I have spent my life witnessing and reporting on the most atrocious crimes, from Bosnia to Somalia, Syria to Algeria and now Ukraine. After Oct. 7—after seeing the burned kibbutzim and gathering the testimonies of survivors—I was often asked if I had ever experienced anything similar. When I think of Kfir and Ariel Bibas and their mother, Shiri, I now answer: No, I’m not sure I have ever encountered such horror.

Consider those phrases “child hostage” and “baby hostage.” In other wars, the death of a child is the ultimate shame, and some remnant of humanity—or rationality—generally prevents captors from bothering with an infant. They abandon the baby. They leave it behind or on the roadside. Someone less hardened might even leave it wrapped in a blanket outside a church, a mosque or a home. Here, they deliberately took the time to abduct these two terrified little beings clinging to their mother.

What went through these men’s minds as they dragged them away like animals? Did they understand the Jewish devotion to children? Had they seen, during their surveillance, how Jewish children are cherished, how beautiful little boys are with their long hair cut the day they are given honey-covered letters to make them love Hebrew? Did they foresee the images of Kfir, 9 months, and Ariel, 4, covering the walls of our cities? Did they revel, in advance, at the outpouring of “Jewish emotion” that this insult to the world’s innocence would unleash? I don’t know.

One must imagine the life of Kfir and Ariel as hostages if, as is probable, they were torn from their mother’s arms. Imagine the life of a baby who spends most of his time in dark, damp tunnels. Imagine the life of a toddler, ripped from his family without understanding. Picture them playing, because children always play. Did they have stuffed animals or spent shell casings? Legos or guns to lick instead of honey-coated letters? Were they hungry? Thirsty? Did they scrape mud with their tiny nails or drink contaminated water? Did the captors change Kfir’s diapers, or did they let him sit in his own filth until his skin burned? Did they have talcum powder? Medicine for fevers? What did the masked jailers do when the boys cried, were scared of night noises, or asked the stars about their fate when they were briefly allowed outside? Did they hit them? Strike them with rifle butts? Did they amuse themselves by firing their Kalashnikovs into the air to frighten them further? Did Ariel become the guardian of his baby brother? Did they live out their brief lives together or separately? When Kfir spoke his first words, did they mock him, silence him, or pour the captors’ language into his mouth to erase his mother’s? I don’t know.

One day, they died. Whether on the same day or not the family, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, or the government may tell us, but they died. After interminable weeks of waiting, suffering, and the profanation of their purity and sanctity as children, they ended their lives alone. As unbearable as it is, we must imagine that moment, because the ultimate indecency—the most indecent form of comfort—would be to close our eyes and refuse to see.

How and when did they die? During a tunnel collapse or a deluge of fire and iron early in the war, as claimed by their captors, who used the boys as shields? Or did the men in black, weary of their tears and noise, their games in the tunnels, or perhaps simply because they thought they were spoiled little Jewish children, strike them to quiet them, torture them to death, execute them? The identification process just confirmed the latter.

Regardless, Hamas did this. Whatever the Israeli military doctors discover, Hamas erased the world’s most beautiful baby and a schoolboy whose life gave the earth its purpose, as all children’s lives do.

Once, children were gassed as they descended from the trains. Hamas waited. Damn those who try to drag us into the false game of moral equivalency. These two breaths cut short, this double death of innocence, is Hamas’s abomination alone—and it is unforgivable.