Hamas murdered a Jewish baby by placing it in an oven, Israeli first responder Eli Beer said at the Republican Jewish Conference this weekend. Hamas supporters instinctively questioned Beer’s story and called it absurd: Was the baby already dead before it was shoved in the oven?
Let’s admit that the claim is unconfirmed. For now. Beer, founder of the emergency-medical-services organization United Hatzalah, has seen much more than you or I, and it certainly doesn’t seem too wild a claim to charge against terrorists who rape women next to their dead friends, abduct Israeli children to use as human shields, execute kids in front of their parents, and burn whole families alive.
Social-media replies to Beer’s remarks have been abhorrent, as Brittany wrote earlier. This reaction is common — pro-Palestinians frequently call stories of Hamas’s war crimes Israeli propaganda.
When Hamas attacked Kfar Aza kibbutz and killed 40 babies, some media reported that the 40 babies were also beheaded. That number was exaggerated, pro-Palestinian sources claimed, and there was no proof that Hamas beheaded all 40. And do you remember the German-Israeli citizen whose limp body Hamas paraded around Gaza in the back of a pickup truck? On October 10, Palestinian sources reportedly confirmed to Shani Louk’s mother, Ricarda, that her 22-year-old daughter was alive — which some on social media triumphantly reported, as evidence to not always assume the worst of Hamas. Well, Israeli military identified Shani’s skull fragments this weekend. Claims from Palestinian and German media that Shani was in a hospital after suffering critical injuries appear false. “At least she didn’t suffer,” Ricarda said of her daughter’s partial beheading.
How much longer will Hamas sympathizers minimize, or question, these crimes? Witnesses saw only a few severed infant heads, not 40, they say; Shani wasn’t confirmed dead; she just lay in the back of a pickup as Hamas held her limp body in place with their feet; the burn marks on that baby could’ve been caused by hot metal, not necessarily an oven.
Hamas is not limited by morality. To verify claims is one thing. To trust that Hamas couldn’t possibly commit such evil, after mountains of evidence suggest otherwise, is another entirely.