We must never forget the ‘progressive’ betrayal of the Israeli hostages

They’re home. After 738 days in hellish captivity, the last living Israeli hostages are free. After more than two years in the cruel bondage of that army of anti-Semites, they have tasted liberty again. Twenty souls returned to their families, and to a nation that prayed for their release. When they are ready they will tell of the horrors they endured in Hamas’s tunnels, those dank lairs of Jew hatred. But for now, in Israel and those parts of the civilised world not yet lost to Israelophobia, the emotion people will be feeling is joy.

There are 20 of them, all men. They include twin brothers: Gali and Ziv Berman, 28, taken from Kibbutz Kfar Aza. And brothers Ariel and David Cunio, 28 and 35, abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz. Ariel’s partner, Arbel Yehud, was also kidnapped, then released in January this year. In a chilling testament to the barbarous cruelty of Hamas’s pogrom, David’s wife and three-year-old twin daughters were kidnapped, too. Like their Nazi forebears, Hamas targeted even Jewish children for ritualistic persecution. After 52 days in captivity, David’s wife and daughters were released in November 2023. The image of the armed neo-fascists of Hamas marching two shattered toddlers to freedom should be seared into humanity’s conscience. Alas, it is not.

Then there is Eitan Mor, 25, who was working as a security guard at the Nova music festival on 7 October. He helped to save dozens of people before himself falling victim to Hamas’s captors. And Bar Kupershtein, 23, who told his grandmother by phone that he was tending to the wounded of Nova and would be home soon. They heard no more from him until he was seen in a Hamas propaganda video in April this year.

And Rom Braslavski, just 21, held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In August, they released a video in which the camera panned Rom’s emaciated frame as he sobbed and writhed in famished agony – Jew-torture porn for the world’s anti-Semites. And there is Evyatar David, 24, who in August was filmed by Hamas digging in the dirt of the lair where he was being held captive. ‘This is the grave where I think I’m going to be buried’, said the bag of bones as he feebly scooped up the soil. It was 2025 and fascists were once more making Jews dig their own graves.

That these men and the others have staggered back into the sunlight of liberty ought to be a cause of global celebration. There will be injuries and ailments and trauma, but it is a wonderful day for Israel and for humanity that 20 men have been liberated from the ruthless grip of a neo-fascist militia. The joy is flecked with sorrow, of course. Alongside these men, we expect to see the release of the remains of 28 hostages who did not survive the ordeal of savagery inflicted on them by Hamas. Their families have secured a freedom they would rather not have: the freedom to grieve.

And yet even as we give thanks for this emancipation of the Jews, we need to reflect on the entire hostage crisis. And in particular on what it says about us. For where the Jewish nation stood by the hostages, we in the West did not. On the contrary, these men, women and children – children – rarely troubled the consciences of those who pose as progressive. They did not trend. No footballers took the knee for them. No Instagram squares were painted yellow for them. There was no viral cry of ‘Bring back the Israelis’, like the cry of ‘Bring back our girls’ following the abduction of 276 schoolgirls by Boko Haram in Nigeria in 2014.

For me, the ‘progressive’ silence on the stolen Israelis was one of the most sobering and illuminating moments of the 21st century so far. Cause-hungry celebrities studiously ignored this cause. Anti-fascists were spectacularly unmoved by this abduction of Jews by fascists. Feminists seemed utterly unstirred by the dragging of young, bloodied women into the misogynist hell of Hamas-ruled Gaza. Even when Ariel Cunio’s partner, Arbel Yehud, was released after 482 days in captivity, feminist influencers were disgustingly silent. There she was, emaciated, hollow-eyed, surrounded by a feral mob of Islamists barking slogans in her face, her only crime that she is a Jew, and yet her ‘sisters’ in the West said fuck all. They were too busy campaigning for their own right to sup Merlot in the opulent surrounds of London’s Garrick Club.

We need a reckoning with this ‘progressive’ betrayal of Jews brutalised by Islamofascists. Here in London, there has been one surefire way to know you’re in a Jewish part of town: you will see yellow ribbons. Jews were left almost entirely alone to rally for their co-religionists who were being tyrannised by genocidal gunmen – something I thought we had promised they would ‘never again’ have to do.

The silence on the hostages wasn’t even the worst of it. The hatred for them was. Do you remember – there was a blind, demented loathing for these men, women and children on the streets of the West. In New York, London, Paris and Sydney, posters of the hostages were attacked and destroyed. Feral Jew-haters clawed at them with a burning animosity until the faces of the Jews were reduced to tatters. People scrawled ‘coloniser’ across their faces. In New York City, faeces were smeared on the poster of Yagil Jacob. Yagil was just 12 years old when he was kidnapped by Hamas. He was held captive for more than 50 days. A society fully loses the right to call itself civilised if it fails to reflect on how such a grotesque desecration of an image of a Jewish child could occur in the 21st century.

To see the true depths of moral dishonour to which the West sank after 7 October, think about David Cunio. He was released today. He is 35. He is a former actor. In 2013, he starred with his twin brother, Eitan, in a film called Youth. It premiered at the Berlinale Film Festival in Germany. And yet 11 years later, as he languished in the captivity of violent Jew-haters, not one person at the 2024 Berlinale saw fit to mention his name, far less call for his release. (Berlinale tried to make up for this sick ‘oversight’ by showing a film about David at this year’s festival.) Worse, when a poster of his three-year-old twin daughters was put up in London, someone daubed Hitler moustaches on them. Jewish infants reimagined as Nazis – such was the gleeful sadism that tore through the West after 7 October.

Tell me: what did David Cunio do to deserve 738 days in captivity? What did he do to deserve the snubbing of his film-world colleagues in the darkest hour of his life? What did he do to deserve having his infant daughters be treated as legitimate targets for the most sickening bigoted invective? We all know the answer: he was born a Jew. That is it. That is the sole reason for his abduction and for the defiling of the likeness of his lovely girls. In both Gaza and the West, his Jewishness marked him out as an unperson, ripe for humiliation.

It is incumbent on those of us who still value reason and decency to confront the West’s moral treachery over the hostages. What we have seen these past two years is the twin savageries of the modern era. The savagery of violent Islamism, and the savagery of identity politics. The barbarous contempt for Jews that motors Hamas, and the barbarous dearth of sympathy for Jews that is a core feature of wokeness. The former see Jews as the arrogant, marauding ‘white colonisers’ of the Holy Land, and so do the latter. ‘Progressives’ in the West were all but complicit in Hamas’s abduction of the Jews, either by ignoring it, or by making excuses for it, or by outright doing Hamas’s bidding and destroying the hostages’ posters. Today we celebrate the liberation of 20 men from the hell of fascistic persecution – tomorrow we ask why so many in our own societies took the side of their persecutors.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy