Marty Levine
October 7, 2024
It is October 7, 2024. In Chicago, the sun is out, and the sky is blue. Lake Michigan gleams. It is as fine an early fall day as I could ask for.
One year ago, we woke to news of Hamas’ break out from the prison that is Gaza and of the killing and hostage-taking that followed. Here’s how I tried to capture how I felt just days later
I woke up Saturday morning to the news of Hamas’ bloody invasion of Israel. It left me shaken. The feeling of dread I felt then has stayed with me as each day adds more detail to a picture of wanton violence and killing, with no distinction between soldier and civilian.
This morning, I listened to an Israeli grandfather describing how his daughter and son-in-law had been killed in their home leaving behind a small child who had been shot in the stomach. He described them as workers for peace and reconciliation. The tragedy of this makes me shudder, seeing myself in those shoes.
For too many the horror of this day was so great that it blocked out history; it became the only marker of the troubled relationship between the two peoples who call one land their home. These issues have been ignored and allowed to fester since the beginnings of Zionism more than a century ago.
Having blotted out the ongoing reality of the occupation and the meaning of the Nakba (the Arabic word for catastrophe and used to describe the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes as Israel was formed in 1948), too many of my American Jewish compatriots see and feel only the horror of Israelis being killed on October 7 and the fear that a Jewish homeland was facing an existential threat. Israel’s right to defend itself was not to be questioned and anyone who did this was a Jew-hater.
I also reflected on this one year ago
There are millions of Palestinians living in a sliver of land called Gaza, living in an overcrowded, impoverished cage that is controlled by Israel. There are millions of Palestinians living in the “territories” as non-citizens under Israeli control. Almost all of them are not Hamas or supporters of Hamas. And all of them have been left out of our conversation. They have been ignored and denied a future. They too have been brutalized and dehumanized by Israeli policy and action.
And, very critically, any attempt to protest their status non-violently has been, by many of the same voices today screaming about terrorism, described as behavior that is out bounds and often labeled as antisemitic.
So, 12 months later over 40,000 Gazans have been killed, almost 100,000 others have been left wounded, and much of Gaza has been demolished with most of its remaining residents living as displaced people, all in the name of Israeli self-defense. 12 months later the war has spread into Lebanon with a similar pattern of death and destruction unfolding. All of this is the name of Israeli self-defense.
I am struck by the words being used at this moment as voices of politicians and Jewish communal leaders are raised to commemorate the anniversary (yahrzeit) of this day. Israelis who were killed are to be remembered, but Palestinian lives lost are to be ignored.
President Biden commemorated the day with words that continued to frame all that has occurred in the context of evil Hamas, good Israel that has marked so much of the past year’s defense of brutality. While toward the end of his statement, he noted the horror of this year for Palestinians, he blamed Israel and ignored the history and perpetrator of the violence that has rained down on them.
On this day last year, the sun rose on what was supposed to be a joyous Jewish holiday. By sunset, October 7 had become the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust…
One year later, Vice President Harris and I remain fully committed to the safety of the Jewish people, the security of Israel, and its right to exist. We support Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran…
I believe that history will also remember October 7 as a dark day for the Palestinian people because of the conflict that Hamas unleashed that day. Far too many civilians have suffered far too muchduring this year of conflict – and tens of thousands have been killed, a human toll made far worse by terrorists hiding and operating among innocent people…
Yes, it is said that many Palestinians have been killed but it is not Israel’s fault nor is it the United States’ responsibility even if it is our bombs that are doing so much of the damage.
In an email I received the morning the leaders of the Israel Policy Forum expressed their thoughts as clearly
For Israelis and Jews across the world, October 7 is not a distant tragedy. It was an assault by Hamas terrorists on our people and a violation of our humanity that permeates our days with anguish.
One year later, we remember the nearly 1,200 innocents murdered by Hamas—the most Jews slaughtered in one day since the Holocaust—and stand in solidarity with the survivors of the massacre, sexual violence, and other unthinkable atrocities.
For them, there was not even a passing mention of the number of Palestinian civilians who lie dead or injured or of the horrors of what life has been for them over these months.
For New York Times Columnist Bret Stephens October 7th 2023 represented a shofar blast (the ceremonial ram’s horn used at this time in the Jewish calendar) awakening us to the fragility of Jewish Life in the United States. The voices that have been raised to question and oppose how Israel has chosen to respond to the horror of that day are not political protestors against the actions of a nation, but challenges to the existence of Jews and Judaism. For him, Zionism and Judaism are one and the same. And everything seems justified in the defense of Israel/Judaism.
To be a Jew obliges us to many things, particularly our duty to be our brother’s, and sister’s, keeper. That means never to forsake one another, much less to join in the vilification of our own people. It means to participate in the long struggle for our survival not only against enemies who mean us harm but also against those who excuse those enemies or those whose moral apathy speeds their way. And it means to embrace — often as a thoughtful critic but never as a hateful scold — the great, complicated, essential project of a Jewish state. To imagine we can do without it is to forget how close we came to extinction before it was born.
Oct. 7 shook our illusions and reawakened us to where we stand as a diasporic community. Now we must reckon with who we are and what we must do.
Is to be a Jew to value Jewish life above all lives? I think not. Does a belief that something terrible, something even unspeakable has been done to me justify doing the same to others? I think not. As a Jew, I think I am called to a higher place. I think that the words we read in our bible that all people are created in God’s image is an ongoing reminder of that. I think that the core injunction of our tradition, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, should guide us even in moments of horror and grief.
I received a different kind of commemorative message from the leaders of the Israeli organization Standing Together, an organization created by a brave group of Israeli Palestinian and Jewish citizens. It was a message that saw this moment as one that called us to see October 7th and the decades that led to it as part of a history that both Israeli Jews and Palestinians share. It was a message that demanded we reject this moment as just one defined by Jewish pain:
If the past year has taught us anything – it is that there is nothing more naïve than believing that this cycle of bloodshed and wars is sustainable. There is nothing more naïve than believing that the path we have been on until now is a path we should stay on.
The truth is that on this land live millions of Palestinians and millions of Jews, and nobody is going anywhere. Working toward a sustainable peace that guarantees everyone freedom, safety, equality and independence is imperative for anyone in this land who wants to see a future here. The fates of Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, are tied.
Ignoring these realities guarantees only that the horrors of October 7, 2023, and of every day that has come after, will continue to be repeated. That is a future I hope that all of the wise heads and the powerful people who have used the past year to play the game of ignorance and hubris can join me in preventing. Building a new future will not be easy…but it is worth the struggle. It has the hope of achieving a much different end.
