Every Day is October 7th – Year Two

Brief Preface: One year passed since I wrote the following essay conveying the experience living in Israel at this moment and the moments since the cataclysm of the October 7^th surprise cross-border invasion by thousands of Hamas terrorists, joined in their mayhem by Gaza civilians. Although the premise and title remain accurate and relevant today, many stories of tremendous courage and heroism have also emerged among the catastrophic IDF failures. Additionally, I’ve written about a few of the thousands of Israel supporters living abroad who made solidarity missions to Israel over the past 14 months. Several of Israel’s dedicated professional journalists have made it their mission to allow survivors to tell their first-hand stories which I recommend. 

Edon Alon Levy (Remember Edon Alon Levy Foundation)

Civilian Israelis have continued to be targets in their homes from high explosive missiles, rockets, drones fired from Hezbollah nearby, from up to 1000 miles away from Iran and Yemen. Without the ever-present steadfast support of the United States Biden Administration Israel would never have been able to defend against this onslaught alone. I’m also mindful of the images emerging from Gaza of the horrific humanitarian disaster resulting from the Hamas attack and Israel’s war of self-defense. The suffering of hundreds of thousands in Gaza can’t be described except to say it’s horrendous. It’s cold comfort to say no one in Israel wished the destruction and loss of life to Gazans. We are clear-eyed however to realize Hamas fully expected and intended for the cruelty of October 7^th to result in the civilian population bearing the brunt of the Israeli response as Hamas cowardly hides in their terror tunnels, continuing to today holding 100 hostages.

In extraordinary times, people do extraordinary things.  While I prefer to highlight and focus on these inspiring people, we shouldn’t ignore the forces at work which are creating new opportunities and new risks. In that spirit I’ve added a post-script to this essay as well.

December 26, 2023:

Every hour of every day in the 11 weeks since October 7th, all the atrocious details of Hamas’s murderous attacks continue to be brought forth. All Israelis are seeing multiple first-person recollections of horrific acts of cruelty gleefully carried out and videoed by Hamas and Gaza civilians. Scenes of a frenzied hunt for unarmed terrified Israeli civilians, murdering family members, violently abducting others, narrated by some who escaped death or capture through the sacrifice of family members are now broadcast on home TV.

The hundreds of home invasions visited upon bucolic Israeli kibbutzim have been documented in horrifying close up detail and through the descriptions of deeply traumatized survivors.

Two of Israel’s major cable television networks have broadcast heart stopping documentary films, never before seen terrifying reality TV. The Washington Post released carefully researched and documented film with partner Frontline which aired last week on PBS also including real time deeply personal videos as people fled, hiding sometimes for hours while the hunt, torture, sexual assaults, executions, abductions continued.

Not unspoken or unmentioned are the hundreds of calls, text messages, Whatsapp messages sent by Israelis while either fleeing, hiding or fighting for their lives plaintively pleading, when will the army arrive to help? While surprised and caught unprotected, southern Israel Negev kibbutzim and IDF surveillance outposts were both under attack by heavily armed vicious Hamas terrorists and Gaza civilians for hours and hours. In many, many cases the army never arrived until it was way too late.

These stories are so very difficult to hear, and for the relatives of victims virtually impossible to accept. Israeli public television KAN 11 reporter Keren Neubach has been on a mission to record and report interviews with parents of young largely female Israeli soldiers assigned to the Gaza border surveillance posts and hundreds of other IDF soldiers caught entirely by surprise and unprepared on the morning of October 7th.

IDF Nahal Oz Surveillance Officers (Kan11)

Typically in their first or second year of service these 19 and 20 year olds, just a year out of high school, not trained in combat, found themselves unprotected while desperately trying to survive murderous attacks, in many cases unarmed and just out of bed still in their nightime sleepwear.

Their devastated parents who sent their precious children to the IDF are relating every detail to Kan 11’s Keren Neubach, of that October 7th morning quoting texts, Whatsapps, and reports from the very few who survived and lived to tell about it. If their daughters weren’t viciously murdered, they were violently abducted to Gaza and remain there today. In many cases the parents have received little information or support from the IDF pouring bags of salt into open wounds.

In introducing her reporting Keren said, “About 60 soldiers and female soldiers fell in the battle on the Nahal Oz outpost. There were 26 observers there. 15 were killed that day. 7 were kidnapped. Uri Magidish was released and Noa Marciano was murdered in captivity. Few were saved, I can’t even imagine what they are going through. We set for ourselves the goal of talking to their parents to tell their stories and the story of the failure.”

“This is the story of Noam Abramovich her second day on the job at Nahal Oz surveillance post.”

“It started like everyone else with the 6:30 am rocket barrage,” Edva Abramovich Noam’s mother told Keren Neubach in a recent interview. “I texted Noam to check what’s up with her and if she’s in a safe place. And she calls us and says it’s very, very scary and she loves us and it doesn’t matter what happens and at this point we don’t understand what she’s saying at all.”

Noam Abramovich IDF Gaza Surveillance Unit Nahal Oz

“The call was at 6:36am and then she writes: ‘Mom, I love you’ and explains that there is a raid on the base and I wrote to her: ‘Hide, be focused, don’t speak loudly’ and she writes to me ‘there are terrorists’ and I write to her Are you sure?’ ‘Yes, they speak in Arabic and scream ‘Allahu Akbar’ and it’s crazy scary, I love you no matter what  happens.”

“And I wrote: ‘Hide Noam, it must be only one and they will eliminate him soon, don’t worry.’ We corresponded with her until 7:34 am and then her voice went silent. Noam did not fall, they were murdered, butchered and executed like a firing squad. They(Hamas terrorists) entered the shelter, sprayed them, threw a grenade, those who were kidnapped were kidnapped, those who managed to escape ran away and the rest were corpses.”

“Edva Abramovich’s grief and anger are unbearable. Noam didn’t even have time to serve in the position that she wanted so much. She didn’t even have time to make friends in the new base,” Edva says.

Ayalon Highway Herzliya

Israelis’ 75-year deeply held trust and confidence in the IDF and senior leadership has suffered the deepest crisis of confidence and emotional trauma Israel has ever known due to the catastrophic failures on October 7th. It is way too early to think Israelis have internalized the events and lessons from October 7th. Sadly Israel’s political leadership has failed to accept responsibility for their role, the catastrophic failures rooted in hubris, arrogance, institutional groupthink, lack of imagination, impunity from criticism and lack of accountability. It will be left to the Israeli people to live up to the massive roadside billboards “Together We Will Win” to recover optimism about Israel’s future, and demand accountability and reform of the military and political leadership. We have a very long road ahead.

Postscript: For the past several years I told anyone who was interested in my impression of living in Israel as a new immigrant that Israelis were living with blinders firmly in place. It was obvious to me that on the borders and certainly within the area called the West Bank of the Jordan River aka Judea and Samaria – ancient biblical names – lived thousands and thousands of Arab Palestinians who had never accepted the status quo. It was also obvious that among this population thrived extremists who perverted the religion of Islam into a divine edict to commit mass murder of Jewish/Israeli civilians wherever they could be found. Thus, the Go-Pro videos of Hamas terrorist rampaging to commit horrific violence on unarmed civilians were narrated with shouts of “Allahu Akhbar” as they fired high powered rifles, tossed hand grenades, shot rockets to commit mayhem unseen in decades, in God’s name.

As Israel’s military sought to eliminate the threats from Gaza and Lebanon, huge tunnel complexes and weapon caches were found equipped both to protect terrorists and to hold hostages. As the essay above indicates we all know what the Hamas/Hezbollah terrorists planned for years to carry out.

We also witnessed within the first hours after October 7^th an uprising of anti-Israel, anti-Jewish actions in the United States and many cities abroad, which continue today. We witnessed American politicians donning Keffiyehs and joining anti-Israel protesters as they shilled for murdering terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah. The blinders are off.

In summary I wish for Israelis and the Jewish people to have a leadership capable of defining a compelling vision of the future that is not just more of the same. In a democracy it’s up to us to settle for nothing less.