On this day in 2023, Hamas made a decision to strike at the Jews who dreamed of coexistence. The Jews most engaged in helping their Arab neighbors. Young Jews dancing for a better world, Jewish families who had welcomed Gazans into their homes, Jewish children. Jewish babies. The horror was not meant to free anyone. It was meant to kill all hope for peace and destroy Gaza. To reignite the cinders of war into a blazing fire. And they danced in the streets, celebrating the horror.
Many around the world will remember the victims of October 7 today. Many around the world will hope for the return of the remaining hostages and the end of this war today. Many but not enough. Many but not most. Too many others will celebrate this day, turning the monsters behind its horror into victims. Glorifying death. Calling for more death. Peace will be the last thing on the minds of too many around the world. Hate consumes them.
As a gentile who stood by Israel long before October 7, while dreaming of coexistence as did the kibuttznikim who were slaughtered that day, I feel more closely the disappointment and the anger of the Jewish people towards a world that did not miss the opportunity to show hate instead of love, in ways silent and thunderous. The silence still remains and for it I am most ashamed today.
It is beyond me that among the words barked at millions through the microphones of a bloodlust media none are directed at those who created the horrors of this day. Not one. All I hear in them is hate. A special kind of hate: hate for the Jews. Too many will celebrate this hate today. Far too many more will stay silent as they witness this. For that I am ashamed today. I feel part of the collective failure that the world has become.
I remember the signs of hope and despair along these two years. Despair reinvented into yet more hope and yet so much that nearly drowned it. The faces of hope denied stay with me. Hersh, Shiri, Ariel and Kfir the most. They stand in my mind for all the others whose lives, as theirs, were viciously taken. I think of them today. Their memory will remain a blessing.
On this day, my thoughts are for peace and the safe return of the hostages still in Gaza, and if I had to choose one person to speak to I would choose Yarden Bibas, and I would tell him how sorry I am that I have failed him. That the world has failed him. Two years later there is still a chance for a small measure of redemption that means everything for those whose loved ones remain captive. I hope with all my heart it comes true. Two years later I hope it’s not too late.
I hope it’s not too late for the hostages, not too late for ending the war, and not too late for the eyes of the world to open. In the midst of despair hope must rise. Like a blessing.
Am Yisrael Chai. 🟦
