When Wrong Was Silenced

Deafening. The world’s silence.

Anywhere we turned on the aftermath of Oct. 7, there was an eerie, disconcerting quiet as if a great shroud of silence had enfolded the earth.

Voices worldwide simply went mute succumbing it seemed to the newest strain of aphonia maxima or in plain English, the   sudden loss of one’s vocal chords seriously impairing one’s ability to speak. It seemed the cold blooded massacre of over 1,200 Israelis and horrific en masse rape of Jewish women and girls was not enough of a cause célèbre for leaders or human rights advocates around the world to find the courage to speak in a show of solidarity, of outrage.

On a deeper and perhaps more subconscious Freudian level, we witnessed a disturbing sort of unspoken approbation in some parts of the world toward arrogant, superior little Israel finally getting what they deserved. And on the Arab streets a sickening, outright jubilatory mood celebrating the horrors of Oct. 7. Candies and sweets were passed around … while battered and bloodied young Israeli women were dragged by the hair, thrown into terrorist vehicles and taken hostage to underground dungeons, places so dark and terrible our own imagination dreads to conjure.

Post-Oct. 7 the world suddenly adopted a warped Escher like perception of the facts where, like in his famous drawings – reality and fantasy fused and mingled in a way few if any could tell one from the other. 

Right and wrong were wilfuly reversed and completely distorted to reflect the heinous antisemitic agenda of the morally unencumbered. The vociferous and ignorance challenged thousands of Jew hating activists occupied entire streets and erected ” solidarity encampments ” on College campuses here in the U.S. and across Europe. In gestures of utter scorn and disregard photos displaying faces of the hostages were ripped and thrown away by passers by — their very humanity disposed of, discarded on the pavements on our lives.

In this grotesque new theater of the absurd, victim and executioners roles were blurred and then methodically, unscrupulously reversed — one becoming the other overnight. Hamas executioners were praised and glorified while Israel and the IDF were vilified for having the audacity yet again to fight back and wage an existential war against a ruthless, Godless enemy.

Jews had now entered an altered reality where nothing that was would ever be again. Devastated and dumbfounded we found ourselves moving in a strange new realm unknown to us, engulfed in a maelstrom of emotions rushing through us raw, unchecked. Disbelief, incomprehension, pain, anger, sadness, grief — washing over us again and again. And above all that ever present gnawing feeling in our gut, that primal and righteous rage at God for allowing yet again such pure evil to happen to Jews, this time in their very own land of Israel.

The world soon learned these crimes were videotaped “ live” as they happened by the rapists themselves so as to later gloat about their maniacal deeds, the sickening video reels — unbearable as they are to view — speak for themselves. And so the tragic fact remains, it’s memory now carved with tears in our hearts and souls – there WAS an Oct. 7. A day when light gave in to darkness, when horrors could no longer be named, when words pathetic and small seemed void of meaning. Everything after that a blur, emotional, psychological, visceral.

In the face of the most sadistic acts perpetrated on Israelis at the hands of Hamas terrorists, human rights organizations  and women rights movements around the world fell silent. Instead of shock, empathy and blistering outrage we witnessed a sickening display of indifference which in the face of such evil, was quite sobering. A painful new reality was dawning on our collective Jewish psyche which echoed and reverberated for Jews around the world. This was the burning salt rub on a freshly gaping wound, translating into a cynical somewhat complicit global shrug as if to say: This is what Wars are, and sometimes they involve rape, and then again these were just Jews …

Instead of shock, empathy and blistering outrage we witnessed a sickening display of indifference which in the face of such evil, was quite sobering.

This was not just a war. Not in any sense of the word literal or otherwise. This was a long time planned, well thought out, premeditated SLAUGHTER. A gleeful, demented, frenzied orgy of violence and death unleashed on unsuspecting, defenseless, unarmed men, women, elderly, children and babies.

This was not just rape. What took place at the rave party and in the kibbutzim was not “just” rape but something far more depraved, sadistic. Unimaginable suffering and pain perpetrated on defenseless women of all ages, beloved daughters, mothers, grandmothers whose bodies were violated, mutilated and even desecrated after being used for the most vile of acts.

These were not just Jews. They were human beings each with their own dreams, their own vision of a better world.  Peace loving families who wanted nothing more than to live in peace with their Palestinian neighbors just a few miles away, making the conscious choice to live in these border Kibbutzim to fulfill that very purpose. And yet, they were slaughtered, sacrificed on the bloody altar of hatred. In their homes, in their beds, at the kitchen table, in their cars, while dancing at dawn on golden desert sands …

To have remained silent in the face of such monstrous horrors was an abdication of one’s moral duty as human beings. A defamation of the memory of those whose lives were savagely snuffed out and are no longer able to scream an earth shattering ” J’accuse ! ” at their executioners.

A few European leaders eventually voiced solidarity with Israel, traveling to Israel to visit the Kibbutzim, witness for themselves what happened on a bright, beautiful Shabbat morning when death, sudden and violent came calling. For Jews around the world and those like myself with an emotional umbilical cord to Israel having lived there my teen age years, it seemed too little, too late.

A mere pittance in the giant, unforgiving and lasting shadow of such nameless horror. 

Such immeasurable wrong

Annette H. Sabbah is a Los-Angeles based multi-media artist, designer and writer.