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Anne Gordon

After October 7: ToI bloggers illuminate a changed world

11 blog posts to help note the ways Israel, the Jewish people, and each of us individuals face a different reality than we did a year ago
The Israeli flag at Kibbutz Netiv HaAsara is lowered to half-mast to commemorate the first anniversary of the October 7 massacre, on October 6, 2024. (Shalom Yerushalmi / Times of Israel)
The Israeli flag at Kibbutz Netiv HaAsara is lowered to half-mast to commemorate the first anniversary of the October 7 massacre, on October 6, 2024. (Shalom Yerushalmi / Times of Israel)

It’s the Ten Days of Repentance — the time between the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when Jews often reflect over the past year. They consider where they did well, what they could do better, and where they were downright wrong. They ask forgiveness, and — if they believe — they approach God with trepidation for all that the previous year may bode for the coming year. Yom Kippur, it is said, is a day of mercy that wipes the slate clean for just about everyone. A private accounting that resets the counters and leaves those who engage in these practices refreshed, renewed, and atoned for.

It’s also October 7th. For many, reflecting on what went right and wrong in the past year is scorchingly, searingly painful. It’s too much to think about, or nearly so. And it does not sit well with the traditional season of repentance, which tacitly (and not even so tacitly) posits that reward and punishment are the means by which the world is divinely governed. But reward and punishment have no place in recalling the year that began last October 7th. I’ll say that louder for those in the back: if you’re a believer, take it up with God why bad things happen to good people, but don’t presume to suggest that the events of that day and since are punishment. Heaven forfend!

Somewhere between the traditional renewal of the season and the impulse to turn away (unless you’re one for rubbernecking) from the violence and loss of the past year is the time to ponder. We do ourselves a disservice if we don’t pause to consider how we are different from ourselves of a year ago. For Israel, the Jewish people, and a good deal of the rest of the world are not the same as we all were on October 6, 2023. In some ways, we’re more cynical — aware now of the human capacity for cruelty (some of it bred). In some ways, we are more insular — as Israelis and Jews across the world circled the wagons in battle and support, covering the costs and comforts of those in need. Even if we still bicker — or riot — about the best direction forward for our tiny Jewish state.

The Ops & Blogs at The Times of Israel provide good fodder for that pause. We published more than 15,000 blog posts over the course of the past year (not all about October 7th or the war or antisemitism, but many, maybe most). You are welcome to scroll back through the posts for a very long trip down memory lane. What follows here are some snapshots of those points of reflection where we say — Aha! Things did not used to be this way. We did not used to be this way. And so, some key voices highlight our changed world of experiences, most of which we would have been glad to do without. 

* * *

I can’t say that the disillusionment is the worst — because the violence (and death and injury and suffering) is the worst. But the past year wielded a good deal of disillusionment and disappointment, perhaps borne most by those who lived in the Gaza envelope, dreaming of coexistence with their oh-so-close Gazan neighbors. Adele Raemer writes that, as of October 7th, she understood that “many of those people…were…betraying us, mapping out our communities, including names of residents and where they lived on the map….some of them… were also learning our habits and lifestyles in order to weaponize that knowledge on October 7th.”

I used to believe more Gazans want to live in peace as I do

Adele Raemer
How upsetting to still not be sure that my Gazan friend’s texts on October 7th were to find out how I was and not where I was

The Gaza Strip as seen through the windshield of a car on Nirim that was destroyed by terrorists on October 7th. (courtesy)

* * *

Admittedly, it’s a different kind of shift, but any who thought Hamas had the potential to work towards a bright new horizon can learn from Gershon Baskin’s revised characterization of the terror group: Because of the “inhuman, inexcusable crimes that will never be forgotten or forgiven[,] Hamas… forfeited its right to exist as a government of any territory and especially the territory next to Israel.”

The future of Hamas after October 7  

Gershon Baskin
The group whose senior officials I negotiated with for so many years has forfeited its right to exist as a government

Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas's political bureau, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Beirut, Lebanon, October 26, 2023. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

* * *

Before October 7th, Avi Lewis cared. He said as much: “I cared about setting a personal example of how a tiny people in a tough neighborhood could still be a Light unto the Nations.” But afterwards? No way. He notes: “…you wouldn’t tolerate any of the things they did to us if they would’ve done it to you…. Don’t expect me to wait for your approval this time.”

Dear world: I don’t care

Avi Lewis
I don’t care if you’re out on the street, waving your flag and chanting your slogans. We won’t die silently the way you want us to
An Israeli soldier on patrol in the southern city of Sderot, October 11, 2023. (Oren Ben Hakoon/Flash90)

* * *

When medieval Jews longed for Israel with a constant awareness, it can’t have been more constant than the place that the 251 (and now 97) hostages kidnapped on October 7th thrummed in the hearts and minds of people all over the world. Front and center are the very young red-heads, Kfir and Ariel. Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar encapsulated the prayers of the world, writing to Shiri Bibas:  “You don’t know me, but I know you. I fall asleep with you at night and wake up with you in the morning. In between, I dream about you.” She wrote that when 50-plus days had passed. Now it’s been a complete year. Who can bear it?!

Dear Shiri Bibas

Rivka Neriya-Ben Shahar
If you, your children, and the remaining hostages are not returned, we will not be able to look ourselves in the mirror
Shiri Bibas and her sons Ariel, 4, and baby Kfir, are abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023 (Posterized screenshot)

* * *

Miriam Schler weighed in on the horrific disregard by too many of the “…assumption that rape crisis centers are supposed to hold: sexual violence is never justified. There is simply never an excuse for rape.” Rationalizing and contextualizing rape was supposed to have become a thing of the past. But not, apparently, for those harmed on October 7th.

The obscene betrayal of Israelis who survived – and didn’t survive – rape

Miriam Schler
Those who disbelieve or justify the sexual assaults on Israelis are sending a cruel message: You are definitely alone

A protester makes hand prints on the wall of Union Station building during a pro-Palestinian demonstration asking for a ceasefire in Gaza in Washington, Friday, Nov. 17, 2023. (AP/Jose Luis Magana)

* * *

According to Tanya White, the usual values of the liberal end of the political spectrum were fundamentally upended, and the most progressive didn’t let their hearts bleed over Hamas’s victims. She asks: “So, why is it that when Jews are murdered, raped, tortured… kidnapped and slaughtered in their own beds, they are not the poster children of radical liberalism that champions victim culture?” And answers: Israelis (and Jews) do not let their suffering, powerful though it is, define them.

Why the progressive liberal left isn’t sympathetic to Israel’s pain

Tanya White
The Jewish experience has been replete with suffering, but since the time of the biblical Jacob, this people has refused to play victim

Yaffa Adar, center, being brought back home to Israel on November 24, 2023. When taken on October 7, she was photographed smiling, causing observers to ask whether she understood what was happening. Her relatives explained that she knew full well, and was defiant. (courtesy)

* * *

The media bias over the past year has created new games in casting aspersions against the Jewish state. Robert Satloff takes The Washington Post to task for not doing its due diligence about the claims it reported, and the same can be said (on other days) of The New York Times, and so very many non-Israeli news outlets. The bias runs deeper than most of us could have fathomed, when “well-meaning people taking care of premature babies across battle lines… turned into an unsourced, unnamed, unverified attack on Israel.”

Did Israel really separate Palestinian mothers from their babies?

Robert Satloff
The Washington Post said so, which means its reporters did their due diligence, right? But they didn’t

Palestinian mothers with their children, Jerusalem. (Wikipedia Commons)

* * *

In January 2024, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that antisemitic incidents were up 360% since October 7th. Yesterday, October 6, 2024, the ADL reported 10,000 antisemitic incidents in the United States over the previous year — including 1,200 on college campuses. The ADL’s count of campus incidents were surely the tip of the iceberg: Alon Tal was a visiting professor at Stanford University (which didn’t quite tolerate anti-Israel sentiment to the degree that brought university presidents to congressional hearings and eventual resignations), and shared his dismay that students did not feel safe in their dorms (what with swastikas graffitied on their doors), as well as his hope that campuses could be a productive place to disagree. 

Antisemitism is in the air at Stanford University

Alon Tal
A visiting professor on campus, I thought reports of Jew-hatred and anti-Israeli bias were overblown. A new report demonstrates how wrong I was

Participants at Stanford pro-Palestinian encampment, 2024. (Alon Tal)

* * *

Another shift this year was Iran’s direct involvement — for a change (usually, the Islamic Republic leaves the dirty work to its proxy axis of evil: Hamas, Hezbollah, and, oh, the Houthis). Israel even had advanced notice of Iran’s projectiles (apparently miraculously, nearly all of them were intercepted or landed without injury: approximately 360 on April 14 and 201 on October 1). But for Sherri Mandell, that just raised the levels of her worry, until she figured out how to handle it.

Waiting for a missile from Iran

Sherri Mandell
An app on my phone tells me that all of Israel is in danger. So I call my children: Should I worry?

Iranians attend the funeral procession for seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members killed in a strike in Syria, which Iran blamed on Israel, in Tehran on April 5, 2024. (Atta Kenare/AFP)

* * *

Who has not wished that the army could eliminate the terrorists without harming regular people? Scott Kahn describes the actions of the IDF in Gaza as “a model of ethical urban warfare against an enemy that actively tries to maximize the number of noncombatants killed.” But greater success in protecting noncombatants was on display in Lebanon, where it was maybe Israel that targeted the bad guys with nearly no “collateral damage.” A nuanced development in the efforts to make Israel safe.

The most moral attack: Taking out terrorists and almost no one else

Scott Kahn
After 11 months of Hezbollah’s 8,000+ missiles, Israel (reportedly) figured out how to target the enemy precisely. The UN has nothing to criticize

People gather outside a hospital in Beirut as Hezbollah members are brought for treatment after pager devices exploded across Lebanon on September 17, 2024. (REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir)

* * *

Back in January, Yael Leibowitz wrote about the changes wrought to Israel as a country and to the Jewish people as a nation — a peace-loving, idealistic, trusting people who became experts at wars they didn’t want because they had no alternative. On October 7th, she writes, “All our paradigms had been shattered, and with them, our trust.” It has been a year of finding out — if not that we are alone, then who our friends are. And we are a different Israel a year later.

Slaying the giant

Yael Leibowitz
Israelis don’t want to fight, but they have no choice: They are the front line defending civilization against the onslaught of savageryRelatives and friends walk among portraits of people taken captive or killed by Hamas during the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, during a visit at the site near Kibbutz Re'im in southern Israel, on January 5, 2024. (Jack Guez/AFP)

* * *

Other things happened this year — and people blogged about them. In seeking out the blog posts that could be touchstones for reflection on the past year, I pulled out some 60 posts, including some by beloved bloggers as well as some essential commentary, though they are not included above (this post is long enough). With so many angles and aspects to the year — bloggers had a lot to talk about. From the antisemitism at The Hague to burning question of the Haredi draft (and other shifts within ultra-Orthodox society) to the impact of October 7th on Israel’s food security (check out the price of tomatoes) to the pain of losing family members and the defiance of faith… from the spirit of volunteerism to the witness-bearing (or is it voyeurism?) of visiting the destruction in the Gaza envelope… to the frightening, unacceptable old-new antisemitism, the world over… to Israel’s dirty work to protect the world from Iran… to the vital need to both win the war(s) decisively and bring the hostages home immediately… and how to talk, especially to children, about the year that has been. 

As we count off 366 days, I can’t yet answer how best to use this time of looking back, but I believe it buoys us as we move on, reminding us of what we’ve been through, like it or not. Looking forward, I trust and pray that a safer world will be in the offing; my hope is that Israel, the Jewish people, and each of us as individuals won’t have to pay too much to get there. In the meantime, there’s plenty to blog about.

About the Author
Anne Gordon is the deputy editor of Ops & Blogs at The Times of Israel and a co-founder of Chochmat Nashim. She has taught Judaic Studies widely, in the US and Israel, and studied in the various women's batei midrash for nearly a decade. She is a graduate of Drisha Institute's Scholars Circle and holds a BA in History & Philosophy and an MA in Judaic Studies from Harvard University, and is ABD in her pursuit of a PhD in Jewish Education.
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