How October 7 Became the Biggest Jewish Story of Our Time

If it’s possible for the Jewish world to have a collective nervous breakdown, then the calamity of October 7 triggered it.

A constellation of emotions seems to be colliding within us, from one minute to the next: Anger, sadness, revulsion, bewilderment, outrage, fear, confusion, shock, resolve, disgust, determination, depression, solidarity—we’re feeling it all. The sheer breadth of emotions is itself overwhelming.

And they’re all justified, starting, certainly, with disgust. Given the savagery of the attacks, the murder of babies in front of parents, the rapes, the eagerness to disseminate videos of the slaughter, the ghoulish nature of the massacres themselves, how could disgust not be the primal emotion that comes out of October 7?

But there’s also shock. Shock is at the core of the trauma of October 7.

Shock at how the most powerful army in the Middle East, an army known for its brilliant intelligence, obsessed with providing security for its people, could break down on such a grand scale.

Shock at the timing of the massacres, on a holy Shabbat at the end of the Sukkot festival, when Jews are supposed to dance in jubilation.

Shock at the scenes of the massacres—living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, a desert rave where 260 happy revelers were murdered in cold blood.

Shock at the 130 Israeli hostages now held in Gaza by the same barbarians who rampaged on October 7.

Shock at the reaction of certain activist groups who insist that the 1200 Israelis murdered had it coming, including the babies. This includes Jewish activists like the co-founder of IfNotNow, who posted this message on her people’s darkest day since the Holocaust:

“Israel makes every day under apartheid a living hell for Palestinians. Human beings can’t live like this…. Blood is on the hands of Israel’s fascist government, army, and everyone who has aided their crimes against Palestinians.”

Shock at groups like the NYU Student Bar Association, who looked at the massacre of Jews by Palestinian terrorists and expressed “unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians,” adding that “Israel bears full responsibility” for the massacres.

Shock at the more than 30 Harvard University student organizations who released a statement holding Israel “entirely responsible” for the mass slaughter of Jews by Hamas terrorists.

Shock at how Black Lives Matter Grassroots, a collection of racial-justice activists, released a statement “in solidarity with the Palestinian people” a few days after the massacre. “When a people have been subject to decades of apartheid and unimaginable violence, their resistance must not be condemned, but understood as a desperate act of self-defense,” the group said. In other words, all those slaughtered babies had it coming.

Shock at how the legacy media continues to use the term “militants” for terrorists who specialize in murdering innocent civilians.

Shock at what the war against Hamas might lead to, including attacks from other terror groups like Hezbollah.

I’ve been hearing from stunned Jews on the left who often side with the Palestinians. They’re in shock, too. The atrocities of October 7 that have been gradually revealed day after day are simply too much.  The very word “Palestinian” always had a certain victim cachet among the elite left. Let’s see how long it takes for the shock of the massacres to wear off and the sheen of that cachet to return.

For the great majority of Jews, it is surely this intense mix of disgust and shock that has made October 7 the biggest Jewish story of our time. We were shocked by the attacks that led to the Yom Kippur War in 1973. We’ve been disgusted before by horrific terrorist attacks. But we’ve never seen a savage volcano of violence like the one we saw on October 7.

One sign of the enormity of the story is the deluge of emails I’ve been receiving daily, with virtually every Jewish organization in the world releasing statements of solidarity, and many arranging missions to send assistance to Israel.

One sign of the enormity of the story is the deluge of emails I’ve been receiving daily, with virtually every Jewish organization in the world releasing statements of solidarity, and many arranging missions to send assistance to Israel.

It’s obscene to look for silver linings while 1200 Jewish bodies are being buried in the holy land. But I was forced to do that yesterday when I spoke to my mother in Montreal and saw how despondent she was over the massacres. As I was walking to a pro-Israel rally at the United Nations, she could hear the noise of hundreds of Jews gathering to show their solidarity with Israel.

When we lost six million Jews eighty years ago, I told her, we couldn’t defend ourselves. We couldn’t fight back.

Now we can. You can hear all the Jews making noise, I told her.

Perhaps that noise makes the story even bigger.