On October 7, I was in Chicago enjoying a fun weekend with friends. But I awoke that morning to the shocking news of the attack on Israel by Hamas and the deaths of a then-unknown number of people. As the day went on, the details became grimmer, and I was thankful to be out of town and busy, otherwise I surely would have been firmly planted in front of the TV all day watching for the latest developments. (Checking in on Twitter was more than enough, for better and for worse.)
Since then, I’ve been horrified by what we’ve learned about the attack and just how brutal it was. Not only were between 1,200 and 1,400 innocent men, women, and children murdered, and not only were more than 240 people taken hostage, they were beaten, raped, mutilated, beheaded, tortured, and more. Early on a Shabbat morning, a day that was also a Jewish holiday. Elderly. Babies. Disabled people. Young people enjoying a music festival. Some were burned beyond recognition and still have not been identified, all these weeks later. Parents were taken from their children and children were taken from their parents right in front of them. All of this was carried out with glee by terrorist monsters who documented it on camera, celebrated it, had plans for it to be much worse than it was, and saw October 7 as just the first in a series of attacks on Israel. One Hamas leader actually said the terrorist group intended to launch “a second, a third, a fourth” attack until Israel is “annihilated,” as if it was perfectly normal thing to say and do.
Despite those details, I’ve been equally horrified by the reaction of the world, and the fact that people didn’t instantly, universally condemn what happened, and haven’t come to Israel’s defense as it fights to defeat Hamas once and for all and bring all of the hostages back home. It didn’t even take a day for sentiments like “Israel deserved it” to spread all around the globe.
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