A Bitter, Yet Hope-Filled, Anniversary

Iranian missile in sky above Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 1, 2024

Tomorrow — in the middle of the Jewish High Holy Days (Rosh Hashana, the New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement) — Israel and Jews around the world will mark the first anniversary of the barbarous 10/7/23 attack on civilian communities and a dance festival in southern Israel. In that rampage, Hamas terrorists as well as hordes of “innocent” Gaza civilians slaughtered with unspeakable brutality more than 1,200 people (most of them civilians, and far from all of them Jews or Israelis), injuring over 4,100 more and kidnapping nearly 225 people, including babies and the elderly, holding them hostage in Gaza. More than 100 of these hostages are apparently still alive, starving and abused, in Hamas’ warren of rancid tunnel-dungeons beneath Gaza’s hospitals, schools, mosques, homes and (even!) UN facilities.

Two images above: Israeli civilians murdered by Hamas outside Gaza, 10/7/2023

The next day, October 8, will be the first anniversary of the start of the ceaseless daily barrage of missiles, rockets, drones and other “standoff weapons” on communities across northern Israel by Hezbollah from Lebanon — in support of its fellow terrorist proxies (puppets actually, Hamas and Islamic Jihad) of the bloodsoaked mullahs in Teheran. This relentless bombardment has now continued unabated and driven over 60,000 Israelis from their homes (96,000 in an estimate on Wikipedia, which is generally unsympathetic to Israel) and killed dozens. Again, among the dead and injured are numerous Arab Israelis and Druze, sadly including 12 children who were playing soccer when blown up by a Hezbollah rocket on July 27.

Funeral of one of the 12 Druze children killed in a Hezbollah rocket attack on northern Israel while playing soccer, July 2024

Atop all this, Israel has thwarted two huge barrages launched directly by Iran’s ruling mullahs and their Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (the IRGC) — shooting down all but a handful of the deadly projectiles (with some assistance from naval and/or air forces of the U.S., UK, France and Jordan). The first barrage numbered 320 ballistic and cruise missiles and drones on April 13. The second, 181 more ballistic missiles tipped with warheads packed with up to a ton of high explosives, was launched on October 1. Fortunately, none of these 501 missiles caused any significant damage. (But one, which Israel intercepted, fell out of the sky, killing a Palestinian man in the West Bank.)

What’s still scarier about Iran’s missiles is that with all the experts in agreement that the mullahs are on the very threshold of being able to build nuclear bombs, its next attack on Israel, should it get past Israel’s phenomenal anti-missile defenses, might well be topped by a mushroom cloud. That would produce a second Holocaust, wiping out half the Jews on the planet!

Amid all this actual, attempted and potential additional carnage by its avowedly hate-driven, antisemitic neighbors, enormous mobs and, yes, even governments around the world — including the leaders of many Western nations who should know better — have shamelessly, preposterously and cravenly labeled as genocidal Israel’s efforts to annihilate its implacable enemies, despite its taking historically unprecedented steps (even putting its own citizen soldiers at heightened risk) to minimize collateral casualties among the civilians being used as human shields by these terrorist organizations. (Regrettably, some of these civilians have served willingly as human shields, as is evident from the fact that some of the hostages the Israeli army has managed to free from captivity in Gaza had been held and used as slaves in “civilian” homes as well as the fact that Hezbollah hid much of its estimated arsenal of up to 200,000 rockets and their launchers in the homes of south Lebanon residents.)

My blood boils not only when I see all these maniacal efforts to kill Israelis but also when I see so many in the West demanding ceasefires that would doom Israel to continue facing mortal threats on all fronts in perpetuity — making no distinction between the initiators and continuing perpetrators of their desired Second Holocaust and the unavoidable military response of its intended Israeli victims.

Pro-Hamas demonstration in London

I am also enraged by the seemingly widespread indifference to the absurd and sickening labeling as genocidal that so many in the West who think of themselves as virtuous apply to Jews, the people most searingly subjected to an actual genocide. Not to mention the bloodcurdling cheering, which continues to this day, in favor of the Hamas and Hezbollah murderers by ignorant mobs on university campuses and in city centers around the West.

Needless to say, I am sickened as well by the exponential rise in antisemitic assaults and threats against Jews around the U.S. and other Western nations where societal norms have, until recently, been far more civilized.

Hopes and wishes
For my fellow Jews and for the kind, genuinely (as opposed to ostentatiously) virtuous people in the U.S. and around the Western World who are as appalled as I am by what I have described above, I hope that the year now beginning will see the utter defeat of those who would destroy us — no less thorough than the defeats visited upon the Nazis, Pharaoh’s army and our many other enemies through the ages.

My hope for the coming year emphatically includes the wish that Israel employ its “long arm” to destroy the mullahs’ nuclear enterprise (and, in so doing, perhaps even trigger an uprising by Iran’s oppressed people that causes the collapse of their country’s malevolent regime) and that no U.S. president make an effort to thwart Israel in this ultimate effort at self-preservation (which would also save the West from at least some of its own folly).

Finally, I also hope to see the shaming of those who have been indifferent, much less indulgent, toward all these most recent attempts by Evil to destroy Good.

And to all those indicted by the preceding paragraphs, I have but one wish — that they may soon find themselves in the company of the late leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and all the others who have failed to murder or defame us.