In the end, there was closure. We lost the battle. They stole our children. Yes, “our” children because “we” (the Jewish people) are above all else a family. Maybe a family that squabbles with each other dysfunctionally but a family that shares in each other’s lives, good and bad, momentous and painful.

They not only stole our children but abused them, tortured them, raped them, defiled their dignity, robbed them of their innocence. They murdered our children in cold blood!

They did so without consequence. The world’s leading “adult” organizations and institutions essentially gave them license to commit such atrocities. They ignored our suffering even as they created a culture and ethic dedicated to the plight of supposed sufferers. They dismissed—no, delegitimized—our long-suffering history as irrelevant, inauthentic, inconvenient and inapplicable to the terrorists’ blood-thirsty wrath and desire for vengeance, vindictiveness and virulent hate.

They made yet again a mass movement out of hating and hurting us. They dehumanized our children, ripping down posters of them, repeating slogans and chants intended and used to advocate our destruction. They made it cool to hate, reinstating with vigor the world’s oldest and most entrenched hatred.

It worked. International organizations. Their sycophantic media mouthpieces. Leading academic institutions. Supposed democratic countries. Every facet of culture, civilization, class and competition joined the fray. It made no difference that it all began with a marauding rampage in which they stole, defiled and murdered our children.

We resolved, however, to stay united. To dig deep into our shared trauma(s). To remind ourselves that we have been through worse. Much worse. To remember that no one ever helped us, came to our aid and assistance. We turned back to our liturgy and legacy, the seminal parts where we are instructed that in every generation they rise up to destroy us but we survive no matter how gruesome and painful the experience.

We stayed together at least as long as there was hope, no matter how small, that we could get some of our children home. We were inspired by those most directly impacted. Those who went to the ends of the world to plead for our children. To the political leaders. The Pope. The seats of culture. The political conventions. Even to the general assemblies and security councils where the hate percolated and metastasized most of all. But of course all of that was futile.

In the end, the hatred, both its sheer evil and the extent of its appeasement, was too great. We could not overcome the fiendish frenzy that has overtaken the world in which our children do not matter, our children are fair game for abduction, harassment, torture, rape and murder. We are not superhuman. We cannot undo the hatred directed at us that exists as a law of nature.

The battle is lost. Our children were murdered by the most evil of terrorists in cold blood in tunnels where they were inhumanly mistreated for almost a year as if they were death-camp inmates. Maybe that is what the world wanted—Jewish children left to die as animals slaughtered by those ignored and appeased for their inhumanity.

They won the battle because the extent of their evil, hate and appeasement is too great for us to overcome just with will and determination to resist and resolve to remain united. We have suffered yet another massive agony in our long and languishing existence.

We have become disunited again. There will be even more protests and demonstrations in our cities. More hand-wringing about what our leaders could have done differently. As if it really makes a difference what our leaders think and do when confronting the scourge of unleashed Jew hatred. Yes, there must be accountability for bad leadership. But it’s not failed leadership that murdered our children and caused us to lose the battle.

The thing is that life is not about winning battles. We will survive. We will continue to live by and promote the life affirming beliefs of our family—no matter how dysfunctional and odd we may be. It’s a horrific and tragic life lesson but it is the reality of who we are and the world’s inability to accept us. We should always aim to make their evil not so but in the end we must recognize how unlikely that is and take some solace in that they can never destroy us.

Daniel D. Edelman resides in Teaneck and works as an attorney in New York City.