October 7th Three Years Later
What follows is my sermon marking the third anniversary of the October 7th massacre.
I have been thinking about why this year’s anniversary of October 7th struck me harder than the previous two years. The horror and loss of that day have not changed. The lingering images of people gunned down at the Nova music festival or of those killed hiding in a shelter or the agonizing pictures of emaciated hostages crouching in Gaza’s tunnels were all present on prior anniversaries. And yet this year felt different.
Perhaps it was the fact that this is the first anniversary since all the hostages have returned home or are buried in proper graves. Or perhaps it is because this is the first anniversary since the tentative cease fire took effect—even though Israeli and Palestinian lives continue to be lost. Or perhaps this is the first anniversary since Israel’s northern border is relatively quiet or its battles with Iran have subsided. Or perhaps it is because this year’s October 7th comes a few weeks before Israel’s upcoming fateful election. For all these reasons this third anniversary felt different.
It awakened within me unexpected angst. I choose to lean into this angst and this pain. By doing so we can offer a tentative reckoning with the past. We can look back and take better account of these past three years. And so, this year’s anniversary caused me to reflect about what we have learned. Here is what we have come to understand during these past three years.
First and foremost, Hamas’ violent attack necessitated a forceful response. Israel was required to defend its citizens and protect its borders. That is the sacred pact a state offers to those who live within it. Its first goal was to redeem the hostages. Its second goal was to reestablish a defensible border with Gaza. Let us be clear. Hamas celebrates the murder of Jews. It relishes in violence. We must not allow its desire for genocide to be obscured by the international judgments leveled against Israel.
Let’s also be honest with ourselves. The IDF cannot destroy Hamas. Armies can only achieve limited objectives. They can push the threat further from the border and destroy an imminent danger, but they cannot destroy an ideology. Furthermore, Israel’s stated goal of reestablishing deterrence by the destruction it has unleashed on Gaza seems counterproductive. Its devastation of so much of Gaza has provided fertile ground for Hamas’ future. Religious zealotry finds more ample breeding ground in ruins. The despair and hunger in Gaza may not serve to throw Hamas out, as Israel hopes, but instead strengthen it.
Hamas is of course largely responsible for bringing such destruction on Gaza. The 25,000 fighters the IDF killed—that is the number the world should be talking about rather than conflating it with the innocent civilians as Hamas does—hid under hospitals, mosques, schools and UN buildings. They sheltered in people’s homes. This does not absolve Israel of responsibility. Innocent civilians, especially the 18,000 children could have been better protected and should have been better protected by Israeli forces. Admitting this and acknowledging such errors does not mean Israel harbors genocidal intent. Israel set out to rescue its people taken hostage and defend its citizens. That was its intention.
We live in a perverse world. It is a world whose lines are coming into even sharper relief. It is a world in which every one of Israel’s mistakes is magnified and every one of Hamas’ crimes is forgiven. It is a world in which Israel’s mere existence justifies violence against it. It is a world that seems to think the Jewish people’s audacity to rebuild their lives in their ancient homeland necessitates a violent response. It is world that believes we brought this all on ourselves or that somehow, we deserve this.
October 7th to this thinking is the logical result of what happens when Jews try to live where they don’t belong. We have heard such charges before. We have heard such antisemitic words throughout our wanderings, most notably during the Holocaust. We say that October 7th was the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust. While this is factually correct it is a tragic formulation. During the Holocaust we did not have agency. The Jewish people did not have sovereignty or the means to protect itself.
The State of Israel was meant to fix that. On October 7th Israel failed to live up to its promise. A pogrom was allowed to rage within its borders. The sacred pact between the state and its citizens fell apart. It was the deadliest single day in Israel’s history. That is the better way to say it, according to my teacher Yossi Klein Halevi. To align October 7th with the Holocaust is to portray Israelis like their Jewish ancestors of the 1940’s. Israelis are not supposed to ever be defenseless victims. Zionism and Israel are meant to end Jewish victimhood. To use Holocaust language is to deflect the reckoning that Israel requires.
This is part of what is on the table in the upcoming election. The only way that Israel, and Israelis, can find a measure of tikkun—healing and repair—is through a state commission that investigates the failures that led up to October 7th as well as looking into its failures prosecuting the war that followed. Already tidbits are coming out about who know what and when, but Israel needs a Yom Kippur War like commission to investigate these failures. It needs to air these failures publicly in order to rebuild trust.
The only way to learn and grow and of course prevent this from happening again is to acknowledge these failures. Admitting errors is hard. It is especially hard when we are being attacked. We are reticent to talk about where we went wrong when even the memory of October 7th’s pain is robbed from us. But we can be better. We can’t be better, we can’t grow, we can’t realize our greatest dreams for ourselves and Israel without a full accounting of our failures. Israel’s leaders made horrible mistakes that allowed October 7th to become the tragedy it will forever remain. Israel also made terrible mistakes in its prosecution of the war. And this cost people their lives. We can’t just blame Hamas.
Israel also continues to make horrible mistakes in the West Bank. It allows Jewish thugs to terrorize and kill Palestinians. This is a moral stain on the Jewish people. (Read more about my summer visit to the West Bank.) Former IDF generals have publicly said this poses a security risk to the state. ( Read more at Commanders for Israel’s Security) This settler terrorism further erodes Israel’s relations with other nations, most particularly the United States. There will come a day in the not-too-distant future when Israel will no longer be able to count on the United States’ unequivocal support. We can’t just blame antisemitism for this diminution of support. It is on us as well. Admitting our mistakes holds open the possibility of repairing Israel’s relations with America. This is how relationships are repaired.
Three years of war have decimated far too many lives, both those of Israelis and Palestinians. Hamas’ rebuilding of its army undermines peace. The rampaging of settlers, and the creeping annexation of West Bank territory, undermines a more peaceful future for both peoples. But all this can change. There is hope for a better future. It begins in the only place where change can happen and that is in the place of admitting failures and errors. To be sure Palestinians, and Gazans must also make changes for there to be any accommodation. We can lead the change.
In this week’s Torah portion, we read of Adam and Eve. We are familiar with the story. They ate the fruit from the one tree God forbade them from eating. Rather than admitting their sin, they blame others. Eve blames the serpent. Adam says, “The woman You put at my side—she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” (Genesis 3) Neither took responsibility for their mistakes. Adam prefers to blame God rather than owning his mistake. This is why they were banished from the garden. It was not because they ate the fruit. It was because they avoided the only way forward. It was because they refused to own their mistakes.
These days we have every reason to be nervous and afraid about antisemitism and the growing antipathy towards Israel. We have every reason to be angry at Hamas for the violence they unleashed on our people and brought upon their own people. We have every reason to be distraught by Hezbollah’s desire to destroy Israel. We have every reason to be agitated by the venom and threats directed at us from Iran’s leaders.
But three years later, we need to be stronger than blaming our adversaries for all our miseries. We need to look back at what went wrong. We need to look within at where we erred and what we continue to do wrong. We need to acknowledge our mistakes out loud and in public. We must not cower from this difficult task. It is the only thing that can carry us forward.
Admitting failure does not make us weaker. It makes us stronger.
In his eulogy for his son Hersh, Jonathan Polin said,
Hersh, we failed you. We all failed you. You would not have failed you. You would have pushed harder for justice. You would have at once understand the other to bridge differences. You would have challenged more people to challenge their own thinking. And what you’d be pushing for now is to ensure that your death, the deaths of all the soldiers, and the deaths of so many innocent civilians, are not in vain.
Admitting failure does not make us weaker. It makes us stronger.
Read the sermon I delivered on the Shabbat immediately following October 7th .