What the world has forgotten about Oct. 7, one year later

In Israel, the memories of that tragedy haven't even begun to fade. The wounds are fresh, and the war is ongoing. "Oct. 7 isn't over yet," an Israeli reservist who deployed more than 100 days last year, told me in August. She's right, even if America, the so-called international community,and not a few of her fellow Israelis may wiSh otherwise. In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political,cultural,and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can locate our full list of In Focus piecesIn Israel, the memories of that tragedy havent even begun to fade. The wounds are fresh, and the war is ongoing. "Oct. 7 isnt over yet," an Israeli reservist who deployed more than 100 days last year,told me in August. Shes right, even if America,the so-called international community and not a few of her fellow Israelis may wish otherwise.in 2019. More than 100 million Americans - roughly one-third of the population - were either born after or are too young to have a lived memory of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. Israel is too small, too embattled, and too conscious of its own history. Or more simply put: Israel does not have the luxury of forgetting. Of course, neither does America, whether it realizes it or not. Israeli schoolchildren don't need to be taught about Oct. 7. They know it firsthand. In a nation of a little more than 10 million, nearly every family knows someone who was murdered, held hostage or is part of the longest military deployment in the nation's beleaguered history. For Israel, Oct. 7 has beEn a nightmare without end. That nightmare began at 6:29 on a crisp October morning, and it has continued through a multiyear, multifront war and the eventual, if inevitable, abandonment by an international community and its various institutions, many of them built in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust. "When they said 'not once again,' we thought they meant it," someone acidly quipped to me. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks changed the U.S. in ways so profound that its perhaps hard for many Americans to imagine what life was like before the era of scrolling news tickers and the Transportation Security Administration. For many Americans, 9/11 marked the finish of an era and the beginning of another. Yet in Israel, that process is both ongoing and magnified. Borders are no safeguard from the threat of terrorism, as Americans learned to thier horror a quarter century ago. yet the U.S. is surrounded by two oceans and neighbors such as Mexico and Canada. adjusted for population, Oct. 7 was "like fifteen 9/11s" as President Joe Biden noted at the time. Hamas meant to break records for savagery and it did. The Nova Music Festival Massacre, in which approximately 400 concertgoers were murdered, is the deadliest concert event in history. "It was the worst matter that I'd ever seen," an Israeli special forces reservist with four decades of combat experience told me. He and a handful of lightly armed men rushed to the scene expecting to locate a few terrorists, only to encounter hundreds of jihadists, many armed with RPGs and grenades.in modern history. Both men and women had thier sexual organs cut off. Some women were raped multiple times and by multiple people, often before - and sometimes evenThe scope and scale of the attack are tough to fathom,let alone describe. So is the wanton savagery. However,we owe it to the victims to try to bear witness. Families were tortured and mutilated in front of each other. Toddlers such as 5-year-aged Ethan Kapshetar were executed while sitting in a car seat on the way back from a family vacation. After seeing her parents and her brother murdered, Ethans 8-year-old sister Aline hid in the bushes before she too died from her wounds. Elderly citizens, family pets,and entire families were burned alive in their homes. Men were shot in the legs and left on the road as part of a bid to ambush those who would rescue them. " to describe what unfolded. That is: the violence perpetrated by Hamas and its allies literally defied description. Before Oct. 7, the words didn't exist. Even now, some legacy newsrooms and the United Nations won't dare utter them.murdering,raping, and pillaging. They even used their victims' phones and social media to livestream their murders in front of their friends and families. After emerging from a bomb shelter with her family, Mor Baydar was horrified to turn on her phone and see her grandmother being murdered on Facebook. notably, it wasn't only Palestinian terrorist groups who took part. Everyday, Palestinians also came across the border,held hostages in their homes and Palestinian workers from Gaza used their work permits to scout and map out the locations for attacks,even going out of thier way to identify which homes had dogs in them. For many Israelis, this only further personalized a mass attack that unfolded, not in a distant downtown or faraway metropolis, but in the very homes and communities of a nation which, at its narrowest point,is a mere nine miles wide