The execution of four Palestinians in Khan Yunis this week, carried out on Hamas’s orders and “for looting and causing the death of members of a force tasked with securing aid trucks,” was a brutal reminder of who really controls day-to-day life in the Gaza Strip.
The men were shot without trial, their fate sealed not by evidence examined in a court but by the whim of the rulers who seized Gaza in 2007 and have governed it ever since by intimidation, public beatings and, when necessary, the firing squad.
Hamas framed the killings as righteous justice intended to safeguard humanitarian convoys. The reality is starker. Gazans are desperate after months of war and shortages; looting has spread because families that once relied on the black market for flour can no longer afford the prices, and because the official aid pipeline keeps sputtering.
Hamas’s answer was not to widen that pipeline or to place deliveries under neutral supervision. Instead, it chose exemplary violence, hoping the report of four bullets would echo more loudly than the groans of hunger in Jabalya’s alleyways. The message is clear: dissent, or even its appearance, will be met with lethal force.
That message is reaching Israelis, too, though in a distorted mirror. Jerusalem is fighting a just war against the terror group that massacred its civilians on October 7, 2023. Yet, it keeps missing opportunities to display the moral clarity that separates a democracy from a theocratic militia.
Did the government secretly transfer $100 million to two foreign-registered entities?
The latest missed opportunity surfaced in Monday’s Knesset debate when opposition Leader Yair Lapid asked whether the government had secretly transferred roughly $100 million to two foreign-registered entities – Safe Reach Solutions in the United States and the Gaza Humanitarian Fund in Switzerland – to finance relief operations.
“If this money is indeed Israeli and the government is concealing it, it would not only be a deception of Israeli citizens – whose taxes fund it – but also one of the greatest diplomatic blunders in the country’s history,” Lapid warned.
Officials flatly deny the charge, yet they have not produced a donor willing to claim the funds. Into that vacuum stepped Jake Wood, the decorated US Marine who, only in March, agreed to head the Gaza Humanitarian Fund. On Sunday night, Wood quit, declaring that the project could not be run “in a way that upholds the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, and independence.”
None of this absolves allies of their own failures. Washington, Brussels, and various Gulf capitals spent months demanding that Israel flood the Strip with relief while refusing to fund or secure the convoys. They urged “innovative solutions” but recoiled when the Gaza Humanitarian Fund proposed using armored contractors and biometric scanners. They can no longer shrug and blame the Israel Defense Forces for every aid delay. If they will not send peacekeepers, they should at least send auditors – and money.
Still, the first duty lies with Israel, because Israel has the most to gain. Every kilogram of rice logged on a public spreadsheet is a blow to Hamas propaganda. Every convoy that reaches Rafah under an Israeli-endorsed but independently monitored regime proves that the IDF can fight terrorists and spare civilians at the same time – a distinction Hamas labors to erase each time it fires from behind an apartment block. And every act of candor deepens the moral gulf between rule by consent and rule by fear.
Hamas has already shown its hand: it governs with fear, bullets, and the rhetoric of martyrdom. By contrast, Israel must govern and fight in daylight. It can begin by stripping away the secrecy that now clouds its humanitarian policy. Admit what funds have been spent, explain how the convoys will be protected, welcome neutral inspectors, and publish the results. Such openness will not end the war, and it will not bring the hostages home, but it will expose Hamas for what it is: a gang of terrified rulers shooting their own people to mask their failures.
In the meantime, the four bodies in Khan Yunis lie unclaimed, silent testimony that Gaza’s masters fear their own hungry citizens more than any Israeli shell. Jerusalem should answer not with equal brutality, nor with silence, but with the one response Hamas cannot match: radical transparency. That is the moral high ground – and in the end it is the only ground that matters.
Jesus Christ is King
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