Many of us who closely followed the hostage releases have yet to recover from the traumatic scenes we witnessed a couple weeks ago. Ohad Ben Ami, Or Levy, and Eli Sharabi – pale, weak, and emaciated – were unable to walk on their own. Yet, masked terrorists paraded them like trophies, forcing them onto a grotesque stage, compelling them to thank their captors and pretend they had been treated well.
We had to watch in horror as Hamas, in a live broadcast, forced a starved Eli Sharabi to speak into a microphone and express his supposed excitement about returning home to his wife and daughters – knowing full well that Hamas had slaughtered his wife, Lianne, and their teenage daughters, Noiya and Yahel, on October 7 in Kibbutz Be'eri, inside their safe room.
It is unjust, brutal, and inhumane – something that would have made Joseph Goebbels proud.
Goebbels served as the Reich Minister of Propaganda for Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 and was one of Adolf Hitler's closest and most devoted associates. A master manipulator of public opinion, he controlled the Nazi propaganda machine, using mass media, film, literature, and public rallies to spread antisemitic ideology and justify the Holocaust. Goebbels was instrumental in dehumanizing Jews, portraying them as subhuman threats to Germany, thus facilitating their persecution and eventual extermination. His ability to distort reality and manufacture hatred laid the groundwork for the atrocities of the Nazi regime.
Hamas, like Goebbels, understands the power of propaganda theater. Every hostage release is meticulously choreographed – not to expose their crimes, but to shift global sympathy away from the victims. When Jewish hostages – abducted from their homes, held underground for over 500 days, and starved to the brink of death – are finally released, Hamas ensures that their suffering is framed not as an atrocity but as a mere footnote in a so-called "resistance." The world watches – some with horror, others with apathy – as this grotesque display of Jewish suffering is repackaged for political consumption.
Just last week, its propaganda show included satellite images of the kibbutzim they invaded and massacred on October 7, marked with targets and the words "We crossed over swiftly." Yet somehow, these sick terrorists have convinced "useful idiots" in the West that they are the victims of genocide, all while deploying Nazi propaganda tactics that expose their true genocidal intentions against Israelis. Hamas has even included the Red Cross in its theatrics, attempting to use a global humanitarian organization to legitimize its actions.
Goebbels mastered this art in Nazi Germany, saturating the media with images and narratives that painted Jews as subhuman. As a result, the world could look at starved Jewish bodies in ghettos and concentration camps and perceive them not as victims of Nazi cruelty but as part of some twisted "greater good." This insidious framing normalized their persecution and, eventually, their extermination.
Hamas employs the same propaganda tactics. The terrorists kidnap Jewish civilians, deprive them of food, light, and medical care from the Red Cross and other international organizations. Then, when releasing them in a frail, broken state, they force them to act as if they were treated with kindness. Their propaganda machine turns hostages into pawns, coercing them to smile for the cameras or praise their captors under duress – just as Goebbels' propaganda films depicted Jews as supposedly content laborers in concentration camps. Meanwhile, much of the media plays along, reporting on these grotesque spectacles without exposing the deeper horror: Hamas's systemic abuse and the world's complicity in tolerating it.
The fundamental lesson here is that the world has learned nothing. The images of frail, broken Jewish hostages should ignite global outrage – just as they did when the gates of Auschwitz were opened. Instead, too many justify, rationalize, or ignore. Hamas, like the Nazi regime before them, relies on this moral failure and on the useful idiots in the West to continue their campaign.
Goebbels understood that propaganda was the key to making the unthinkable seem inevitable. Hamas is following his blueprint – and succeeding. Its goal is not just to kill Jews but to make their suffering appear ordinary, to ensure that images of malnourished, abused, and degraded hostages do not provoke action. This is why its propaganda must be exposed for what it is: the continuation of a genocidal tradition that the world swore it would never allow again.
The question is no longer whether Hamas is a terrorist organization. It is whether we will allow it to rewrite reality, just as Goebbels once did.
