Certain events get stuck in people’s brains. They are so significant that people remember what took place, where they were, and the first thought they had when they first learned the news.

Significant events in that category are the Kennedy Assassination, the Moon Landing, and the September 11th attacks, to name a few. A year ago, on October 7th, 2023, another event was added to that category of significant events, a horrendous terrorist attack against Israel. The attack was so heinous it will be forever ingrained in the minds of anyone old enough to understand. Like September 11th, this terrorist depravity will be forever known by its date and month, October 7th.

On October 7th, Hamas terrorists exploded through the Gaza border with Israel, breaking an existing cease-fire. The terrorists murdered around 1,200 people, and over 250 people were kidnapped. However, the raw numbers don’t tell the story of what happened.

The terrorists’ murders included unspeakable horrors carried out against people of all ages, even babies. Some mothers were murdered in front of children old enough to understand. After mom, the kids were shot in their heads, babies were brutally attacked and burned to death in front of their mothers before the mothers were raped and murdered, men were found dead with limbs cut off, and entire families were found with bullet holes in their heads their murdered bodies laying next to each other. These were just some examples of heart-wrenching slaughter so disgusting it is hard to believe it was conducted by human beings.

On this first anniversary of October 7th, most articles will discuss all the hows and whys the attack happened, what the Israeli gov. did right and wrong, the rebuilding of Kibbutzim communities, the IDF’s reputation and that of the government, interviews with the bereaved and the families of those who are still being held by the terrorists. Those articles are necessary, but as they will be covered by many different outlets, even those totally engaged in learning about what happened on October 7th will become disinterested in the content.

This tome takes a different approach. The below features some Herut members explaining where they were and/or the first thoughts crossing their minds and ingrained in their souls when they first heard the news about the October 7th massacre.

You will not only find the below interesting, and in some cases, reassuring because their reaction may be similar to yours.

 

Joshua Goldstein

Information was fuzzy during the holiday. I was in Shul, and I heard information about an attack. Amidst the singing of Simchat Torah, I had that nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was majorly wrong. I felt detached from the holiday and started to disassociate.

On the evening of October 8th, after the Chag, I listened intently to the news but felt it was only bits and pieces with no concrete details. Even with the initial reports, it took several days to understand the enormity of the attack, and the videos really drove it home. Feelings of numbness, emptiness, and anger filled me in the coming months.

 

Brian Pikelny

October 7th will live with me forever and has been compared to the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. My first reaction was to contact my family in Israel to see if they were okay. Most of them live on a Kibbutz in the center of the country near Rehovot. But one cousin who just had a baby lives in Kibbutz Dorot, near Sderot. I was frantic to contact her, and when I heard her Kibbutz wasn’t attacked and she and her family were okay, I felt a huge sense of relief.

After the massacre and close to 12 months later, I can only reflect on how this could have happened? After the war is over, as in the Yom Kippur War, there will be an investigation, and hopefully, changes will be made to prevent anything like this from ever happening again. But my first thought is giving land concessions to an enemy that wants to destroy you should never occur again. As Jews, we pray three times a day, yearning for Peace. Peace must come on our terms with guaranteed security for all the people of Israel.

Am Yisrael Chai

 

Sarah Martynov

On October 7th, I woke up in my new apartment in Herzliya around 10 AM. Groggily, I noticed my phone was on the floor, away from my bed, which was odd. When I picked it up, I was hit with a barrage of notifications about rocket sirens, including some in my area. Confusion and anxiety immediately set in as I scrolled through the English headlines on i24, trying to make sense of what was happening. Messages from friends in the U.S. poured in, checking on my safety, and it became clear that something terrible was unfolding. I woke up my roommate, who, like me, had slept through the rockets. Initially, she laughed off my concern about finding the bomb shelter, assuming I was overreacting as a worried American. But once she checked her phone, the gravity of the situation hit her, too. We spent the day in stunned silence, glued to the news, while every siren afterward sent me running to the stairwell, shaking in fear of this terrifying new reality.

As we sat on the balcony, watching the news, every passing car made me panic, fearing it could be Hamas advancing further north. Reports from Telegram channels heightened our anxiety as we heard they might be moving closer. That evening, we both left to stay with others, seeking comfort and safety, but my mind was in turmoil, struggling to process the unfolding horror. Panic, shock, and disbelief consumed me, and it took days before the magnitude of the tragedy fully sank in, allowing me to finally break down and cry. I couldn’t believe something of this scale was happening. Even after Hamas was pushed out of our territory, my thoughts were constantly with the southern residents as more videos and stories of devastation emerged.

 

Sandra Kessler

It was an idyllic first week of October. We were in the Catskills, a little house in the woods, for a much-needed escape from the city. Saturday, October 7th, was to be our final full day of rest and relaxation. I woke up ahead of my husband, made the coffee, settled in at the dining table, and opened my iPad. The news from Israel hit me in the face like nothing I have ever experienced, not even on 9/11. Not one to stay paralyzed in a moment of utter shock, I went right to the Herut What’s App convo. What’s going on??? Shabbat was pretty much over in Israel, so my dear Herut Family was posting whatever information they already had. One of the very first messages I saw was from Yonatan Herzfeld, our very own Lone Soldier Paratrooper Hero, letting everyone know that though he had been in the States and South America enjoying traveling with his family and on his own, he was flying to Miami to catch a flight for reservists to head back to Israel. My heart swelled with both fear and pride.

The rest of the day passed in a bit of a fog. I just kept watching the news from Israel and posts from Herut. We left early Sunday to drive back to the city. I spent the trip doing the same. Then I saw the horrifying examples of Israel haters in NYC and all over the major cities of the world, holding celebratory mob actions to congratulate Hamas. I was not totally surprised. Certainly not shocked. I was already very aware of who our haters are, and sadly, I know too many of them personally. I had already become someone who did not hide my beliefs lest someone not like me. The following weeks and months only made me stronger and more defiant in defending my people.

 

Miriam Fischer

I remember when I first heard the news on October 7th. Because we are observant, we were still celebrating the holiday of Simchat Torah, until the evening of the 8th. After the Yom Tov ended, my husband received a phone call from a friend of his, who is a Reform Rabbi. She had told him there was an attack in Israel, and it was pretty bad. But at that time, I did not know the scale or the severity of the matter.

I turned on the television, tuning it to i24, an Israeli news station. Watching i24 is when I started getting a better idea about what happened. It took a while for me to get the depth and the depravity of what happened. Also, I’m the kind of person that takes some time for me to mentally and emotionally digest a situation.

Once I fully comprehended everything that had happened initially, I felt a combination of anger and sadness. I was angry at the depravity. I was angry at the loss of life. I was angry because there were people who were just out to dance, and they lost their lives or were tortured, and some are still in captivity to this day.

I’m still at a loss for words for what happened and because it’s harder for me to completely grasp October 7th since I don’t live in Israel. However, I still feel the sadness of missing our people. I feel anger about how we could let this happen. Part of me has this damn everything, let’s destroy them all attitude, but then we would be no better than the terrorists.

So now I do my best to tell people what’s going on, what’s happening, how we feel as the Jewish people, and how we’re dealing with the incredible upsurge and antisemitism that has occurred since October 7th.

 

Jeff Dunetz

Suffering from a debilitating disorder that has since been diagnosed and treated, Baruch HaShem, I was sleeping long into the afternoon on October 7th when my wife woke me up crying, “It’s horrible, it’s horrible.” She explained to me that there was a terrible terrorist attack in Israel. Kids at an outdoor concert were slaughtered, terrorists rampaged through the parts of Israel bordering Gaza, and in some places was still going on.

Well into the night, and for the next few days, I kept flipping through cable news channels and browsing through internet news sites. Some sites were based in Israel, and others were based in the United States. Both types of media were being scanned to get a complete picture and the breaking news of this heinous attack. That’s when I first noticed the secular outlets call the terrorists “militants.” I wondered, at the time, if they called other terrorists, the ones that were killing people other than Jews militants.

I don’t remember when I first heard the confirmed report of terrorists setting some babies and young children on fire, causing them to die a horrible, painful death. Others were “mercifully” shot in the head before they were set on fire. That’s when I broke down; that’s when I started to cry. “Babies, Babies,” aren’t any of these terrorist animals, fathers? Not that any of the any of the other murders are justified, but we’re talking little babies.

Some of the news media have imbeciles doubling as reporters who somehow found a moral equivalence between what terrorists who refuse to negotiate claim were their reasons for terrorist attacks and a massacre where subhuman animals slaughtered people in monstrous ways.

Years from now, when I look back on Oct.7th, my first thought will be those little babies set on fire by soulless creatures.

 

October 7th was one year ago, but it still hurts like it was yesterday.

 

 

This morning, a Herut North America newsletter with the above article was sent to our members and other unapologetic Zionists. Jeff Dunetz (The Lid) is the director of special projects for Herut North America and on the Herut North America leadership board. Herut North America is an international movement for Zionist pride and education dedicated to the ideals of pre-World War II Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky. More about Herut can be found on our website, www.HerutNA.org. When on the site, click on this link to join me in Herut North America, the Unapologetic Zionists.