It’s been a year since Oct. 7, a date etched into our collective memory, marked by horror, disbelief and a searing pain that can never quite be put into words. I know, because I’ve tried, again and again, to find the right words to describe the chasm that opened inside me that day.
That morning, I watched in horror at the GoPro live feeds of the terrorists excitedly posted online for the world to watch. They were proud of their barbarism, even going as far as calling their moms to brag about how many Jews they had killed. As I scrolled through endless news feeds, I searched for meaning amid the destruction. I was left asking questions that felt too big to answer: How do we, as a people, continue to survive when time and again history threatens to erase us? How do we hold onto hope when the world so often seems indifferent to our pain? And for me, the hardest question of all: What does it mean to be Jewish now, after this?
For the first time in my life, I truly felt the weight of the world’s apathy. I realized how deeply ingrained antisemitism is, how the Jewish people are still too often seen as expendable in the grand narrative of struggles. We are a people who have always had to justify our right to exist, even after six million of us were murdered in the Holocaust. The attacks of Oct. 7 laid that reality bare once again. As if searching for permission to feel my pain, to claim my own grief. Am Yisrael Chai, but at what cost? At what cost to our hearts, our souls, our bodies?
The swift condemnation of the attacks was soon drowned out by deafening silence from some quarters, and worse, by the insidious justifications of terror. “There are two sides.” “Have you watched Sean King? Have you seen what is happening in Gaza?” One person, who I used to call friend, showed his truth when he texted me only three days after Oct. 7, writing “As a Black man, I empathize with the Palestinians feeling of being disenfranchised.” He also said “Jews don’t hold all the power in the world but they are in a position of power in this specific conflict.”
As I reflect on that day and on the year that has followed, I know this to be true. There is no room for ambiguity when it comes to condemning terrorism. Yet, the global response is characterized by silence, excuses and, in some cases, outright support for those who perpetrate violence against Jews. Sadly the elephants in the rooms across the United States still need to hear that we cannot afford moral ambiguity when our people are under attack.
Hamas is not a freedom-fighting organization. They are not militants. They are not a resistance. Hamas is an evil terrorist group. A year, 365 days later, and the world still needs to be reminded that words matter. Their mission is not to seek peace and unity, but rather complete destruction of the state of Israel and annihilation of the Jewish People.
To Hamas, unity is not peaceful coexistence. On May 14, 2023, Hamas released a flier titled “The More You Know” on one of their social media channels stating “Unity is Liberation.” They went on to state “Palestinian resistance factions are more unified than ever through the joint operations rooms in Gaza and Jenin. Today, they wage the struggle for liberation under the Palestinian flag first, coordinating joint armed and rocket attacks on Zionist settlements. The fields have united, with Gaza, the West Bank, the occupied interior, the refugee camps in Syria and Lebanon, and the Diaspora at large confronting Zionism and the occupation as one heart. The liberation struggle seeks to end the Zionist settler-colonial project of ‘Israel.’ We are not satisfied with coexistence or ‘ending apartheid.’ Liberate the land, from the river to the sea!”
If you aren’t going to believe Jews when we tell you what they want — our extermination — believe them when they say it. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran are not interested in a two-state solution, they are only interested in finishing Hitler’s final solution.
There is no “both sides” here; there is right and there is wrong. This is a battle between good and evil, and on Oct. 7 pure evil showed its face.
In this past year, I’ve seen antisemitism rear its head in ways I never thought possible. The Jewish people are once again facing a world that seems all too comfortable with our suffering. This is why now, more than ever, we need leaders who aren’t afraid to speak truth to power.
We cannot be silent. We cannot soften our language to accommodate those who sympathize with or excuse violence against Jews. If speaking out against antisemitism — if condemning Hamas, if calling out Jew-hatred specifically and directly just as we do against hatred directed at any other group — makes others uncomfortable or makes us afraid at what “they” will think of us, then “they” have won. Oct. 7, whether in Israel or in our own backyard, we must confront this hatred head-on, with courage and conviction.
In the wake of the attacks, I publicly condemned Hamas and will continue to do so. I feel a deep responsibility to speak out, not only in defense of Israel but in defense of truth. Silence is complicity. My commitment to defending Jewish lives and standing up for Israel is unwavering. This isn’t just about Israel. It’s about standing against a rising tide of antisemitism, a tide that doesn’t just threaten Jews in Israel, but Jews everywhere, including in Teaneck.
There is a reason we read the story of Amalek, the eternal enemy of the Jewish people, year after year. It is a reminder that hatred will always rise up, sometimes in new forms, sometimes in old ones. But we, the Jewish people, are still here. We carry the scars of history but we also carry its blessings. We are part of a chain that cannot be broken.
Oct. 7 was a stark reminder that we do not have the luxury of turning on one another. When the world refuses to see us, we must see each other, protect each other, love each other fiercely.
So, to my fellow Jews, I say: Hold your heads high. Our people have faced unimaginable suffering but we are still here. We are still strong. We will not let fear or hatred define us.
Hilary Goldberg is a Teaneck Town Council member and Teaneck High School graduate.
