October 7 was an American calamity

This week, we commemorated one year since the inhuman Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023. It’s the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust (1,200 murdered; sexually mutilated, burned alive, beheaded, parents executed in front of their children and children executed in front of their parents), a trauma that Israel is still living. 

This week I have done more than a dozen media interviews and responded to countless emails and text messages, asking how we are, one year on, both personally as a family, and nationally as a people. It’s all been physically and emotionally draining. 

Most of the interviews were with American TV and radio programs, each one outstanding on its own for the sincere interest and poignant questions on a wide range of topics relating to the Hamas massacre, jihadi genocidal Islamic extremism, US and international politics, antisemitism, how we are grieving, my sons in the army, and the war that Israel is fighting on several fronts. As an example, within one week several hundred rockets, missiles and drones were launched at Israel from Gaza (still!), Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran. 

Some wanted to know what and when I project the Israeli response to the unprecedented Iranian ballistic missile attack will take place. I answered honestly that I didn’t know, but that if it were up to me, Israel would take out the Iranian nuclear facilities, IRGC and its military capacity, the Supreme Leader, and only then its oil and other critical economic infrastructure to cut off any flow of funds to the remains of the Islamic regime before the Iranian people are able to overthrow it, and take back their country that was hijacked nearly 46 years ago. Doing so is also the key to ultimately undoing the prevalence and threat of Islamic extremism in most of the world. 

I also communicated, where possible, that October 7, 2023, was an American calamity. This is true on a few levels. 

October 7 was Israel’s September 11 on steroids. On 9/11, some 3,000 people died in what we thought then was the most gruesome way. That’s 3,000 out of more than 300 million. It was an unprecedented catastrophe and act of terror in the history of the US. But it started and ended on that day. 

October 7 was a catastrophe of 1,200 people being killed, up close, face to face. Human beings with the same DNA were so indoctrinated with evil that they did not hesitate to commit even worse atrocities against other human beings, for which they trained for months, armed with everything needed to inflict the greatest death and suffering. That’s 1,200 out of a population of fewer than 10 million. That’s many times more proportionally than the US suffered. And it triggered a war that is still going on, with more than 100 hostages still in captivity in Gaza. Few if any Israelis have not been impacted directly. That wasn’t the case in the US after 9/11.

The State Department correctly notes that 46 Americans were “slaughtered” along with citizens of more than 30 other countries. It notes that 12 Americans were taken hostage, and affirms that it was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. But it fails to note that after the June 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting (50 dead), and the October 2017 Las Vegas shooting (61 dead), October 7 is an American catastrophe because, after 9/11, it was the third largest massacre of Americans this century. Adding to the death count of October 7, American hostages who have been murdered bring the October 7 American death toll greater than Orlando. 

October 7 saw more dead Americans than well-known other calamities including the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting (33 dead), 2009 Fort Hood shooting (13 dead), 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School (28 dead), or the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting (22 dead). 

October 7 is also an American calamity because, at least in part, the United States funded it. Between the Obama appeasement of the 2015 Iran Deal (JCPOA) which released billions to the Iranian Islamic regime, and the Biden-Harris undoing sanctions on Iran, providing billions more, there’s no question that these funds fueled the construction of Iranian long-range ballistic and cruise missiles and drones, missiles, rockets, drones and other weapons provided to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis in Yemen, the dividends of which we are seeing now. 

In addition to releasing billions to the Islamic regime, American costs as a result of the multi-front war that’s ensued, are a direct result of its funding and enabling the Iranians and their proxies for more than a decade. 

While Americans have been bearing the cost of arming and training the terrorists, October 7 is an American calamity because US policies seem to be more about the fear of “regional escalation” in an election year, and the inevitable increase in gas prices and soaring shipping and consumer costs more than fear of the global threat from the Islamic extremists starting with the ayatollahs. 

October 7 is an American calamity because we have seen jihadists hijacking American campuses, cities, and civil society with calls for genocide and revolution, not just against Israel but against America as well. If the Iranian regime were really smart, they’d open a discount business selling American flags to be burned and make a killing. Pun intended. 

That all these are happening, tolerated, and even rationalized under First Amendment rights is a terribly sad perversion of American freedom. It’s as if America has built its own Trojan Horse, outfitted with minarets, and wheeled it right into its own gates. 

The growing public expression of antisemitism is also an American calamity because it is being accepted and tolerated at a level that would not be allowed were it hate and violence toward any other religious or ethnic group. It concerns me deeply as a Jew, but also as an American, because rampant antisemitism is also a marker of the beginning of the end of any civilization throughout history. America remains the best hope for the greatest number of people in the world, ever. It’s a shame to think of this just as the beginning of the end of the great American experiment, as the jihadists want. Unchecked, it may be. 

May Americans resolve to uproot this evil in their own gates, and the tolerance and funding of it around the world, for the well-being of America and the rest of the world. May the families of the 46 Americans murdered one year ago find comfort and strength, and that their loved one’s death not be in vain.