Judges who prioritize the well-being of Hamas terrorists over that of the hostages need to adjust their moral compass.
Ruthie Blum
(JNS)
Israel’s High Court of Justice has once again revealed its misplaced priorities. And that’s putting it delicately.
In a hearing on Monday about National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s policy to bar Red Cross visits to Nukhba terrorists in Israeli prisons until the organization gains access to the hostages in Gaza, the judges made their outrage clear. But their fury was not aimed at Hamas or the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has utterly abandoned its humanitarian mission. Instead, it was directed at their own government and prison authorities.
The ex parte session was spurred by a petition on behalf of the terrorists. It was submitted by the usual left-wing “suspects”: the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Physicians for Human Rights, HaMoked (the Center for the Defense of the Individual) and Gisha.
These NGOs pulled a typical fast one. They first acknowledged that “Hamas doesn’t provide information about those it holds in captivity, and refuses to allow Red Cross visits to the hostages … in Gaza [among whom] are those who were murdered in Hamas captivity.”
They then went on to get to the crux of their foul maneuver to equate victim and perpetrator, by stating that “Israel’s obligations toward those it holds do not change because of Hamas’s war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
As if Israel’s “holding” of mass murderers is comparable to Hamas’s “holding” of innocent captives.
Not surprisingly, Justice Yitzhak Amit, the self-anointed president of the Supreme Court, agrees with this twisted logic. But the reasoning that he proffered during the hearing went beyond woke politics to focus on his personal reputation and that of his hallowed perch in the international arena.
“Right now, what’s … being publicized abroad [is] that there is starvation, that dozens of prisoners are dying, that it’s basically the Israeli Guantánamo,” he bellowed, banging on his table. “And you’re putting us, the court, at the forefront, on the front line.”
His colleague, Justice Daphne Barak-Erez, fretted about families of terrorists not knowing what’s become of their loved ones. You know, being a sensitive woman and all.
She went as far as to bemoan that each incarcerated individual has been reduced to nothing more than an anonymous title of “prisoner X.”
Though like the petitioners, she conceded that the Oct. 7 terrorists indeed “committed heinous acts,” she expressed horror that their families have no clue where they are. “Even in the harshest times, there was never such a situation,” she asserted. “A writ of habeas corpus requires that information be provided, and there was always compliance. Suddenly, zero information is being conveyed.”
Boo-hoo for the parents who raised their kids to boast about killing Jews with their bare hands.
Subsequently, she turned to Eli Cohen, deputy commissioner of the Prison Service’s Intelligence Division, and asked: “Are you such a weak organization that you can’t handle a single representative of the Red Cross from the United States?”
Cohen replied by pointing out that the terrorists in prison are aware of and discussing this very hearing, hoping that she and her robe-clad buddies will force Ben-Gvir to change course.
The whole scene was as jaw-dropping as it was dangerous. For one thing, the mighty bench, yet again, is sticking its gavel where it doesn’t belong. What it knows but chooses to ignore is that its job isn’t to forge or determine policy—that lies with the elected government. By inserting itself into matters of war and diplomacy, the judiciary continues to undermine Israeli democracy and deterrence.
For another, Hamas’s Nukhba barbarians, who invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and unleashed the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust, are not “ordinary prisoners.” They are jihadists who raped, beheaded, burned and abducted innocent men, women and children. Fifty of those Israelis, 20 of whom are assumed to be alive, albeit barely, remain starved, shackled and tortured.
Not once since that black Sabbath/Simchat Torah holiday more than a year and 10 months ago has the ICRC visited them—not to report on their condition or deliver much-needed medication. The organization whose raison d’être is to secure access to captives in war has shirked its duty so thoroughly that even the head of the Red Cross delegation in Israel, Julian Larison, told Channel 13 last month that his organization had failed by not obtaining permission from Hamas to see the hostages.
Yet Amit and his ilk aren’t focused on this humanitarian scandal. No, they’re concerned about losing face with the hypocritical bodies that never miss an opportunity to vilify the Jewish state.
For years, Israel’s jurists have insisted that their hyperactive court serves as a “flak jacket” against foreign tribunals like the International Criminal Court. Talk about a joke that’s been exposed as a lie—and not only since the volcano of antisemitism that erupted along with the Oct. 7 massacre.
Ben-Gvir, derided far and wide as a reckless extremist, has been right all along on this issue. It is obscene to grant the Red Cross privileges to the monsters who butchered Israelis, while it professes to be unable to reach the Israelis languishing in the hands of Hamas.
It’s time for the High Court to drop the pretense that it’s about “justice” and adjust its moral compass. Israel’s enemies will call its prisons “Guantánamo” no matter what. They will accuse it of “genocide” and “apartheid,” regardless of the facts. Catering to their narrative only strengthens it.
Image: Israeli Supreme Court Justice (now president) Yitzhak Amit speaks at a court hearing on petitions against the firing of Shin Bet director Ronen Bar at the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem, April 8, 2025. Photo by Yonatan Sindel/Flash90.
