Throughout Israel, October 7 is a day we will forever dread.
Today, we will grieve. We will manage our shock, one year on, at the massacre that was and the horrific year that ensued.
We will commemorate the fallen, the murdered, and desperately hope for a miracle to return the hostages remaining in Hamas hell, alive and dead.
There have been uplifting moments that a friend of mine who is a military expert refers to as “imagination-bending achievements.”
Like the impossibly daring hostage rescue operations.
And then, on Sept. 17, thousands of pagers, often clipped to a belt or tucked in a pant pocket, simultaneously beeped. The Hezbollah operatives carrying the devices pressed a button to read a message. And the pagers exploded. Eyes, hands, fingers, chunks of torsos and other body parts were destroyed.
The following day, walkie-talkies replaced pagers. They, too, exploded. Virtually every day since, top Hezbollah and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders have been assassinated in targeted attacks, culminating with the pinpoint strike on Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Sept. 27.
Nasrallah was surrounded by top aides in an underground bunker. The hideout was in a civilian apartment building in the Hezbollah-controlled Dahieh area of south Beirut. These senior Hezbollah officials had gathered to watch Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu address the United Nations General Assembly, an opportunity that was seized by the Israeli air force. It was a calculated, high-risk attack.
In that moment — when Nasrallah was assassinated — the balance of power in the volatile Middle East flipped absolutely. Mighty Hezbollah — Iran’s proxy army that effectively controls Lebanon — was wounded, lethally. Hezbollah also served as the penultimate military deterrent for Israel in the region.
As the regional conflict widens and escalates, Israelis feel a resurgence of hope. Iran’s direct attack last Tuesday, pummelling Israel with close to 200 ballistic missiles, targeting civilian and military targets, marked a decisive turning point.
The Middle East may be transformed — for the better — in the coming months. Whereas Israel shoulders the burden for the West, the United States has committed firm support for any Israeli retaliation. Even Qatar — the main financial support for and gracious host to Hamas leadership — has been quiet. Saudia Arabia, the U.A.E. and all middle eastern countries (with the exceptions of Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Iraq) — are grateful for Israel’s fortitude and intervention.
During the past few weeks, Israel has obliterated more than half of Hezbollah’s massive arsenal of missiles and rocket, destroyed secure communication networks and eliminated much of the organization’s senior leadership.
Iran — the ultimate military threat to Israel — is now exposed. With its proxies defanged, the Islamic Republic — the directing mind of this Islamist axis — must do its own dirty work. It will also incur the consequences.
There has long been a camp of military analysts that has argued that Iran is a paper tiger. Perhaps. But if October 7 taught Israel one thing it is that it cannot afford to be presumptuous and arrogant, as it was in the years leading to that darkest of days, one year ago. That will haunt Israel forever and should never have happened.
But it did.
In recent months however, we have seen the “imagination bending” results of years of painstaking intelligence work. Gathering raw information. Cultivating assets. Penetrating secretive, violent organizations at the highest levels. Watching. Waiting. Analyzing more. And knowing to react when the moment presents, as it did last week. Because there is rarely a second chance.
I have thought often in the past year of the pogrom that ravaged the Jewish community in Kishinev (Chisinau today), Moldova, in April 1903. For three days and nights over the Easter holiday, local police and thugs went on a murderous tear through the poor, Jewish neighbourhood in Kishinev. An epic poem written the following year by Chaim Nahman Bialik, immortalized this pogrom in the quite spectacular annals of such attacks on Jews throughout history.
Bialik’s literary work was hugely influential in shaping the Zionist ethos and state. He did nothing to conceal his contempt for the helplessness of what he saw as the weak Jewish men who hid while their wives and daughters were raped.
Titled “In the City of Slaughter” Bialik’s poem is anthemic in Israel and taught to every schoolchild. And it certainly resonates today. In a particularly searing passage evoking the proud, warrior past of these powerless, cowering Jews, Bialik writes:
Come, now, and I will bring thee to their lairs
The privies, jakes and pigpens where the heirs
Of Hasmoneans lay, with trembling knees,
Concealed and cowering, the sons of the Maccabees!
Exactly one year ago, the mighty Israeli military was humiliated by marauding Hamas terrorists and civilian thugs who invaded from the Gaza Strip. They raped, looted, burned families alive, tortured, murdered, without mercy. Worse. With unbridled glee.
The army and air force were nowhere. The prime minister did not appear before the nation on television until more than 12 hours after the attack had begun. And then only briefly and taking no questions. Hamas had penetrated deep into Israel and no one of authority, it seemed, knew what was going on.
In that moment, Israelis and Jews the world over were back in Kishinev, 1903. The nation’s trust was shattered on that day of abject failure on the part of the security and intelligence institutions that were supposed to protect the people of Israel.
What, I wonder, would Chaim Nahman Bialik say to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today?
Nothing will erase or mitigate the abandonment of the people on October 7, 2023. And, some would say, in the year since. Hostages languish in captivity. Close to 200,000 Israelis cannot return to their homes due to ongoing conflict and destruction. Many have left the country in despair.
Even victory, which is difficult to conceive, will not be sweet. There has been so much civilian suffering and loss among Israelis, Palestinians and now, the Lebanese. Hostages have been starved, tortured, murdered. And still are.
It is possible that this apocryphal scenario could result in dramatic geopolitical change in the Middle East. It could also lead to a dreaded Armageddon.
Reality, in these parts, can flip like a switch.
Today, we mourn. Remember. And hope. For that desperately needed miracle.
National Post
Vivian Bercovici is a former Canadian ambassador to Israel and the founder of the State of Tel Aviv.