has stood on the sidelines in a mighty struggle for justice.
They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American dream.
And so my friends, they did not die in vain.
God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. And history has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive. The innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as a redemptive force that will bring new light to this dark city. The holy Scripture says, ‘A little child shall lead them.’ The death of these little children may lead our whole Southland from the low road of man’s inhumanity to man to the high road of peace and brotherhood.
These tragic deaths may lead our nation to substitute an aristocracy of character for an aristocracy of color. The spilled blood of these innocent girls may cause the whole citizenry of Birmingham to transform the negative extremes of a dark past into the positive extremes of a bright future. Indeed this tragic event may cause the white South to come to terms with its conscience.
Likewise, we can hope that the deaths of the Bibas Babies reminds people of the evil, bigoted hatred Israel faces and the need of good people to oppose that hatred.
Of course, the most obvious objection is to claim that Dr. King would not support the violent methods that Israel has employed and to that we say … not so fast. One of the most revealing quotes that Dr. King ever made was this:
if your opponent has a conscience, then follow Gandhi. But if you enemy has no conscience, like Hitler, then follow Bonhoeffer.
That quote requires a little unpacking just because most people don’t know who Dietrich Bonhoeffer is. There was, in fact, a movie released about him just last year:
We haven’t had a chance to watch the movie but the trailer pretty much summarizes the story. Bonhoeffer was a German pastor who watched the rise of Nazi Germany with appropriate horror and joined an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler. So, once you know that context, you see that Dr. King is really saying that you only use peaceful methods if your opponent has a conscience ('follow[ing] Gandhi'). Otherwise, violence is justified (‘follow[ing] Bonhoeffer’).
And while we are reluctant to call people Nazis unless they really, really deserve it …
The Jew-hating totalitarians of Hamass really, really deserve it.
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