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Remembering October 7th, 2023

One statement/fact/truth comes to mind in trying to put together a post today to commemorate the long year since the October, 7 2023 massacre of Israeli’s by Hamas. It comes from Sam Harris:

If Israel’s enemies laid down their weapons, there would be peace. If Israel laid down their weapons, there would be genocide.

A second from Bari Weiss hits hard:

We expected Hamas to try to kill Jews. We did’t expect Americans to celebrate when they did.

I had never listened to a Sam Harris podcast before October 7, 2023. I had not heard of Douglas Murray. I had never read anything by Bari Weiss. Now all three are helping me make sense of the madness, hate, rot, antisemitism and of course find hope.

Here is Bari today in her latest piece titled ‘A Year of Revelations’:

How do you offer an elegy when the war is not yet over—and 101 hostages, those still alive and the bodies of the murdered, are not yet home? How do you remember a catastrophe when it is still unfolding? How do you mark a past event that feels as though it was a prelude to a much deeper darkness, whose dimensions we are still discovering? How do you look at something with a sense of distance when it has revealed so much, so close to home?

The genocidal war launched by Iran and its proxies a year ago this morning began with rocket fire and a ground invasion by Hamas battalions who carried maps of every kibbutz and village. These maps, made by Palestinians who worked inside Israel, told them where the daycare centers were, where the weapons were stored, which families owned a dog. After several thousand terrorists, targeting civilians, had raped, murdered, and kidnapped, they were followed by waves of ordinary Gazans—to borrow Chris Browning’s phrase—who played their role in a day of slaughter with millennia-old echoes in Jewish history. 

Just look at the terror on the face of Shiri Bibas, clinging to her nine-month-old baby Kfir and her four-year-old son Ariel—an image that flashes across my eyes when I put our children to sleep. 

photo below…

My reading habits have changed a lot since October 7, 2023. It is not just Bari, Sam and Douglas in my reading/listening list. I follow a lot of Israeli news and Israeli friends via Whatsapp.

I have given up even looking at news from New York Times or The Washington Post and removed the Twitter app from my phone. I keep hoping the war can end so I can quit pointing out the antisemitic lunatics and leave Twitter’s miserable timeline for good. The media is worse in Europe. The BBC, The Guardian and Sky News are basically Qatar and Iran.

I suspected the BCC, The Guardian and SkyNews were antisemitic but they have leaned into it very hard since October 7th. Here is a fresh piece of hate and antisemitism from The Guardian:

The UN is a polluted and broken antisemitic institution. It is held together by the ‘security council’ of five countries – The US, The UK, France, China and Russia. This weekend President Macron of France wanted to stop shipping arms to Israel even though his plane is protected by Israeli defense equipment. Churchill is rolling over in his grave about how fragile this has become.

As for Israel, it is hard not to worry. Look at a map:

They are surrounded by enemies that might have already destroyed them if not for their Iron Dome.

But sure…the Israeli’s are colonizers.

Enough from me.

Here are a few other reads that I hope you take the time to read…

A Year Ago Today, Terrorists Stole My Son.

Bret Stephens – ‘The Year American Jews Woke Up’. (use archive.ph ) and drop link if you have a paywall)

One more…Douglas Murray – ‘Things Worth Remembering: Jonathon Sacks on the Improbability of Israel.

Be kind today.





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