The Hamas assault on Israel, on October 7, 2023, woke up the Israeli nation from its blindness to reality and the hibernation status it chose not to get out from.
No matter what the writing on the wall was, Israel’s leaders convinced themselves and their people that this earthquake, this volcano of evil would never erupt.
This evil’s extent and its national reach was an emotional earthquake to all Israelis, a shock to a nation, to which their response this past year should be regarded through this very human lens.
Compare the Numbers
Hamas’s attack – what those terrorists call “resistance” or “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” – latest count murdered more than 1,300 Israelis and other country nationals, including a guesstimated 29 Americans.
In a country whose population just reached 10 million, if one takes a comparison ratio to the United States’ population count that would be comparable to killing nearly 40,000 Americans, thirteen times more than the number of Americans killed by the Islamic group al-Qaeda on 9/11, 2001 in New York City.
Reality Check Intensity
Tens of millions of Americans watched, in real time, the 9/11 terror attack and the collapse of the Twin Towers. It all seemed surreal. The news about this terrible terror attack spread like wildfire to all corners of the world.
As terrible as 9/11 was, most of the American people did not know any of the 9/11 victims or their families. But Israel is a country as large, or small, as New Jersey – some 8,700 square miles in total area – and daily travel in it is at most times less in mileage than the daily commute for many Americans. Hence, not a single family was untouched by this terror attack, either directly, as a family member, or through a friend, a neighbor, a classmate or the through who knows whom chatter.
Since 2007, when Hamas took over from Fatah to rule over the Gaza Strip, they were firing rockets, at will, into Israel as their pastime occupation.
On Tuesday September 11, 2001, between 8:40 AM-to-10:28 AM EST, the US terror events took place.
Millions of Americans gathered around television screens in the safety of their home, office or where they abruptly stopped to watch the horrors unfolding, as the Twin Towers imploded and collapsed, one after the other. Growing shock and anger overwhelmed the American nation and the entire world along with them.
But in Israel, on October 7, 2023, Israelis didn’t have that amenity to be able to watch what was unfolding. Hamas not only butchered the people in Israel south Gaza Envelope communities, they “complemented” the monstrous terror attack, in their effort to terrorize and paralyze response from the population that was driven into safe rooms and shelters, with firing thousands of rockets and missiles into Israel.
The Horrific Terror Acts Including Individual Savagery
The 9/11[2002] and 10/7[2023] events have one common denominator, which is Islamic-terror attack.
To describe 9/11, essentially it was a case of mass killing in which thousands were murdered in a series of four single acts of horror, from airplanes flying into high-rise buildings, into the Pentagon, or forced down by the passengers, causing buildings’ collapse, property damage or death by forced plane crash.
But on 10/7, Hamas terrorists perpetrated hundreds of focused and separate acts of unfathomable brutality. They murdered babies and toddlers; murdered parents protecting their children; raped women, young and old, sometime as corpses of their spouse, sibling, child, or a friend watched the act or laid dead beside them. These terrorists’ acts of heinous brutality were aimed at anyone, anything and everything they faced.
“Thanks” to the 21st century technology, images of individualized cruelty-face to face events, between the Hamas terror committers and their victims, were proudly announced to the world, in real time, as they were recorded on the perpetrators’ GoPro cameras. These live on film or audio, are historical evidence that will never fade away.
A Reminder When Events Go Cold
At the end of WWII, after the allies claimed victory over Nazi Germany, American General Dwight D. Eisenhower visited Nazi Concentration Camps and said, “Get it all on record now – get the films – get the witnesses – because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower (1945).
Needless to say, there are those, among them Mahmoud Abbas, the eternal president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), who, years ago, wrote his university thesis on Holocaust denial.
General Eisenhower’s Nazi concentration camp photos raised great interest from the American public. The General’s “tour” of the Nazi death camps helped generate a massive publicity campaign that exposed the Nazi regime’s crimes to the world.
Sadly, the 10/7 Hamas atrocities has often raised a very different reaction on American and European streets. We witnessed protests and even riots. Their theme was vehement support for Hamas and its terror acts. Moral compass lost its place.
Sadly, after a year and two months, as of this writing, the shocking events of 10/7 are already moving into cold mode. The terrorists’ GoPro evidence seems to have been forgotten or is much less of interest to many of the public.
Israelis and Other Nationals Are Kept Hostage
A historical record was established by Hamas. In the recorded history of the century plus-old Arab-Israeli conflict there has never been a one side capture of civilians taken across borders in mass numbers.
A group composed of civilians. Toddlers, children, women, men, elderly, foreign workers, even mentally ill and dead bodies of Israelis, already murdered by the terrorists, were dragged into Gaza and were cheered by the Gazans as they arrived with the human loot.
By January 2025, 117 abductees had been returned to Israel alive; 8 had been rescued alive in IDF (Israel Defense Forces) operations, and 38 bodies had also been rescued and brought for burial in Israel; 96 abductees remain in Hamas hands, of whom 34 were defined as casualties killed during the attack on October 7 or later. But rumors continue to circulate that this number is decreasing and with it the hope to see any of these hostages returned alive.
The hostages’ case has been dragged out a year and two month, as of this writing, after the original national shock of the act of terror, with growing speculation that perhaps it will end in further tragedy.
Americans should recall another hostage event of a much smaller number. On November 4, 1979, Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy and detained more than 50 Americans, as hostages, ranging from the Chargé d’Affaires to the most junior members of the staff. The Iranians held the American diplomats hostage for 444 days.
The Iran hostage case paralyzed the U.S. government and dominated the media and thus the country’s daily life.
Why Go to War
Putting together and taking into considerations all the above, drove the government of Israel’s decision to go to war against Hamas; to permanently remove Hamas from their terror enclave in Gaza.
The war with Hamas escalated into Lebanon, after the terror organization Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, in support of Hamas, for a year. Rockets and missile attacks from Iraq, Yemen and Syria have received the IDF’s lethal reaction as well.
Israel’s idea is to establish defensible borders and remove terror organizations far away from Israel’s borders.
Iran’s Proxies
Israel faces radical Islamist extremist groups. Hamas on its southern border and the Lebanese “Party of God,” Hezbollah that armed itself with an untold number of rockets and missiles and weapons to last for many years of war on its northern borders. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are the Islamic Republic of Iran proxies, supported, financed, trained, supplied and, to a certain extent, even commanded by this terror sponsor state.
Hamas belongs to Islam’s Sunni sector; Hezbollah belongs to Islam’s Shiite sector. The Sunnis and the Shiites are at odds, sometimes violently, with each other. Yet, Hamas aligned with Hezbollah, under the leadership of the Shiite ayatollahs in Tehran, with one goal which is to destroy the Jewish state, Israel.
The Repairs Needed
Israel’s immediate task is to end Hamas military capability, eliminate its leadership and destroy its rule in Gaza.
Israel’s other objective is to restore public confidence and trust in its government and the army. Furthermore, to restore Israel’s deterrence in the region and the perception, prior to October 7, 2023, that Israel is vulnerable. As Dr. Mordechai Kedar always says: to survive in the Middle East you must be invincible.
Incoming President Trump
President elect Trump faces a significant challenge. What started on October 7, 2023 and escalated to the fall of Assad’s regime in Syria, could be seen as the prelude to the main plan of the Islamo-jihadist enemy. Remember, Al Qaeda is power-drunk with their Syrian conquest.
While the world saw Israel as the main target, it is not. The end target is the West and Israel is merely a way station on the road to a much bigger attack.
While Israel is currently fighting the war to defend itself, it is really fighting America’s and Europe’s upcoming war. If the West doesn’t understand this, it may be too late for them. In Ottawa, Canada’s capital, locals in Muslim terror garb roam openly in the city. We may see embassies explode while attacks from within or on homelands, on a scale unseen so far, will take place.
In Summation
Israel, a year and two months since October 7, as of this writing, still faces a long, brutal and bloody military effort to vanquish Hamas while freeing the remaining hostages – alive or dead.
When the outside world judges Israel’s actions from the safety of a country, a second assessment must come to mind. Americans, their country borders democracies on the northern and southern front and two wide oceans to the east and west, should pause and think back to the sense of outrage that overwhelmed the nation on 9/11. Subsequent to the 9/11 attack, the sense of revenge that animated every American 22 years ago must be multiplied by 10, 20 or more which is what 7/10 means to Israelis.
Keep in mind that the Israelis suffered a catastrophe on 7/10 that, for them, was much, much worse than the 9/11 horror, depravity and evil was for Americans.
