This is where the professional meets personal.
I am heartbroken.
Hamas staged scenes of horror in my home country. Innocent people were hunted down in their own homes, brutalized, sexually assaulted, and ruthlessly executed and kidnapped. Theses atrocities were not led by freedom fighters seeking political solutions. They were committed by terrorists blinded by hate.
I haven’t experienced such deep sorrow since 9/11. Last month marked 22 years since that tragic day in which nearly 3,000 people died. The number of lost lives in the Hamas attack on Israel on Saturday is the equivalent of if 20,000 Americans had been killed on September 11, 2001, one of the darkest days in U.S. history.
I recognize that other people in the world are suffering. Mass atrocity crimes were and still are being committed by Russian forces against the people of Ukraine. And it is heartbreaking.
But I am now grieving for my people, the people of Israel.
For the Jewish people, our shared Holocaust generational trauma has resurfaced. Hamas attack on Israel is the most lethal assault against Jews since the Holocaust. We vowed “never again” and to “never forget.” We have a duty in honor of all who perished in the Holocaust to remember the horrors. And now, we must reaffirm this duty and stand firm against terrorism and hate. As we mourn the lives tragically lost, we must pledge to ensure that future generations know the horrors of Hamas so that its crimes are never repeated.
It is our duty to fight ignorance.
I am devastated all over again by the failure to condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. On Monday, the UN Human Rights Council held a moment of silence in memory of lives lost in the “occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere.” This was prompted by the Pakistani ambassador, Zaman Mehdi. Failure to honor Hamas victims is adding insult to injury. Most concerningly, the people who are supposed to guard human rights don’t know left from right, right from wrong, and the difference between terrorism and the right of a country to defend its citizens.
Also concerning is the support for Hamas on social media, for example, the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) celebrating the atrocities as “a historic win for Hamas.”
What is Hamas? Hamas Covenant calls for the “obliteration” of Israel,” See article 13 below: “no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad.”
“[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.” (Article 13)
Have you asked yourself why there are so many videos of the massacre? Hamas fighters go after civilians, women and children. They torture, rape, kill, and film the atrocities. They commit such horrific acts as the end goal, as means to fear and destruction. Israel, on the other hand, kills in self-defense. Israeli soldiers fight trying to minimize the loss of lives. They don’t rape, brutalize or film their victims. They do not celebrate death. Israel’s end goal is peace. Always know and remember this difference.
Also know that Israel is first, then other Western countries – other “infidels” in the “lands of Islam.” Hamas is not freedom fighters. Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people. Hamas is a Jihadi extremist group standing for terrorism, not peace.
Failure to unequivocally condemn the appalling assault against Israel by Hamas terrorists from Gaza should concern all who care about humanistic values. Terror on Israelis also threatens the US and core values of humanity and democracy.
How can we stop the vicious cycle of intergenerational hate?
The only way forward is to identify the real threat to democracy, human rights, justice, and peace; to be clear on who are the friends of democracy and who are the terrorists. And then to stand up together unequivocally against terrorism.
And no, I am not doing okay. Please know that your Israeli and Jewish colleagues are not okay.
I’d like to share Michael Etkind’s, a Holocaust survivor, poem “We Must:”
A thousand deaths
We die each time
We catch
A glimpse and see a fragment
Of the Holocaust.
A thousand deaths
The train arriving at the ramp –
The barking dogs …
The capos and the SS guards.
The mothers with their children
urged to hurry up.
And yet … we must
Relive the past
And feel the pain …
And keep the outrage live …
And never let it fade and vanish from
the psyche of Mankind.
The poem reflects what I and many Jewish people are feeling right now. We relive the past and feel a “thousand deaths” each time unabashed hatred of the Jewish people is expressed, manifested, and spread. Let us stand together, and together let us recommit to stand against evil and resolve to work for a world that is free of terrorism, Jihadist, violent extremism, antisemitism, and hatred.
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