7 October – What it means for Israel

Barry Shaw | The View from Israel |  October 8, 2024

Last year, on the night of 6^th October 2023 people paused their routines lives to sleep before heading into an annual period of intense Jewish reflection or secular laziness.

The secular young headed south to a midnight rave called the Nova Dance Festival.

And then a Palestinian hell descended upon Israel in its overwhelmingly torturing, raping, murderous, captive-taking, form.

In Israel, after a year of deep division, the dividing walls collapsed in shock, horror, disbelief and tears.

Floods of tears.

Israel awoke in deep shock. The news was sparse. Something to do with massacres in the south, and a total absence of our army, or air force.

For a year or more we had watched raucous crowds in Tel Aviv be incited by left-wing Ashkenazi elite anarchists to do everything to bring down the democratically elected Prime Minister because under him, death and destruction will descend on Israel.

In the crazed words of a former and deranged prime minister, “Ehud, they will call you when bodies float in the Yarkon River. I wish to stress not the bodies of illegally residing Palestinians from the territories will be floating, and not Israeli Arabs. The floating bodies will be of Jews that were killed by Jews.”

This was Ehud Barak, acquaintance of the notorious Jeffrey Epstein, speaking with a complicit CBS in an interview given less than three weeks before 1,200 Jewish bodies lay in pools of blood. Not killed by Jews, but killed by fanatical Palestinian savages not apprehended as they crossed the Gaza border by the arrogant military and intelligence decision makers who were sleeping as female IDF observers were reporting, in panic mode, the arrival of hundreds of heavily armed terrorists at their isolated and undefended southern army bases.

The elite, that had been telling reservists not to enlist, turned over and went back to sleep.

It was, after all, a holiday weekend.

But a strange thing happened.

From within the rising panic, word was spread that hundreds of young men had, individually, taken the initiative of putting on their uniform, grabbing any weapon they had at hand, and drove south messaging to friends and commanders as they drove.

Many of these young men died, heavily outnumbered in close combat with armed Palestinian terrorists, trying to save the lives of unprotected and unarmed civilians in small towns and kibbutzim along the southern border.

Others fought for hours with limited munition until the IDF sent in units and tanks to support them.

Every day, since 7 October 2023, Israel’s young men and woman have proven themselves to be an exceptional generation.

They love life with a passion, but they have placed themselves directly in the line of fire every day since 7/10.

Many have died in battle. Many have been egregiously wounded in ways that will challenge them for the rest of their lives physically and emotionally.

But these young folk saved Israel, and they enthusiastically continue to service until victory.

They are the ones calling to fight to ensure that 7/10 will never strike Israel again.

Not only did they save Israel they are, as you read this, courageously turning the tide of battle in Israel’s favor, in Gaza and in Lebanon.

This is the generation who, on 7^th October 2023, learnt that “Never Again!” and “Masada Will Not Fall Again” are not empty slogans from a distant past, but an essential element of what makes a proud Israeli today, tomorrow, into the next battle, and beyond.

These young people will be our leaders in the years ahead.