The Worst Day in Israel's History?

My mind goes blank trying to comprehend the devastation.

Oct 08, 2023

Click here to check out the first 30 Installments - Volume I - in this series on Antisemitism and Culture. The top 5 most important pieces from this first wave:

This is the 29th installment in Volume II, a second collection of 30 essays exploring the many manifestations of Jew Hatred and the issues surrounding it in America and globally. See the 28 previous installments listed at the end of this article. The next piece in this series will be the conclusion.

These writings are part of my ongoing effort to overcome my PTSD by forcing myself to try to write and publish something every day. Since May, most of my writings on these subjects have shifted over to news reporting at Jewish News Syndicate, including a weekly report of antisemitic incidents around the world.

“Politics is downstream from culture,” the late Andrew Breitbart popularized among conservative bloggers while he was alive. I’d go a step further: Everything is downstream from culture. The cultures you embrace determine who you are and who you become. You become what you worship.

I am in a total daze this morning editing the usual weekend news articles and trying to take in the sheer scale of what Hamas — backed by Iran — inflicted on the Jewish state. Yesterday when I wrote about what was happening my tone was one of raw rage, both at the genocidal terrorists committing the atrocities and the masses of indifferent people in America — around the world, really, but I’m angrier at my countrymen.

This morning, though, it’s just too much to process. I’m going to try and walk everyone through what new facts we know and some commentary/analysis which might be of use in making sense of what is known so far.

First,

Daniel Gordis

’s assessment is one I cannot dispute:

Yesterday, in a single day, Israel lost about as many civilians as it did soldiers in the entire Six Day War. And we’re far from done counting.
Yesterday may well have been the worst day in Israel’s history.
It’s just not clear that there isn’t worse to come.

Here’s where the death toll is at now:

The surprise assault has left more than 600 dead, hundreds taken hostage, and thousands wounded, all from many different nationalities and ages. Some U.S officials have compared the brutal Hamas onslaught to Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

The great Zionist writer

Eve Barlow

puts the numbers into perspective, my emphasis added:

The figure I “woke up” to this morning is 600. The current death toll in Israel is 600 civilians murdered by Palestinian terrorists. Contextualizing numbers may appear gauche but right now it is necessary to nurture an understanding of the devastation. Relative to America's population size, that would amount to some 24,000 lost. It is the largest number of Jewish people killed in a single day since the Holocaust.
Re-read that.

I’m sorry, that needs to be put into larger letters:

“It is the largest number of Jewish people killed in a single day since the Holocaust.”

But it could get much worse still. Iran could take advantage of the situation, and the world can no longer trust the capabilities of Israel’s intelligence agencies anymore:

Western countries, led by the United States, denounced the attack. President Joe Biden issued a blunt warning to Iran and other countries: "This is not a moment for any party hostile to Israel to exploit these attacks."
…
That Israel was caught completely off guard was lamented as one of the worst intelligence failures in its history, a shock to a nation that boasts of its intensive infiltration and monitoring of militants.

Here’s what the Islamic regime in Iran had to say:

An adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday congratulated Palestinian fighters, the semi-official ISNA news site reported. "We will stand by the Palestinian fighters until the liberation of Palestine and Jerusalem," it quoted Yahya Rahim Safavi as saying.
Iran's state television showed parliament members rising from their seats to chant "Death to Israel."

An op-ed by By Erfan Fard emphasized that Iran and Hamas should be regarded as one and the same:

The Iranian regime’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah is a ticking time bomb. It threatens the very fabric of peace and security in the Middle East. The Hamas attack on Israel emphasizes the urgency for a collective effort to address this threat comprehensively. The world must act swiftly and decisively to curb Iran’s influence and support for terrorism if it wants lasting peace and security in the region.

There’s also the horrifying kidnapping component of this attack:

Yoni Asher, who was back at his home in central Israel after countless attempts to get assistance from authorities, said his wife was visiting her mother in the community Nir Oz near the border with their two young daughters when Hamas attacked.
"She told me the terrorists are in the house," he said. Then the call got cut off.
Later on he located her mobile phone through her Google account. Its location was Khan Younis, a city in Gaza. He then saw a video that spread on social media of them being taken to Gaza.
"I surely identified my wife, my two daughters, and my mother-in-law on some kind of a cart, and terrorists of Hamas all around them," he said.
"My little two girls, they are only babies, they are not even 5-years-old and 3-years-old ... I don't know in what terms they are captive. I don't know what happened to them."

And what does Hamas plan to do with these captives? The same thing they do with their own people:

The terrorist group said it is holding "far more than [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu thinks." Hamas further claimed that the 163 people in its hands were "dispersed in tunnels throughout the Gaza Strip."
At the same time, a White House official described the situation as "entire families kidnapped, including children." The Israeli security apparatus admitted that the situation was unprecedented, and even Hamas had been surprised by the ease with which it managed to kidnap such a large number of people.
…
The terrorist organization said it intends to use the civilians as potential human shields to its advantage, stating that any Israeli incursion into Gaza would have “direct consequences on the hostages.”

And what does the Secretary of State believe may have driven the attack? The world’s most influential Arab state reaching for peace with Israel:

The attack by Hamas launched at dawn on Saturday represented the biggest and deadliest incursion into Israel since Egypt and Syria launched a sudden assault in an effort to reclaim lost territory in the Yom Kippur war 50 years ago.
"It wouldn't be a surprise that part of the motivation may have been to disrupt efforts to bring Saudi Arabia and Israel together, along with other countries that may be interested in normalizing relations with Israel," Blinken told CNN in an interview on Sunday.

What must Israel, the Jewish people, and their supporters do now?

An editorial by JNS made a key point:

Whatever strategies and tactics that the Jewish state adopts as it seeks to reassert control over its border, rescue those held hostage and punish those responsible for these crimes, some basic principles must govern the response to these events.
The first is that the Jewish people and those who care about Israel must unite. After a year of political division and a culture war that threaten to tear Israeli society asunder and undermine its economy and security, those arguments must cease, there and elsewhere. The magnitude of this crisis is comparable to that of Israel’s wars in 1948, 1967 and 1973, and so must be the response of those who claim to be Israel’s friends and supporters.

An op-ed by Ron Jager also revealed what would now be the next step for Israel to take:

It now appears that the Israeli government and the security establishment have decided to destroy the Hamas regime in Gaza by military means. This means that what was will no longer be. This is what has to happen. There is no backing down. The entire Muslim world is watching to see how we respond. No doubt, there will be a high price in blood for an effective, game-changing response, but we have no other choice.

And now I just sit here dumbfounded, without any sort of pseudo-profound insight to offer or wisdom to consider. The weight of the human suffering is suffocating. Let’s just repeat that sentence from

Eve Barlow

a third time:

“It is the largest number of Jewish people killed in a single day since the Holocaust.”

I suppose there is only one place left to turn:

The Worst Day in Israel's History?

My mind goes blank trying to comprehend the devastation.

“It is the largest number of Jewish people killed in a single day since the Holocaust.”

“It is the largest number of Jewish people killed in a single day since the Holocaust.”

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