When And Where The Wicked Stand

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Over the 2025 Martin Luther King holiday weekend, three Israeli women who had been held in captivity for 471 days by Palestinian Arab terrorists, were released in exchange for 90 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. As the Red Cross came to collect the three women, armed Hamas soldiers climbed atop the Red Cross vehicles to incite the Gazan mobs who had converged on the scene.

*Mobs in Gaza surround Red Cross trucks carrying Israeli women*

The parade of masked terrorists led The New York Times to comment that Hamas was still “standing”, albeit weakened and isolated, as the “dominant Palestinian power in Gaza.”

The official Palestinian Authority daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, was not as generous the Times. It mocked the members of Hamas who wore civilian clothes during fifteen months of war hiding amongst women and children, who suddenly donned military uniforms once Israel signed onto a ceasefire:

“When shame ends, only insolence remains. For 15 months of harsh war, Hamas did not dare to show even one of its operatives in military uniforms (!!), but when the ceasefire agreement stipulated that the cannons be silenced, Hamas brought out its operatives in military uniforms – not only for display purposes, but also to fabricate a victory narrative!”

“Victory?” Israel has never been stronger relative to all the countries in the Middle East. Hamas is only powerful relative to the decimated Palestinians.

If the “last man standing” is only relative to YOUR OWN SIDE, then your military foe was never really the opponent. The actions were performance art, a spectacle of battered women and children wavering being sadism and masochism, aired for an antisemitic audience whom Hamas hoped would actually do the fighting against the Jews.

Hamas launched a war with genocidal intent and then hid underground with civilian hostages as well as disguised amongst civilians, only to emerge “standing” atop humanitarian trucks carrying a few female hostages.

After fifteen months of hiding, leaving women and children to bare the brunt of Israeli fire, the armed cowards of Hamas came out once the gunfire had been silenced to wave their arms as “victors” before thousands of Gazans who had watched their own lives being destroyed.

MLK once said “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” The measure of Hamas, the ruling power in Gaza is depraved, cruel and cowardly. That “support for Hamas remains the highest compared to all Palestinian factions” according to the most recent Palestinian poll, marks the Palestinian society as integrally complicit and wicked.