October 7, 2023, was a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. It was also the festival of Shmini Atzeret. The following day, October 8, was Simchat Torah, another holiday on which observant Jews are forbidden from using electronics. (In Israel, the two holidays are celebrated together in one day, while outside the Holy Land they are split in two.) Consequently, it was not until after nightfall on October 8, here in New York, that I and many of my fellow Jews could take stock of the horrors that Hamas had inflicted in Israel’s south.
By then, the story on the home front had already shifted from one abomination to another. In the hours and days following the massacre, rape, and kidnapping of thousands of Israeli civilians—while babies, Holocaust survivors, and American citizens were being kidnapped and secreted through tunnels in Gaza—thousands of people took to the streets of cities throughout the West to celebrate these atrocities. These demonstrators—wrongly called “protesters,” since Israel’s military response had not yet begun—expressed support for the destruction of Israel “by any means necessary.” This is old news by now, yet it still shocks the conscience.
Read more of our October 7 coverage.
Many Jews and decent American citizens were horrified and confused by these displays, which have only escalated over time. They remain horrified by the thought that so many people who live among us—some citizens, even—would kick Jews and Israeli Americans while they were down. The dominant moral idea of our age presents itself in terms of concern for the downtrodden: those vulnerable or in pain receive deference and space to grieve, while others must refrain from “punching down.”
On October 8, 2023, we Jews thought, consistent with this ethos, that our pain and vulnerability would invite sympathy and solidarity. By the time daylight had broken on October 9, however, we realized we were wrong. We could no longer deny that weakness only emboldened those who hate us. Our blood was in the water, and our enemies took that as a sign to attack. To those who believe that Jews should leave Israel and “go back to Poland,” as we have gotten used to hearing, our pain is a sign that they are succeeding in their efforts to make our lives miserable until they get what they want. These are old-school bullies in progressive attire.
Many Jews, though certainly not all, have taken this lesson to heart. Strength, not weakness, is how we must now defend ourselves and our traditions. Unprecedented numbers of Jews are signing up to purchase and learn to use firearms for self-defense. In Israel and America, there is a renewed vigor in defending the Jewish state on the grounds that Israel is home to millions of Jews who are entitled to defend themselves against their enemies and are weary with explaining themselves to a hostile world. Even liberal Jews have begun, however haltingly, to rethink their weakness-as-security worldview.
With a year’s worth of hindsight for clarity, October 7, 2024, has raised the same challenge for the West. In a violation of all norms of decency, the same groups that celebrated Hamas a year ago have redoubled their efforts. They flooded our streets once again with deplorable calls for violence and open support for America’s and Israel’s enemies. And they did not do so in “protest” of Israel’s subsequent response to the previous year’s atrocities; they did so, explicitly, in celebration of those atrocities. By choosing to appropriate for the anti-Israel cause what should be a day of mourning, the demonstrators signal again that they have no interest in coexistence or decency.
October 7 will always stand for shock and pain. But October 9 should stand for steeling ourselves against such evil and resolving to show strength, never weakness, in combating it. That is a lesson most pertinent to the diplomats currently botching efforts to get the hostages (among them American citizens) out of Gaza. After each failed round of negotiations, the U.S. has noted that Hamas was responsible for the breakdown, before showing the classic sign of weakness: asking Israel, our ally, the decent party, to concede more. This has things backwards. The lesson of October 9, for those attuned to it, is that we must refuse to embolden those—Hamas and its backers in Turkey, Qatar, and beyond—who do not play by the rules of decency.
Domestically, properly permitted and orderly demonstrations constitute protected free speech. But law enforcement must be vigilant in ensuring that any demonstrator engaging in non-protected actions—harassment, vandalism, disorderly conduct, or assault—is swiftly arrested. Prosecutors must take these crimes seriously.
As citizens, we have much to ponder. There is the political dimension: How have our votes empowered policymakers and administrators who cannot bring themselves to condemn the radicals’ behavior? There is an economic dimension, too: How do we ensure that domestic terrorists and America-hating lowlifes never gain power? Then there is the cultural question: How has our tolerance for one-sided histories and self-styled reckonings with America’s past sins enabled widespread anti-Western fanaticism? A little more civilizational confidence in answering these questions would go a long way toward learning the lesson of October 9.
Photo by Selcuk Acar /Anadolu via Getty Images