The danger of dehumanizing Hamas: A call for clarity in the face of horror

The news is unbearable: Hamas terrorists, with their bare hands, murdered the Bibas children—a 9-month-old infant and a 4-year-old toddler—ripping them from the promise of life in an act so brutal it defies comprehension. Our instinct is to recoil, to label these perpetrators as monsters, beasts, or something less than human. The temptation is overwhelming; it feels like a shield against the raw terror of their actions. But this impulse, however natural, is a dangerous misstep—one that risks distorting our understanding of evil and undermining our response to it.

To call Hamas inhuman is to suggest that their capacity for cruelty exists outside the boundaries of humanity. It implies they are a breed apart, driven by some feral instinct we cannot fathom or counter.

Yet the truth is more unsettling: they are as human as we are. They eat, drink, sleep, and breathe oxygen, just as we do. Their hands, capable of gentleness, chose violence. Their minds, capable of reason, chose savagery. This is not the work of animals—it is the work of people who have twisted their humanity into something grotesque.

Why does this distinction matter? Because dehumanizing them lets us off the hook. If we cast Hamas as subhuman, we absolve ourselves of the hard work of confronting what they represent: a deliberate, ideological choice to kill, maim, and terrorize. Animals act on instinct; humans act with intent. The murder of the Bibas children was not a mindless spasm of nature—it was a calculated act, rooted in a worldview that glorifies death over life. To strip them of their humanity is to strip ourselves of the clarity we need to fight back effectively.

There’s a practical danger here, too. When we label Hamas as monsters, we risk underestimating them. Monsters are chaotic, unpredictable, and easily dismissed as aberrations. But Hamas is none of these things. They are organized, strategic, and deeply committed to their cause. They thrive on our outrage, banking on the idea that our emotional recoil will cloud our judgment. By refusing to see them as human, we play into their hands, blinding ourselves to the systems—political, cultural, and religious—that fuel their violence.

This isn’t about sympathy. Acknowledging their humanity doesn’t mean excusing their atrocities or softening our resolve. If anything, it sharpens it. Recognizing Hamas as human forces us to grapple with the reality that people, not phantoms, are capable of such evil—and that people, not fictional beasts, can be held accountable. It demands that we address the root causes: the indoctrination, the funding, the propaganda that turns ordinary men into murderers. It insists that we see them for what they are, not what we wish them to be.

The Bibas children deserved a future, not a headline. Their deaths are a wound on our collective conscience, a reminder of the stakes we face. But as we mourn, we must resist the urge to mythologize their killers. Hamas is not a pack of wolves—they are men with choices, men who chose wrong. To call them anything less is to hand them a victory they don’t deserve: the power to escape the full weight of their humanity, and ours.