October 7 2024: the plot is being written and the ending unknown.

It is October 7, 2024, and as I sit at my desk looking out my window at the San Francisco Bay–the water almost tropical in its blueness, the air hot and still, the effect of an Indian Summer day that lasts just a few weeks out of a year and can give uninformed tourists the sense that this is a short sleeves and shorts kind of place–I do not hear bombs exploding. I have no bomb shelter into which I would ever need to escape from missiles coming from Irans jihadist surrogate, Hezbollah in the north. Missiles that can come at any time and just might evade the protective Iron Dome. I am not afraid of a missile blowing up the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, which I view from my window. I do not fear murderous marauders–bloodthirsty merchants of evil that want to kill me because I am Jewish, such as what occurred one year ago exactly to the peaceful residents of kibbutzim near the Gaza border. Babies were beheaded as they slept. Women were raped in front of their husbands, the children found and the family murdered. Beheadings in beds as the marauders of pure diabolical hatred laughed and celebrated, photos taken and calls of pride placed to their commanders.

I only know what I have read, and heard from friends in Israel. But they corroborate these accounts and much more that I cannot conceive let alone repeat.
My eyes see the stunning Golden Gate Bridge and the perfectly still Bay, but my mind, spirit and soul has travelled to Israel–the anguish of the hostages that are still alive, their families, the horror of the six hostages used as bargaining chips by Hamas and Iran, then after nearly a year of waiting and holding on to life were murdered execution style by Irans well funded death squad, Hamas. It is simply too much for the mind to comprehend. But comprehend it, American Jews must do. We grieve as Jews, our souls are tortured because our spirits are tied to our ancient Homeland–our souls are connected to the founding of Jerusalem about 5,000 years ago, our identities are tied to the first Temple of Judaism–Solomon’s Temple–and whether we truly understand it or not our identity, collective consciousness, the sense of God that comes to us in our laughter, humor, joy, sorrow and prayer is inextricably tied to our Ancient homeland–even if we are secular we feel something of that connection, that pull to a God that wants us to be heard.

We cannot take away the pain of Israel. We cannot fight the war against evil for Israel. Most of us were not in Israel on October 7, but we feel the grief, we must express our rage, our anger, our desire for revenge, we understand that Israel faces a threat of annihilation from enemies dedicated to its destruction. And that dedication to its destruction has taken the role of global anti-Semitism. It has infiltrated college campuses where students chant “Israel, Israel, You can’t hide, we want Jewish genocide.” No doubt many Israeli students would sit side by side with those protesting the thousands of Palestinians that have been killed in this war–but they would want to try to explain that these people have been human shields, insignificant and disposable catastrophes in the long term game being played by Iran to create and Islamic extremist empire that is religious and geopolitical. They would try to explain that Israel also has a right to exist, and the destruction of the country has been long planned by Iran-as they funded hundreds of miles of terror tunnels built under schools, mosques, hospitals, homes in Gaza. Perhaps the students would know that the leaders of these groups accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions of dollars to implement the war once the terror networks were established. Perhaps their fellow students–so convinced in the narrative that Israel is synonymous with apartheid, terror and colonialism ( narratives well taught by tenured professors imported from anti-Israel and extremist world neighborhoods)- might just listen in the spirit of open mindedness and desire to overcome pre-suppositions that was once the essential mission of a University. I have no doubt that dialogue would lead to mutual understanding. But sadly, Hamas as freedom fighters is such a profound identity narrative that it will persist as anti-Semitism has always persisted.

Yes, the Israel students that are “guilty as sin” because they are Jewish, cruel oppressors of the Palestinian people’s right to live in peace because they identify with Israel’s right to exist would love to tell their oppressive fellow students that have condemned their Judaism as synonymous racism and genocide that the people that have inspired them–Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran–are not freedom fighters, but perpetrators of some of the most hatred the world has ever known. The Holocaust has been minimized, denied, sanitized and trivialized as anti-Semitic incidents multiply across the world, and certainly across America.

It is October 7, 2024 and the world has dramatically changed from where it was on October 6, 2023. As Israel grieved the holocaust of October 7, Iran put into play it’s short game, which would be a significant part of it’s long game to wipe out Israel, even if it takes 100 years or longer. Hezbollah began launching hundreds of missiles daily upon the northern part of the grieving nation, as the hostages suffered in dark tunnels without medicines, light, food, clothing, sleeping in unbearable conditions. The world has changed because the true reality facing Israel–that there were enemies that did not want peace, enemies that were simply using a Palestinian homeland or state as a ploy for the larger goal of destroying Israel–has become more clear. I am not in Israel, I am gazing upon a beautiful bay. And there are so many beautiful bays and beaches in Israel that should bring peace to its people– a peace that really can be shared with its neighbors. It is a dream that can be realized for Palestinians and Jews. And we have come so close.

Several times so close. But each time, sabotage– terror attacks upon bar mitzvahs and synagogues, birthday parties. Yes, one year later, it is quite clear that the enemy has never wanted peace. They wanted to be an enemy. And it is now transparent. Indeed, Israel may have done better to prevent this Ocotber 7 attack, to prevent the catastrophe of the murders and hostages. But It was going to come at some point–because as Golda Meir so perceptively stated–amidst disillusionment that she so wanted to be otherwise– ” You cannot negotiate peace with someone who has come to kill you.”

In his New York Times column of October 5, 2024, Benny Gantz, Israel’s former Minister of Defense and the chairman of the National Unity Party, stated that”…according to Hamas’ plan after its attack on Israel, the remaining components of Iran’s axis of evil–Hamas in the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and the Shiite militias in Syria, Iraq, and Iran–would join in a regional war with the ultimate goal of destroying the one and only Jewish state. A secret Hamas document reportedly uncovered in Gaza testified to such assertion: Written by the Hamas leader on Jan 8, 2023, in it he claimed to have received a commitment from Iran that the axis would join the attack against Israel once Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood plan to invade Israel was activated. ”

And of course this special plan devised by Iran–the beginning of the short game to execute their long term plan to destroy Israel–makes sense when we read the words, stated in the year 2000 by Ali Khamenei, Supreme leader of Iran, that “Israel is a cancerous tumor that will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed.” And on May 24, of 2024, he stated that “the divine promise to eliminate the Zionist entity will be fulfilled and we will see the day when Palestine will rise from the river to the sea.”

One has to appreciate Israel’s recalcitrance to a Palestinian state–especially after October 7–when we read in article 18 of the Hamas covenant under “The Movement” that ” the following are declared null and void: the Balfour Declaration, the British Mandate Document, the UN Palestine Partition Resolution, and whatever resolutions and measures that derive from them or are similar to them. The establishment of Israel is entirely illegal and contravenes the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and goes against their will…” The intentions behind October 7. 2023, become quite clear when we read article 6 which states that it “strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.”

The Eleh Ezkerah prayer is read on Yom Kippur. It is a prayer that mourns the horrors visited upon Jews over millennia, from the Roman conquest of Judaea and the martyrdom of its Rabbis, to the Crusades and Spanish Inquisition to the Nazi Holocaust. Tragically, sadly, shockingly the Jewish people will add October 7, 2023 to this prayer that remembers Jews that so wanted to live peacefully and died so tragically in their homes.

Perhaps I lack imagination, but it is hard to see how the terror against Israel from the North, from within Gaza, from Yemen, on the West Bank comes to an end if Iran feels protected from paying a price. A steep price. They have to be attacked militarily and sanctioned economically. They are at the head of an axis of evil that has also solicited Russia as a partner– forming an alliance that provides weaponry for their invasion of Ukraine in exchange for cyber capabilities. Russia made the wrong bet on the PLO to gain geopolitical significance in the middle east, and they are hoping they have made the correct bet on Iran.

This is an axis of evil that rivals the aspirations of Nazi Germany. And Israel must contend with global anti-Semitism, fed by the apartheid, colonizer, racist narrative so prevalent on college campuses– a narrative that goes unquestioned as a result of laziness toward history and the easiness of using anti-Semitism under the guise of anti-Zionism.

The United Nations has not been supportive of Israel. They never condemned Hamas attack on October 7. They never condemned the murder of the six hostages killed execution style after a year of waiting to be released. They have not condemned the Iranian attack on Israel last week or in April. Might they be considered the United Nations of anti-Semitism? It is disgusting that Israel has uncovered employees of the United Nations to be members of Hamas.

Iran has no natural enemy in the region. Iraq once stood as a balance to the Iranian Empire, but not any longer. I cannot see how Iran can be pacified, particularly given their alliance with Russia. How does the terror against Israel end without a regime change in Iran? and how does that happen? Iran can no longer be off limits. And this is a long distance train ride from where we were on October 6, 2023. Armageddon? God forbid.

Vice President and Presidential contender, Kamala Harris, spoke about October 7 at her residence in Washington DC today. It was quite moving and brought some tears. She planted a pomegranate tree which she called a “symbol of hope and righteousness. She described the Hamas attack as an “act of pure evil” and said the scores of hostages remaining in Hamas’s hands should be released.

She stated that “we must work to relieve the immense suffering of innocent Palestinians in Gaza who have experienced so much pain and loss over the year…”

Her message to Americans and Israel was that she will “restate my pledge to always ensure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself, and that I will always work to ensure the safety and security of the Jewish people here and around the world.”

Bruce Farrell Rosen