‘Pure evil’: Likud minister decries coffins being ‘paraded like trophies before a cheering crowd’ in Gaza

Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Hamas terrorists carry the coffin apparently of a slain Israeli hostage as they hand over four such coffins to the Red Cross in Khan Younis, Gaza, February 20, 2025. (AP/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Hamas terrorists carry the coffin apparently of a slain Israeli hostage as they hand over four such coffins to the Red Cross in Khan Younis, Gaza, February 20, 2025. (AP/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Following Hamas’s release of what it says are the bodies of four slain hostages, Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli declares that “a society that cultivates a culture of murder and death has no right to exist.”

“One of the West’s greatest failures is its refusal to acknowledge the existence of pure evil. We have raised generations to believe that monsters exist only in fairy tales, that there is no true right or wrong, and that all cultures are equal,” the Likud minister tweets.

“And then comes this accursed day, a day of horror and shame, when an elderly man, a mother, and her two children: Oded Lipschitz, Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas — who were slaughtered by Hamas terrorists, paraded like trophies before a cheering, flag-waving crowd in Gaza. Pure evil. And against such evil, there can be no excuses, rationalizations, or compromises,” he writes in English.

“A society that cultivates a culture of murder and death has no right to exist. A society that tolerates Hamas sympathizers within it dooms its own elderly, its own mothers and children, to the same fate. Evil thrives in the shadow of cowardice. History will not forgive those who turned away.”

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