Two years ago, most of us watched the unfolding attack on Israel in real time, barely believing what was happening.
Shortly after, when the first reports of massacre began to roll in, the shock and horror felt by civilized people everywhere brought to mind the 75-year-old promise made by the world to Israel — "Never Again" — which rang hollow against the backdrop of blood and slaughter in Southern Israel.
Remember.
Two years of bloody conflict in Gaza have failed to shake Israel's iron resolve to eliminate the threat from Hamas. Unfortunately, it has also failed to shake the resolve of the terrorists. This is the nature of asymmetrical warfare. Hamas, broken, bloodied, and yet unbowed, finally appears ready to end the current battle. I say "appears ready" because Hamas has never kept its word in any agreement, nor has it retracted any of its statements promising to kill all the Jews in Israel.
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Whatever the outcome of the current negotiations, the Middle East is a very different place than it was on October 7, 2023.
Iran has been weakened and Hezbollah decapitated, while a degraded Hamas, not yet defeated, fights on in Gaza, where tens of thousands have been killed and a humanitarian crisis persists. The U.S.-Israel alliance has come under strain from growing forces on the far left and right who wish to see an end to American military support for Israel. A vast anti-Israel protest movement swept across college campuses, presenting university leaders with a test — how to balance freedom of expression with protecting Jewish students — that many failed.
Yet despite the myriad challenges that have emerged from this war, Jews around the world were instilled with a new sense of pride in defense of Jewish peoplehood. More people are going to synagogue and celebrating Jewish holidays now than before Oct. 7. Judaica sales spiked as people yearned to represent their faith proudly, even as antisemitism surged around the world.
The tsunami of war has rolled over the world, and as the tide recedes, the outline of a new shore is revealed.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Jewish Insider, “There is the Middle East before Oct. 7 and there is the Middle East after Oct. 7. The attack was motivated by a desire to stop normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel — which was close to being realized — building on the Abraham Accords."
It's barely mentioned today, but the push for normalization with Saudi Arabia, a process begun as a result of the Abraham Accords, was the proximate cause of the attack on Israel by Hamas. Now, it's not possible for the foreseeable future.
"The biggest change is that support for the two-state solution is at an all-time low in Israel and the animosity toward Israel on the Arab streets is at an all-time high," Graham notes.
Iran has been weakened in every way: militarily, politically, and economically. For Tehran, it's only going to get worse. The UN sanctions have "snapped back" and economic pain that will challenge the hold on power of the clerical fascists in control in Iran could bring about a messy revolution with an uncertain outcome.
The rest of the anti-Israel "resistance" in the Middle East is in shambles.
"Israel has since delivered just deserts to Hassan Nasrallah, Ismail Haniyeh, the Sinwar brothers, and platoons of terrorists. Bashar al-Assad is at Moscow, and Tehran is smarting," writes the New York Sun.
The Sun points out the supreme irony of Israel winning the war while "Palestine" is recognized as a state by the nations of old Europe.
Moral inversion has transpired not only on the streets but also in the gilded halls of power. One European grandee after another has swung behind the notion of a state for the Palestinian Arabs even as Israel’s hostages languish in Gaza’s dungeons. One of those, Great Britain, on Yom Kippur, witnessed a terrorist assault on a synagogue at Manchester. Britain’s former foreign minister, David Lammy, was jeered at a memorial by British Jews.
Nigh every day brings a demonstration of Jews being blamed for the war being waged against them, even though Israel’s foes are also the sworn enemies of the European countries that indulge their hateful protests. Nor is Europe alone in its complicity. Early support by President Biden for Israel’s war against Hamas has yielded to a rush by the Democrats to heap opprobrium on the Jewish state. Senator Bernie Sanders’s hostility is now his party’s mainstream.
Israel, meanwhile, has never wavered in its determination to do what needs to be done. Its reservists have served for thousands of days. Hundreds of its soldiers have been killed in action, working to defeat the scourge of Hamas. Its soaring stock market suggests that investors know that the Jewish state, war-locked though it might be, is a good bet because its underlying fundamentals — people, values, cause, liberty — are sterling.
Writing in PJ Media this morning, Naomi Nussbaum notes that "With the second anniversary of October 7, there will be a temptation to relegate it to the past. But for those who survived, October 7 is not history. It is every day. Parents still grieve children. Children still wake to nightmares. Widows still raise toddlers alone."
Since most of the Western world has given a list of qualifications to the adage, "Never Again," perhaps it's enough on this painful anniversary of the October 7 attacks to simply "Remember." Remember the dead. Remember the outrage.
Remember.
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