We were standing in Kibbutz Be'eri, just a stone's throw from the Gaza border ... the scene of some of the most horrific butchery on October 7th.

You could still see the bullet holes and the charring, a permanent scar on a place where 102 people were murdered. I was here with Tommy Robinson, who'd been invited to Israel, and we were listening to Thomas, a resident of over 30 years, whose family was torn apart that day.

Thomas’s voice, somehow calm despite the unimaginable ordeal, painted a picture of terror. "It was terrifying, obviously," he told Tommy. As rockets rained down, he retreated to his bomb shelter, only to hear gunfire closing in.

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A deep "sense of dread. Absolute dread," settled over him. He managed to contact his ex-wife, urging her to close her shelter door, and that was the last time he spoke to her. She was later murdered, "Shot her once in the stomach, once in the neck."

Then came the second tragedy: his eight-year-old daughter, Emily, had been kidnapped. After being told by the kibbutz committee she was dead, Thomas felt a fleeting, horrible relief: "I literally was relieved because I knew what was going to happen or what could happen to her." It took 30 excruciating days for him to learn the truth from a witness: Emily, her friend, and her friend's mother were taken to Gaza.

Emily was held for 50 days, enduring starvation. "She went in with chubby eight-year-old cheeks and came back gone, very thin," Thomas revealed. She told her father she saw a man she knew "with a bullet in his head and blooded everywhere. Eight-year-old child had to see that."

When the conversation turned to the recent decision by governments like Ireland and the UK to recognise a Palestinian state, Thomas didn't mince words. "Unfortunately, the way they did it was a direct reward for terrorism," he said. The lack of conditions, such as requiring Palestine to recognise Israel, was, in his view, an "absolute waste" of bargaining power.

He reflected on the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, which he had supported as a step toward peace. "How wrong I was. I think that's the worst political thought that I ever had." He sees no path to peace after this.

Tommy asked Thomas what message he had for the Western nations. "It was very hurtful," Thomas said of their recognition. "It was detrimental to the peace process. It was detrimental to getting the hostages back."

The appeasement is deafening, and Thomas’ anguish confirms what many of us already know: a betrayal of those on the frontline of this war.