We dare not forget 7 October

It’s hard to believe that three years have passed since 7 October 2023. In some ways, it feels like yesterday. In others, it feels like something from a terrible dream, the edges of which are beginning to blur. Yet on that morning, the Jewish world changed irrevocably as Hamas terrorists swept into southern Israel, their sole reasons were to kill as many Jews as possible. They were determined to maim, rape, and brutalise as many Jews as possible, and take hostages – dead or alive. They went all out to ensure they left as much devastation and horror in their wake. And they did it all with glee, filming much of it and putting it out around the world on social media. 

This week, the SA Jewish Report once again carries stories and opinion pieces about that day and everything that has happened since: the toll on Israel, the damage to Jewish communities around the world, and the horrifying rise in antisemitism. 

We don’t return to 7 October because we are unable to move forward. We return to it because, even as we live with its consequences, others are trying to rewrite it. 

There are those who minimise what happened, those who justify it, and those who deny it altogether. Some even claim that Jews did it to themselves to win sympathy, or for whatever sinister purpose they choose to imagine. 

It’s difficult to comprehend such thinking, but it follows a familiar antisemitic pattern. Jewish victims are recast as villains. Jewish pain is treated as propaganda. Jewish testimony is presumed to be a lie. 

Over the past three years, this hostility has also imposed a cruel test on people in public life. Jewish authors, artists, musicians, and business leaders have too often been pushed to declare which “side” they are on. Those who openly support Israel, defend Jews, or refuse to disown their own community can find themselves boycotted, or even “cancelled”. 

It isn’t much of a choice when one answer may cost you your audience or your livelihood. All the more reason, then, for us not to shrink or apologise, but to be loud and proud about being Jewish. 

We saw something of the same poisonous instinct after the apparent attempt to bring down flydubai Flight FZ1073 on its way to Tel Aviv last week. Imagine the terror in that cabin: the captain attacked, the aircraft suddenly plunging thousands of feet, and more than 170 people wondering whether they were about to die. 

Yet despite the terror they were feeling, Israeli passengers intervened. Two off-duty flydubai pilots onboard – one of whom is believed to be South African – helped take control of the aircraft, and eventually landed safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. All 174 people on board survived. 

There were extraordinary acts of courage and it was nothing short of a miracle. 

But even this story of lives saved in terrifying circumstances has been dragged through the mud. Instead of seeing human beings who faced an extraordinary emergency and acted, some people have searched for a conspiracy, a publicity stunt, even an event Jews supposedly engineered for applause. 

Why is Jewish heroism so difficult for some people to accept? 

We seem to be permitted to be victims, but not rescuers. We can mourn, but when Jews survive and fight back against terror, suspicion follows. 

That is worth thinking about. 

The people on that plane weren’t performing for anyone. They were ordinary people caught in an unimaginable situation, who acted when they had to. Their bravery deserves our awe, not an asterisk. 

We know what happened. We should be able to tell the story without apologising for the fact that Jews and Israelis were among those who helped save lives. 

The truth is that 7 October was the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. 

That comparison isn’t made lightly. The Holocaust was the purposeful murder of six million Jews, and yet there are still people who deny, distort, or diminish it. We know only too well that even the most documented horror can be questioned once hatred is allowed to drown out truth. 

This is why we dare not allow this anniversary to pass as just another date. We have to remember what was done to our people and the extent of the damage. We must remember those murdered, wounded, and abducted. We need to hold those bereaved families; the shattered kibbutzim; the displaced communities close to our hearts. We dare not forget the countless lives divided forever into before 7 October and after it. 

Saying this doesn’t mean that we cannot or should not mourn innocent Palestinians who’ve died in Gaza. We must. Their lives matter, and their suffering is real. 

But that mourning cannot come at the expense of Jewish mourning, or be used instead of it. Compassion for Palestinians shouldn’t require the erasure of what happened to Jews on 7 October. 

One people’s pain doesn’t invalidate another’s. 

Still, memory does strange things. As time passes, even the unimaginable begins to feel less immediate. Think about COVID-19. At the height of the pandemic, fear followed us everywhere. We counted infections, worried about those we loved, and grieved the many lives lost. Today, much of that fear feels distant. 

Our minds soften the sharpest edges because, perhaps, that’s how we survive. 

That softening makes the deliberate telling of truth even more important. As American-Israeli journalist Natasha Raquel wrote this week, “Telling the truth keeps you whole. It protects the record from being rewritten. Truth outlasts denial.” 

But survival cannot mean forgetting and truth will outlast denial. 

We have to remind ourselves what happened, describe it honestly, preserve the testimony, and teach it to those who come after us. We cannot assume that the truth will look after itself. If we don’t hold onto our history, others will reshape it for us. 

So, on the third anniversary, we remember. 

And on the three-hundredth anniversary, our descendants must remember too. 

These were the lives of our people. This is our pain, our history, and our responsibility. 

Others may deny what happened. We will not. 

We will hold our heads high, speak the truth, honour those whose lives were stolen or changed forever, and refuse to forget. 

Shabbat Shalom! 

Peta Krost 

Editor