Two years ago today, the State of Israel endured the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. On the morning of October 7, 2023, Hamas militants stormed out of Gaza, slaughtering more than 1,200 people in southern Israel. They gunned down families in their homes, burned safe rooms, massacred young people at a music festival, and dragged 251 hostages into captivity. Women were raped, children were executed, and elderly grandparents were kidnapped at gunpoint.
Some of those hostages were Americans. Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old dual Israeli-American citizen, was kidnapped from the Nova music festival and later murdered in captivity. Edan Alexander, another Israeli-American, was held for nearly 600 days before his release in 2025. The bodies of other American citizens were recovered after months in Hamas tunnels. Their families — Jewish Americans — remind us this was not only Israel’s tragedy. It was ours too.
This is why we cannot let the world forget. And it is why America owes Israel not just words of sympathy, but firm support in its struggle to combat unspeakable terror.
After September 11, the United States had no choice but to strike back. A sovereign nation that allows a terror group to murder its people with impunity ceases to be sovereign. The same principle applies to Israel. War is never desired. It is not clean. Innocents die, mistakes are made, and every operation brings terrible cost. But Israel did not start this war, Hamas chose it — and in doing so, made war unavoidable.
Since 2023, the fighting has been devastating. It is suggested that more than 60,000 Palestinians have died in Gaza, many of them civilians. About 2,000 Israelis have been killed. Dozens of Israeli hostages remain in captivity. Each statistic is a life — one lost or scarred by a conflict none of us should pretend is easy or painless. Yet we must also be honest about responsibility. Hamas deliberately places its fighters in civilian areas, builds tunnels under hospitals, launches rockets from schools, and uses civilians as shields. These are violations of the laws of war. But time and again, it is Israel that gets condemned by the U.N., while Hamas is spared the sanctimony. That hypocrisy is as dangerous as it is absurd.
Much of this war has also been fought in the realm of information. People choose to believe whatever figures or stories fit their worldview. Opponents of Israel cite numbers from the “Gaza Health Ministry,” which is essentially a Hamas-run propaganda arm. Its figures are routinely inflated, unverifiable, and delivered for maximum impact on Western audiences. Yet sketchy statistics spread virally on social media, repeated uncritically by major outlets, and shape global opinion. Some claim hundreds of thousands of deaths with no substantiation, while ignoring Hamas’s culpability for embedding its fighters inside civilian infrastructure. In the fog of war, truth is said to be the first casualty, and those who hate Israel seize on the opportunity to paint it as uniquely sinister.
Critics now brand Israel’s campaign as “genocide.” That is a false and malicious accusation. Genocide, by definition, requires the intent to wipe out a people in whole or in part. No credible tribunal has found Israel guilty of such intent. What happened on October 7, 2023, however, looked much closer to genocide than anything Israel has done since. Small communities along the Gaza border — kibbutzim like Be’eri and Kfar Aza — saw their children slaughtered, their elderly executed, their entire populations targeted for destruction. Hamas attacked not soldiers, but families. That was intentional extermination. Israel’s war, by contrast, is aimed at dismantling Hamas so it cannot repeat that horror. It has often been brutal, and civilian deaths are very real. But war, however hellish, is not the same thing as genocide. And confusing the two erases the moral clarity that free nations must insist upon.
There is also a willful blindness today about why the United States supports Israel. Too many younger Americans — on both left and right — have forgotten some fundamental history. The State of Israel was largely established after the Holocaust because Jews in diaspora had nowhere to go. America was the first country to recognize it in 1948. This bond was not accidental or arbitrary, it was rooted in a sense of moral duty and a recognition that a Jewish homeland was unquestionably essential.
Israel has been a steadfast ally in a consistently volatile Middle East, a democracy surrounded by hostile regimes, a partner in intelligence, security, and trade. It is the one place in that region where Jews are safe, Christians can worship freely, and dissenting voices have real political clout. America does not need to be ashamed of supporting such an ally.
Yet public opinion is, indeed, shifting. Polls show that nearly four in ten Americans now believe Israel has gone too far in Gaza, up sharply from 2023. Among younger voters, the numbers are even higher. On college campuses, anti-Israel sentiment is now mainstream. Even among conservatives, cracks are appearing. Influencers like Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens, eager to disrupt “the establishment,” have convinced some on the right to adopt what essentially amount to left-wing talking points about Israel. The problem is not honest criticism of tactics. Israel, like America after 9/11, can be criticized for aspects of the way it conducts war. The problem is when those criticisms morph into denial of Israel’s right to fight (or exist) at all.
On this anniversary, we remember. We remember the men, women, and children slaughtered in their homes. We remember the festival-goers who were gunned down, mercilessly. We remember the hostages — Israeli and American — waiting endlessly for freedom. What America owes Israel is not a blank check, but solidarity rooted in truth. Israel’s cause is just. Its survival as a state matters. And if the Jewish state were ever erased, history tells us exactly what would follow: the same persecution that haunted Jews for millennia, without any refuge.
To stand with Israel is not to ignore civilian suffering in Gaza. It is to recognize the fundamental difference between a democracy defending itself and a terror group bent on extermination. Israel did not seek this war. It was thrust upon them. And if they are to prevent October 7 from ever happening again, they must ensure Hamas is vanquished.
Today, we are still remembering October 7th — and still standing with Israel.
For those who want to understand the reality of that day more viscerally, a new documentary October 7 is now streaming worldwide. I encourage readers to watch it, share it, and help ensure that the truth of what happened is never forgotten or distorted.
Michael J. Hout is Editor-in-Chief of Liberty Affair. Based in Warsaw, Poland, he writes about politics, culture, and history. Follow his latest insights on X: @michaeljhout.
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