The seventh of October, 2023 should be recorded in the annals of history, similar to other events that shook the foundations of the free world, such as the attack on Pearl Harbor or 9/11. A date that will live in infamy.
Tales of tumult: Israeli authors decode war
- A call: Help release the Israeli captives/ Yishai Sarid
Don't make the mistake of thinking that because it happened here, in this small, arid, remote corner of the world, the shockwaves won't reach you.
As the great religions that grew here and spread around the world have proven, things that happen here have a tendency to resonate. For better or for worse, it is an essential pivot in the geopolitical balance. And now, no one is safe anymore. No woman is safe in her home. No nursing baby is safe in his mother's arms. No grandmother is safe in her wheelchair and no grandfather is safe in his bed. None of them are safe anymore from a slit throat. A gunshot. A beheading. Being burned alive. Raped. Kidnapped.
No man is an island, wrote the poet John Donne. And the tsunami of pain and horror that started here on October 7, is only increasing. It will reach your safe shores. For what happened here was such a monstrous, abominable massacre, beyond the limits of morality and reason. It places its perpetrators as enemies of all of humanity, not just Jews, not just Israelis.
The number of people killed here exceeds the number of those murdered in all terrorist attacks on European soil since the nineties, combined. In its brutality and relative to the size of the population, it eclipses any other terror event in the Western world. Imagine that instead of 3008 dead on 9/11, 25,000 would have been killed. Imagine that everyone you know knows someone who had their throat slit, who was shot, raped, burned alive or kidnapped.
Therefore, this is not merely a "terrorist incident" but a declaration of war. A war on all that is human. All that is on the side of life.
But that dark and awful day is not yet over. It is the longest day. A nightmare we can't wake up from. Those who are trembling now in their shelters continue to live it. Those who armed themselves to defend the perimeters of their hometowns continue to live it. The families of the dead continue to live it, and even more so, the families of those who were kidnapped and taken into captivity - continue to live it. more than a hundred of them were taken: silver-haired grandmothers in wheelchairs, taken along with their devoted caregivers. Grandfathers with numbers tattooed on their arm, a reminder of Auschwitz death camp. Mothers whose babies were torn from their breasts, fathers whose children were beheaded before their eyes, girls who were repeatedly raped. Toddlers who have just said their first word. All these and more are now in the hands of those who committed these atrocities. Each of them has a name, a face, a family. A life.
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Washington Post shows hostages taken alive before they are seen dead
(Photo: Screenshot )
After World War II, the French philosopher Raymond Aron wrote: "I knew but I did not believe. And because I did not believe - I did not know."
I know it's hard to believe what you just read. But the evidence is before you. The information is there. The truth is looking at you now, demanding: believe, know, act.
- Noa Menheim is an author and literary editor. Her book The Life Fantastic: Myth, History, Pop and Folklore in the Making of Western Culture was published by Watkins Media UK, in 2022