BORIS JOHNSON: The October 7 massacre is among the most depraved events in the history of human cruelty. So it’s incredible that so many in Britain seem to have lost all moral clarity
Here is what happened to one Israeli family three weeks ago today, on the morning of Saturday, October 7, at their home on a kibbutz in south Israel. I am relying on the evidence of reputable journalists who have seen the footage and who believe it to be incontrovertible.
At about 6am we see the father emerge from sleep. He is clearly frightened by the gunfire he can hear outside. He grabs his two young sons, both of whom appear to be under ten, and for a few moments they mill around in panic, all three still in their boxer shorts.
They go to the front door and then retreat because it seems too dangerous outside — until the father decides to make a break for it. They rush for a shelter but before they have time to seal themselves inside, a Hamas terrorist jumps over the wall and throws a grenade in after them.
There is a blinding flash in the shelter. The father comes out and dies in a pool of blood. His badly injured sons follow, stepping over their father’s body.
The scene cuts to the kitchen. The boys are on the floor. The terrorist is getting a drink from the fridge. He first takes some cold water, then drops the jug and finds some cola, which he chugs back.
One boy sets up a piteous wail: ‘Why am I alive? Why are we alive? Brother, this is not a prank, our father is dead.’ Then they discuss the other child’s badly bleeding eye. He can’t see, he says; and that is the last we see of them.
The October 7 massacre was among the most sickening and depraved events in all the history of human cruelty, writes BORIS JOHNSON. Pictured, Israeli police officers evacuate a woman and child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel
We are reflexively treating Hamas, pictured, and Israel as two belligerent parties in an ancient quarrel, where there are faults on both sides; and we are therefore ignoring, or minimising, what actually happened
We don’t know what happened to the boys. All this was on a 43-minute compilation of footage — from CCTV, from Hamas bodycams, first-responder cameras, and so on. It was shown a few days ago, by the Israeli government, to dozens of experienced international journalists, and it was by no means the most horrific episode.
They saw a young girl — maybe seven years old — being chased under a desk, and then shot at point-blank range.
They saw people being tortured, burned, beheaded. Members of the audience were seen to retch involuntarily, to weep and to beg ‘Make it stop’.
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There is a reason why these images do not appear in papers such as this one. They are simply too gruesome, and they are not published because these victims are innocent human beings who in their lives had beauty and grace and worth, and who do not deserve to be exhibited to the world in the final extremities of their suffering.
But we know enough, far, far more than enough. We know that the October 7 massacre was among the most sickening and depraved events in all the history of human cruelty. So it is incredible that in the three weeks since the murder of 1,400 Jews we seem — in Britain and around the world — to have lost all moral clarity.
A fog has descended. We have forgotten which way is up. We are reflexively treating Hamas and Israel as two belligerent parties in an ancient quarrel, where there are faults on both sides; and we are therefore ignoring, or minimising, what actually happened.
At one point in the film a young Hamas terrorist can be seen ringing his parents in Gaza. ‘I have killed ten Jews today,’ he boasts, as they weep for joy. ‘I am a hero! I have killed ten Jews!’
Who is this young man — boasting about killing innocent and defenceless people?
He is a member of Hamas, and Hamas is the government — I repeat, the government — of Gaza. This jihadi didn’t just go on a casual anti-Semitic shooting spree. He was part of a long-meditated and deep-laid plan to kill as many Jews as possible, in circumstances as humiliating and degrading as possible; and that plan was devised by Hamas, the government of Gaza.
These are the very same people whose casualty statistics are spouted so trustingly by the BBC; the same people who claimed that it was an Israeli bomb that killed those poor people at the hospital — an assertion that turned out to be a lie.
Now we are told that we must listen to Hamas when they protest that Gaza is running out of fuel (which also seems to be doubtful when you look at Hamas fuel stocks), and now more and more people are calling for a ‘ceasefire’, as if this was a war between two powers that basically respect the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war.
It is no such thing.
This is now an attempt by a decent, civilised and democratic society to deal with an Islamist death cult.
We grieve for the innocent Palestinians who are losing their lives — and so do Israelis. But it is Hamas that has thrust those victims in the line of fire. Pictured, an Israeli airstrike on Gaza
On the one side — it can never be said too often — we see Israeli Defense Forces that are trying to minimise civilian casualties.
On the other side, Hamas terrorists who want to maximise civilian casualties, and who brag about how many Jews they have killed and maimed and raped.
We grieve for the innocent Palestinians who are losing their lives — and so do Israelis. But it is Hamas that has thrust those victims in the line of fire.
What has gone wrong with us that we cannot see it?
Shame on broadcasters for refusing to call Hamas terrorists. Shame on those tens of thousands of people, in this country, who took to the streets after the October 7 massacre to show their support — for the Palestinians!
What message do you think you are sending to Hamas, all you who wave your Palestinian flags, your disgusting Nazi-era banners with images of the Star of David being thrown in the bin?
You are effectively sending a message of support, and that means, I am afraid, that you are giving succour and encouragement to the baby-killers of Hamas.
If you say that it is all relative, and that there are faults on both sides, then again I am afraid you are failing to think clearly, and you are making a moral equation between deeds that cannot be equated, between terrorism and self-defence.
I want a two state-solution, and I will continue to work for it, and for peace.
I want the Palestinians to have their own homeland — though you have to wonder how the Israelis will ever trust them to make it work after the catastrophic consequences of letting Hamas run Gaza.
If you step back and look at the broad sweep of post-war history, you also have to wonder why this is the one territorial dispute that continues to excite such viciousness and such hatred.
Think of the colossal movements of people around the world after 1945, the tens of millions who were turned into refugees as the maps were re-drawn.
Why has this question proved so insoluble? Is it just Israeli intransigence? Or is it also the recurring virus of anti-Semitism that continues to be so prevalent, not just in the Middle East but around the world?
After the horrors of the early 20th century, the international community had no choice. We had to create a homeland, in Palestine, where Jewish people could feel safe.
After some of the responses to the October 7 massacre — including, I am sad to say, in the UK — I am more glad than ever that we did.
It is plain that Israel is agonising about how to deal with Gaza, whether and how to launch a ground attack.
We must pray for restraint and proportionality. We must pray for the minimum loss of civilian life. We must pray that Israel has the wisdom not to set up another cycle of hatred and revenge.
But please can we stop equating Hamas and Israel, because that ubiquitous tendency to moral equivalence is wrong; it is sick; and it is doing the terrorists’ work for them. We need to snap out of it.
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