Brendan O’Neill Brendan O’Neill

Why are ‘anti-racists’ silent about Arbel Yehud’s terrible ordeal?

Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad and Hamas fighters escort Israeli hostage Arbel Yehud (Getty images)

Watching Arbel Yehud being freed in Gaza today, I thought to myself: this is what it must have been like at Salem. Here we had a diminutive woman being paraded through a baying mob of hollering men. They barked religious slogans at her. They shoved and jostled to get a better view of the marked woman. They thrust their mobile phones in her face to capture her terror for posterity. They’ll no doubt share the clips. ‘Look! See how scared she was!’

Mercifully, Ms Yehud was being marched, not to the gallows, but to liberty. She was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas-led pogrom of 7 October 2023. She was held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad for 482 days.

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