Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.
On this occasion, it shows a lone female Israeli hostage, accompanied by balaclava and helmet-clad gunmen, being jostled through a baying mob comprising hundreds of jeering men.
These were the chaotic scenes yesterday as Arbel Yehoud was escorted by fighters from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to a waiting Red Cross vehicle in the southern Gaza Strip.
The terror of this young woman, still only 29, and emerging from hundreds of days of captivity during which she endured unimaginable horror, is written all over her face.
It is, of course, not the first time we have seen such sickening scenes of jubilation at what should be a time of sober reflection and fragile concord in this most horrible of conflicts.
They have been a hallmark of every hostage handover that has taken place in recent weeks.
Yet this particular public display made my stomach turn: Jihadi men screaming genocidal chants, trying to intimidate a traumatised young woman already gripped with fear.
No wonder prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday released a statement condemning the ‘shocking scenes’.
Israeli soldier Arbel Yehoud, 29, circled, is escorted by Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters as she is handed over to the Red Cross in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, January 30
Yehoud has been held hostage by Hamas in Gaza since October 7, 2023
He vowed to delay the reciprocal return of Palestinian prisoners ‘until the safe exit of our hostages is guaranteed in the next few days’.
In other words: Hamas is jeopardising the already precarious ceasefire.
Not only was the behaviour of the Islamist crowd certifiably evil – but deeply misogynistic.
How can we see it any other way when confronted with these scenes, knowing as we do that those same gunmen holding Yehoud at gunpoint are part of a regime that has overseen the rape, torture and death of any number of Jewish women?
This was a display of pure, naked aggression – an aggression that started on October 7, 2023, when Hamas fighters slaughtered innocent civilians, gang-raped young Israeli girls, spat on their brutalised bodies and paraded other terrified and blooded Israeli women through the streets.
Equally shocking was the response to these deplorable acts by Western liberal women – which was not unequivocal condemnation, but denial.
Hordes of female protesters, many of them middle-class and no doubt fully paid-up members of the #MeToo movement, marched through the streets of London and other European capitals swathed in Palestinian flags, calling for death to Israel and an end to Palestinian suffering.
They have done so ever since, apparently oblivious to the gaping hypocrisy at the heart of their protest, which is that if you cherry-pick who you perceive as a victim on the basis of their race, nationality or religion then you are betraying any feminist principles you may believe you hold.
Yehoud was the second Israeli hostage out of three to be released on Thursday
Scores of spectators clamoured to catch a glimpse of the Israeli hostage amid the chaotic scene
Their denial of the suffering of Jewish women has continued to be a source of profound disgust to me, a woman who grew up in a Muslim household in Pakistan and who knows first-hand how cheap a woman’s life is for men who fight in the name of religion.
I wonder if they notice that among these baying crowds there is not a single woman present?
That the Palestine they cheer for is an unequal society where many women are little more than chattels, confined to their homes and many themselves subjected to torture and murder by the men of Hamas, as many human rights organisations have reported.
Not for them are the rights and freedoms that women in Western democracies enjoy. Yet many use that freedom to protest in favour of a regime that would strip it away in a heartbeat.
This is the uncomfortable truth that those flag-waving marchers seem unable to confront, a truth encapsulated yesterday in those chilling pictures of Arbel Yehoud’s terrified face.
A refusal to accept it is nothing less than a betrayal of all womankind.
Khadija Khan is politics and culture editor at A Further Inquiry magazine.
