We need to start talking to our children about the monsters. We need to tell them that the monsters are real, that they are more bestial than any fairy tale could have imagined. Above all, we need to warn our children about the monsters that live among us – and that grow from our silence.

Do you remember what it sounded like when the reports from October 7th started to leak? When the pictures of bloody cribs and murdered teenagers were censored by Facebook and the media published the apologists’ explanations about «fake news»? When Greta Thunberg was allowed to keep her saint’s halo even though she replaced it with a keffiyeh? When a Swedish university lecturer was able to keep his job after claiming that the massacre at the Supernova festival was due to the youth provoking the Palestinians by dancing?

Since then, it has continued on the same track, regardless of what has been revealed. Raped teenage girls. Babies murdered in front of their parents. Pregnant women with their bellies ripped open. Slaughtered pensioners. Automatic fire and hand grenades against defenseless youth. The boundless and sadistic abuses, committed even by so-called Palestinian civilians and by UN employees.

Despite the stories, the pictures, the films – the evidence – the media, politicians and activists have continued to defend the actions of the terrorists. Even in our streets, pro-Palestinian terrorist huggers have marched, week after week. They have shouted anti-Semitic chants, advocated genocide of Jews and called for armed struggle – without a single person being prosecuted for hate crime or for supporting terrorist activities.

Convinced Islamists and gullible Swedes have united in their «From the river to the sea» and the politically correct have wanted to confront Hamas’ terror by boycotting Israeli goods. The passivity from society has been total.

There have been excuses for everything. Until now.

Last Thursday, Hamas handed over the bodies of the youngest hostages, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, four years and ten months old respectively, and the body of one of the elderly hostages, peace activist Oded Lifshitz (83). Four black coffins stood on the stage. The fourth one was supposed to contain the boys’ mother Shiri (32), but that was not the case. When the locked (!) coffins were handed over together with keys that did not fit (!!) in the locks, it turned out that the fourth coffin contained an unknown (!!!), Palestinian woman. Shiri Bibas’s body was only released a day later, due to «a mistake». Yeah, right.

Even the handover of the bodies of murdered children was turned into a show by Hamas: Palestinians brought their children to celebrate, there was wedding music on loudspeakers and a full festive atmosphere. Palestinian children chanted slogans and made victory signs in front of the coffins of murdered Jewish children. You can watch footage from the bizarre ceremony here.

The autopsy showed that Ariel and Kfir had been murdered by strangulation. Then their bodies had been mutilated, to support Hamas’ claim that the family had died in an IDF airstrike.

It is almost impossible to even imagine the horror of the boys’ parents: To be woken up by terrorists, to see the boys’ grandparents murdered, to be taken from their home by Palestinian civilians, to be separated, to be forced into the (aid-funded) tunnels under Gaza.

The boys’ father, Yarden, has been kept separate from the rest of the family and only after he was released did it become clear that he had lost his wife and sons. What the boys’ mother has been forced to go through and the details surrounding her and her sons’ deaths, no normal person can even visualize. It is too disgusting. Too inhuman.

But nothing seems too evil. The more hostages are released, the more bizarre shows Hamas stages, the more facts we get.

The young women have been isolated, sexually abused and used to perform slave labor in Palestinian families. The injured have been denied medical care. The four Israelis who were freed on Saturday, after 505 days in captivity, had been kept chained in the darkness in the tunnels beneath Gaza. One of them, Omer Shem Tov, had been isolated in a tunnel for all but the first 50 days. When he was to be released, he was forced to kiss his captors as part of the humiliating ritual that also involves all hostages receiving release certificates signed by representatives of the Red Cross.

On Saturday, Hamas released a propaganda video showing hostages Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa Dalal, sitting in a car, forced to watch as the other four were released. In the video, the two men are seen asking their captors to release them – which is denied. In the background, the scene where the «release ceremony» takes place is visible. When David and Gilboa Dalal will be released is unclear at the time of writing.

What is proven beyond reasonable doubt, however, is that all the hostages have been subjected to physical and psychological torture to an extent that makes it almost impossible to understand how anyone could have survived.

It has not been enough for the terrorists – and their so-called civilian supporters – to murder, rape, kidnap and exploit. No, everything has been done in the most elaborate and degrading way possible and with a single goal: to cause maximum suffering to the victims, to their relatives and to the nation of Israel.

It is not over yet. But we have so much evidence that we can state that those who treat others in such a way have excluded themselves from humanity through their actions. The same goes for every individual who has spent the past 500 days supporting, defending, or excusing Hamas. They are not human – they are monsters. Living monsters.

Nor do they hide under beds or in closets in our children’s fantasies. Instead, they roam, not only in Gaza but also in our streets and squares – working in our municipalities, caring for us when we get sick, or teaching our children – with all the inherent hatred and deeply disturbed view of humanity that has made possible what the hostages have experienced since October 7.

These monsters belong to a death cult whose hatred has grown and normalized by society’s silence and condescension.

But in all the darkness, there is actually a glimmer of light: Now we have seen the true nature of the monsters, and I am convinced that support for Hamas and their struggle has diminished as eyes have been opened.

Therefore, the time is now. We need to stop dismissing our children’s fears of monsters in the night, and instead explain to them that monsters are real and must be fought. The older the children get, the more we can tell them about the nature of monsters. But perhaps most importantly: We need to explain to our children that the power of monsters fades in the light of truth and that «never again» is now.