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The Bitter Reality: Nearly Two Years On From 7 October

by Ram ben Ze’ev


The Bitter Reality: Nearly Two Years On From 7 October
The Bitter Reality: Nearly Two Years On From 7 October

Nearly two years on from the atrocities of 7 October 2023, Israel is being forced to confront a grim and painful truth. Our countrymen and women who were seized that day were not hostages in the sense of being bargaining pawns alive and awaiting release. Many were murdered outright, their bodies taken into Gaza to be exploited for propaganda and political extortion. The case of Ilan Weiss—murdered defending Kibbutz Be’eri and dragged into Gaza as a bargaining chip—underscores this reality in the starkest possible terms.


We must finally understand that while the names of our enemies shift—Hamas today, the Muslim Brotherhood yesterday, some other banner tomorrow—the essence remains unchanged. They are Arab terrorists, and their goal has never varied: the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews. To dress them up in organisational titles or to pretend that a new “group” emerges each time only serves to blur responsibility. These are the same enemies our people have faced for generations, clothed in new acronyms but fuelled by the same ancient hatred.



It is time for Israel to gather its strength not only to mourn, but to act. We must accept the possibility—indeed, the likelihood—that many of our loved ones will not return alive. To pretend otherwise weakens our resolve and prolongs our paralysis. At the same time, we must demand from our leaders and from ourselves the determination to ensure that 7 October 2023 is never allowed to happen again.


This means eliminating the threat in its entirety. Not managing it. Not containing it. Eliminating it. Whether in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, or among those who hide within Judea and Samaria, Israel, or elsewhere within Israel, every last terrorist must be uprooted. Anything less is to invite the next massacre.


Some will recoil at such words, insisting that we must exercise restraint, that “the world” will not permit us to act decisively. But the world did not save us on 7 October. The world did not prevent the Shoah. The world has never protected the Jewish people from annihilation, nor will it. We survive because we take responsibility for our own defence, because we recognise that evil does not disappear through education, slogans, or treaties. Evil is destroyed only when it is confronted and eliminated.



For thousands of years, we have suffered the same atrocities in different forms. Pogroms, inquisitions, expulsions, ghettos, gas chambers, and now massacres on our own soil. The lesson of our history is clear: unless and until we eliminate the very last terrorist, we will continue to face the same danger.


The murder of Ilan Weiss, like that of so many others, is a reminder not only of what we have lost but of what is demanded of us. His memory, together with the memory of all who fell on that terrible day, and the countless innocents murdered before, cries out for action. We owe them not platitudes, not hesitation, but the iron determination that their sacrifice will mark the beginning of the end of our enemies.


This is the bitter reality nearly two years on from 7 October. We dishonour our dead if we fail to act upon it.



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