October 7. Never again
October 7 is no longer just another day.
October 7 shook us with horror. The horror of brutality, hatred, and massacre.
October 7 showed us a reality we had believed was different.
It showed us that perhaps we had been living in a fantasy of acceptance and inclusion, convinced that we inhabited a truly civilized world.
Many of us believed that what we had read in books, seen in movies, or heard from a grandfather or grandmother who was still alive belonged to a bygone history.
A difficult, terrible, unjust, and inexplicable history. But a history that was over.
We believed that senseless hatred and indiscriminate killing, simply because we were Jewish, belonged to the past.
We believed that “Never Again” truly meant Never Again.
It never occurred to us to imagine that “Never Again” was only for a little while.
Until it became necessary to say it again.
And yet, there they were—the images. Live and in real time. Filmed and celebrated by the terrorists themselves, and, only a few hours later, watched by a world that proved incapable of reacting to the horror.
Then came horror upon horror, when instead of widespread condemnation, there were warmish statements that, sooner rather than later, turned into outright support for the terrorists over the hostages and those who had been murdered.
Three years later, I still cannot comprehend the cruelty, blindness, and manipulation of a Western world that continues to call itself civilized.
A world that so often seems blind and deaf in the face of interests that I still cannot fully understand. Or perhaps I do not want to understand them.
A world that condemns and attacks the victim because the victim dared to defend itself.
Perhaps they expected to find the same Jews of the 1940s, massacred without question.
Or the Jews of the Inquisition.
Or perhaps, going even further back, those exiled by Rome, Assyria, or Babylon.
Well, no. Not this time.
The world did not know how to say Never Again to horror.
We did.
The Jews of the world cried out Never Again from every corner of the Earth. And we will continue to do so.
We will continue to defend our right to exist, to live, and to have a state of our own.
To never again have to apologize or ask permission for existing.
And we will also continue to show that extraordinary resilience that allows us to fight and dance, pray and question, debate and embrace our differences.
We said we would dance again. And so we do.
We said we wanted everyone back home. And so they were brought back. Tragically, not all of them alive.
We said Never Again. And we will make sure it is respected.
Am Yisrael Chai.
The People of Israel LIVE.
No matter what.
October 7 is no longer just another day.
