Oct 7: The day of anger, grief and horror that shocked Israel and the world

On the morning of Saturday, October 7, I was awakened by a message from the editor-in-chief of VOZ Mario Noya. I read the message just as I was about to get up. I thought something serious had happened. He asked me if I was awake because "Hamas invaded Israel." I thought he was exaggerating. Although my head was not yet fully lucid because I was just waking up, I imagined that it was a, let's say, regular infiltration, where one or two Palestinians managed to cross from Gaza and make it a few meters  before getting caught. 

However, I told myself, now a little more awake, that this was obviously something more serious than that. I got up and checked my cell phone to see what was happening in Israel, a country where I lived for seven years and which I admire, beyond its successes and mistakes.

I could not believe what my eyes were seeing and reading. Hamas had really invaded southern Israel after a wave of rocket attacks. Terrorists roamed around as if they were in their own home murdering, raping, beheading, torturing and kidnapping men, women and children. It was a brutal massacre in the middle of the 21st century and in the Jewish state.

I quickly made myself a coffee and sat down in front of the computer to try to keep VOZ's social media up to date. I know a lot about the issue because I've been following it since my teenage years. I lived in Israel for almost seven years. I was in the Army and I studied and worked. Mario put me in charge of many more responsibilities than usual. The reports and pictures coming in were getting worse and worse, sadder and sadder. I didn't know what to post first. I wanted to keep social media updated in the best way. If there is one thing I can take away from the stress and pressure I was under at the time. It helped me overcome the anger, pain, disgust and sadness I felt, feelings that would have really affected me when it came to work. People had to know what was happening and in the best possible way. There would be time for my brain to understand the gravity of what was happening.

It got dark. The day went by really fast. It was time to think about what had happened. I never imagined that it would feel so close to home and not only because when I lived in Israel I had attended electronic music festivals like the one where hundreds of young people were killed, tortured, raped and kidnapped, but also because I had traveled to the south several times to visit friends. I had lived in those places where several rockets landed. I have friends and friends of friends there. I contacted them to find out if they were okay. Luckily they were.

But then I received a message from one of my best friends who told me that his friend's brothers who live in Israel were missing and had not yet been found. At that time I wondered are they dead? Were they kidnapped? Where are they and how are they doing? There was so much uncertainty! Today, one year later, that uncertainty has not eased as they are still being held in the Strip.

Then, that fateful day, a childhood friend who I've lost some contact with wrote me to tell me that one of the families killed was that of a cousin of hers. The whole family was killed while she was at home. EVERY ONE OF THEM, at once, by savage beasts who have no respect for human life.

The attack was hitting close to home. I wondered if I would have died in this attack. I could have easily been murdered or kidnapped. I had never felt this way before, not even when it turned out that a female terrorist was working in the restaurant where I worked when I lived in Tel Aviv in 2006 or when a suicide bomber in Burgas, Bulgaria, blew up a bus killing seven Israelis in 2011. It could have been the one I had ridden on a year earlier when I flew to the Bulgarian city for work.

I didn't understand what had happened in Israel. How is it possible that one of the strongest armies in the world had failed so badly and for so long? Golda Meir resigned as prime minister for so much less after the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

The alliance of the left and Islamism against Israel

I had to keep working to keep sharing the news of the war and that's when I started to see the messages on social media. Of course there were and there are many gestures of support for Israel and many who are speaking out against Hamas, which shows that perhaps the world is not lost after all and there is still hope. However, there were also people from the left who supported the terrorism that took palce on October 7. They accuse Israel of apartheid, genocide and even compare the Jewish State with Nazism, as did Gustavo Petro, the terrorist president of Colombia who likes narco-dollars. This leftist support for Islamist terrorism has not gone away. 

And at that moment a phrase from journalist Alejo Schapire came to my mind, which sums up part of the ideology of the left, whose members are nothing more than skinheads with hair: "The left sees Nazis everywhere except when there are Jews murdered for being Jews." Touché.

We should also remember the words of Yoseph Haddad, the Israeli Arab activist whom I had the honor to interview for VOZ. He said that "terrorists do not distinguish between Arabs and Jews." Haddad is an Israeli citizen who travels the world to explain that far from there being apartheid, in the Jewish State there is more freedom than in any other country in the region for ALL its citizens. Yes, ALL, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, color, sexual preference or whatever.

The Jewish State continues to bear a heavy cost. Despite having the power to obliterate Gaza, many soldiers and civilians have lost their lives as Israel chooses to pay with its own blood rather than the blood of others.

Apartheid is what the Palestinian leadership enforeces, not only the savage acts of Hamas but also those of Fatah, whose leader, Mahmoud Abbas, mischaracterized as a moderate by some, has justified the Holocaust. Palestinian extremists want to perpetrate genocide, but they will not succeed.

This bizarre alliance between the left and Islamic extremism is tragicomic. We are already seeing it in the U.S. There is friction between Muslims and progressives who want to impose their unhinged agenda on everyone, even on a population that is usually made up of very conservative people and with no small sector of bigots willing to do anything to impose their ideas.

Jews and Israel are not the only targets of radical Islamism

That day of the massacre and the ones that followed were really exhausting. There were days where I barely got up to go to the bathroom because VOZ and myself needed people to be updated with what was happening.

The issue is no longer just about Israel. Anyone who believes that Hamas and the other Islamic terrorist groups in Gaza are aiming to gain territory doesn't understand a thing. The aim of such groups is to drive the Jews into the sea, to exterminate them. At least, that's what they say. Not me. 

But do they really believe that their only target is the Jews? Not at all. The problem for them is that the Jewish State, an oasis of freedom and progress in the Middle East, is next door, and it is strong, proud, prosperous, open and free. They cannot stand this. Israel is the first obstacle, that's all. However, radical Islamism continues to spread in Europe and terrorist attacks also target the infidels (non-Muslims or Muslims who do not want to follow their path of destruction).

Security concerns are growing among European authorities after opening the doors, driven by a mix of misplaced idealism and political opportunism, to people who not only refuse to integrate but also seek to impose an authoritarian and violent way of life. I have been seeing and hearing people who have begun to change their minds about immigration. These are the same people who lived in a fantasy world, believing that the problem was borders and lack of opportunities, although no one made reference to the fact that this 'lack of opportunities' began in the country from where the refugees were leaving. The borders opened and they came in by the droves since the opportunities were there for the taking but they rejected them. They were just looking for the opportunity to dominate the West, bit by bit. They are in no hurry.

Are there really people who believe that these beasts have any regard for the people who welcome them with open arms and 'understand' them? In fact, many of the Israelis living in the kibbutz and other southern communities and several of those who were at the electronic music festival FOR PEACE, yes, FOR PEACE, were surely pacifists. The Hamas terrorists kidnapped, murdered, raped, beheaded, tortured and burned them alive because they DON'T care about their ideology, their way of thinking, whether they are sympathetic or not. In the eyes of Islamic terrorists, we are all less than rats; we are trash they must exterminate because we pollute the pure air of Islam. I have had many discussions with the victims regarding how Israel, Europe and the world should take care of themselves. I have been saying it for many years: it is better to prevent these things from happening in the first place. We see what Israel has to do now because it made serious mistakes in protecting its borders. And the rest of Europe is getting tougher on measures to protect its population from radical Islamism. I don't know where they will end up. The enemy is eating them alive.

Let's go back to Israel. I wonder, could Yoseph Haddad have been right when he said in the interview I had with him that Israel always responded to attacks in the 'right measure,' ergo, the proportion that the world asked of it, while Hamas and other terrorist groups set the pace of the clashes in order to reinforce themselves and attack again? Surely none of this would be happening today. As I read from an influencer on the internet, Israel is not going to respond proportionately because it is not willing to go to a party to rape women, kidnap and murder innocents rampage, or go house to house mowing down entire families with bullets and beheading babies. No, Israel prefers to go after the terrorists, who are already hiding among the civilian population to hinder Israeli attacks. So, as Yoseph Haddad told me, EVERYTHING that happens in Israel and Gaza is Hamas' responsibility. 

Civilization against barbarism

Let's get this straight once and for all: Israelis go to sleep thinking about getting up and going to work the next day. Palestinian terrorists go to bed thinking about how to kill them. Israelis create and produce products that are used all over the world and make life better for all of us. Palestinian terrorists only think about what they can destroy. Israelis teach their children how to succeed in life. Palestinian terrorists only teach them to glorify death, their own. In Israel, Jews, Muslims, Christians, Arabs, Druze, Bedouins, Orthodox, secular, homosexuals and heterosexuals live together with the same rights and with more freedom than in any other country in the region. Meanwhile, in Gaza or the West Bank, authoritarianism and intolerance reigns against infidels, gays and anyone who does not submit to their tyrannical whims. In Israel there is freedom of expression for all. In the Palestinian territories, no one can say a word critical of the leadership.

"I prefer the repudiation of the whole world and not their condolences."Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel between 1969 and 1974.

It is likely that nothing I write will change the position of people who already have made up their minds on the issue and unfortunately I am not just referring to the left. There are open-minded and intelligent people who are not going to be swayed by an image or by what this person or that one says, not even myself. But I've taken my time to write this for those people.

But beyond everything, Israel has to do what it has to do. The images of October 7 will remain in everyone's memory until the end of our days like the images of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps. And yes, as expected, many people have been condemning the Israeli response, even from the very day of the massacre.

The harm to civilians must be minimized, which is what Israel always does, but Hamas and other terrorist groups must be exterminated. The Jewish State continues to bear a heavy cost. Despite having the power to obliterate Gaza, many soldiers and civilians have lost their lives as Israel chooses to pay with its own blood rather than the blood of others. Still, as I've said, nothing will satisfy those who have already made up their minds, whether out of hatred or not. But Israel must go its own way.

The Israeli Army is the most moral and pluralistic in the world. I had to enlist and I met young people there from diverse cultures, ethnicities and religions (Muslim and Christian Arabs, Jews, Druze, Bedouins, etc). In fact, the logistics commander of the base where I spent the last few months of my military service was a Druze man and he was the one who gave us a lecture on the Holocaust on the day of remembrance of the victims of the Nazi genocide. I'll never forget my friends who were combatants. They told me that they sometimes had to defend the Palestinians when a conflict arose between religious nationalists and Palestinian villagers in the West Bank.

Israel has the right to defend itself and its people have the right to argue and fight without any danger to the existence of their country. Many people say that internal division related to judicial reform led to October 7. I don't know about that but what I do know is that Israelis have the right to fight just like any other country in the world, but when their very existence is at stake, they unite, as they have demonstrated since the beginning of this conflict.

It is unbelievable that Israel, under attack from all directions by people who want to wipe out its entire population in the most brutal ways, is still expected to justify its right to self-defense. Despite the harsh circumstances, Israel responds with force against terrorists while trying to avoid civilian casualties, unlike its enemies, who deliberately target civilians on the other side and use their own as human shields. Yet, Israel is constantly forced to explain itself. Enough. As Golda Meir said, "I prefer the repudiation of the whole world and not your condolences."

Peace? Must I repeat that Hamas does not want peace, nor do the 'moderates' in the Palestinian Authority who have justified the Holocaust. How many times have they rejected any kind of solution that would finally establish own state once and for all? As a radical Islamist organization, Hamas seeks the destruction of all Jews and is part of a braoder extremist movement that aims to impose its authoritarian, misogynistic, racist and bloodthirsty ideology on the world. The Palestinian Authority's leadership has also shown repeatedly that peace is not, shall we say, one of its priorities. This was evident when Yasser Arafat rejected Ehud Barak's near-complete offer in the early 2000s, responding when the Second Intifada and later when Mahmoud Abbas turned down Ehud Olmert's proposal. Additionally, in 2007, Israel saved the lives of many members of the military-political organization Fatah, the main faction of the Palestinian Authority, who were being brutally killed by Hamas terrorists during their internal conflict.

Israel has not only saved the lives of Fatah members but has even saved the lives of Palestinian terrorists who were wounded by Israeli forces after perpetrating an attack. That is the fundamental difference. In Israel, life is valued, even the lives of those who want to kill them. Palestinian fundamentalists value death and kill even their own brothers to achieve their dark ideological and political goals.

It is necessary to clarify that it is no longer about the Arab-Israeli conflict but about civilization against barbarism. It's about valuing life against valuing death, valuing the freedom of all against those who want to subject us to their authoritarian whims.

Never again means never again. Israel understands that it must dictate the terms of combat, not Hamas or its allies in Lebanon, Syria or Iran. It chooses to ignore biased media that distort facts to tarnish Israel's image and turns a blind eye to the UN, where some of the world's most tyrannies give lectures on human rights. They can criticize all they want, but as Golda Meir said, "I prefer the repudiation of the whole world, and not its condolences."