UN silence on Hamas is deafening

For Israelis and Jewish people worldwide, orange is in vogue. But for all the wrong reasons. For more than 500 days, we were gripped, in painstaking agony, as to the fate of the beautiful Bibas family.

We prayed that four-year-old Ariel and his baby brother Kfir, nine-months-old at the time of his brutal capture on October 7, 2023, would soon return home, along with their mother, Shiri.

We saturated our timelines, our flags, our posters and our clothes with the colour orange as the two red-headed Bibas children emerged as unfortunate global symbols of Hamas’s heinous savagery.

We hoped that the children’s father, Yarden, held captive separately from his family and released alive earlier this month, would once again reunite with his perfect family.

Yet last week’s news confirming the slaughter of Ariel, Kfir, Shiri, along with 83-year-old Oded Lifshitz, who helped establish Kibbutz Nir Oz, shattered us. That wound, penetrating deep in the heart of the Jewish people, will never heal, and Israel will never forget the unspeakable barbarity carried out by Hamas while those hostages were held captive in Gaza, and when their coffins were paraded in a depraved hostage release ceremony.

The murder of the Bibas family will forever scar the soul of Israel and the Jewish people.

It should also be a scar on the soul of the entire world. Silence, as we have come to see at the United Nations, can no longer be considered neutrality. When these hallowed halls pass umpteen resolutions condemning Israel and hold countless emergency Security Council sessions lambasting the Middle East’s only democracy — all while failing to formally condemn Hamas’s atrocities — that silence is deafening. It is an eerie silence that does nothing but encourage more acts of barbaric terrorism to be carried out against Israel and its people.

In the face of such silence, Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations organised a commemoration ceremony for the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz, inviting dozens of ambassadors from all over the world to participate in a minute of silence and to sign a condolence book that will be sent back to the victims’ homes.

For all the silence, the Bibas murder did spark outcry in some places, including Argentina, where the Bibas family held dual citizenship. After their brutal deaths were confirmed, Argentina’s President Javier Millei declared two days of mourning — a gesture of unwavering integrity that we hope serves as inspiration to other leaders of the civilised world. Speaking at the commemoration event, Argentina’s Ambassador to the UN Francisco Fabián Tropepi said, “We cannot allow these atrocities to be forgotten. We cannot allow those responsible to remain unpunished. What happened on October 7 was not just another attack in the history of conflict. It was an act of terrorism of unprecedented brutality.”

These are the moments in human history where the only thing more sinister than unconscionable evil is indifference. “Never again” is not just a maxim harking back to the Holocaust 80 years ago. As the slaughter of the Bibas family showed, it is an ever-present clarion call to root out hate that we cannot afford to ignore.

Jonathan Harounoff is Israel’s international spokesperson to the United Nations and author of Unveiled: Inside Iran’s #WomanLifeFreedom Revolt, out in August.