1,096 Days

 

1,096 days since the 7th of October 2023

 

I don’t know what to write to you. Where do I begin? How do I write about something so utterly diabolical without asking, again and again, how on earth did this actually happen? How do I find the rational, calm voice that is usually my signature when I am boiling inside?

Who will ease the pain of ten-year-old Daria, alone in her home with the body of her father after he was slaughtered by Hamas, while she spoke to her mother on the telephone and her mother desperately tried to understand what her little girl was describing? How does a child ever recover from something like that? And how can any of us begin to comprehend the sheer scale of what happened — the deliberate slaughter of people from the age of 87 to a ten-month-old baby?

There are moments when words simply fail. This is one of them. All I can feel is grief, horror and a fury that refuses to go away.

 

Imagine the pastoral beauty of Kibbutz Be’eri. Life was quiet, crops were planted, animals tended, children grew up, and many of the kibbutz members devoted themselves to helping sick children and adults, including bringing patients from Gaza to Israel for medical treatment. Imagine an ordinary October morning — people making breakfast, sitting outside with their coffee, getting ready to begin another day. Then 400 terrorists descended on the kibbutz with murder and destruction in their minds. What followed is impossible to comprehend.

 

The horror of Be’eri was repeated in kibbutzim all along the border, while at the Nova festival young people were only just beginning their morning when the killing began. Many had nowhere to run. In total, 1,195 people were slaughtered, including 364 at Nova, and 251 civilians and soldiers were taken hostage. The cruelty was beyond anything I can put into words: rape, burning people alive, parents murdered in front of their children and children in front of their parents. And then comes the part that makes my blood run cold: some of the terrorists had worked in these kibbutzim. They had been trusted to enter people’s homes, knew where the safe rooms were, and had drawn maps of the houses. They knew exactly where to find the people they came to murder. This was not spontaneous hatred. It was planned, studied and carried out with a level of cruelty that I still struggle to comprehend.

 

And then comes the part that makes the whole thing even harder to bear: the warnings were there. The young women serving as IDF observers along the Gaza border saw the changes, watched Hamas training and preparations, and repeatedly tried to sound the alarm — but their warnings were dismissed. Egypt warned Israel several times that something was about to happen, and the UAE also raised the alarm directly with Netanyahu. Yet the warnings were not acted upon.

 

And all the while, Israel was pursuing a policy of keeping Hamas quiet through money. For years, Netanyahu's governments approved the transfer of Qatari cash into Gaza, including some $30 million a month, believing that economic stability and the flow of money would help contain Hamas. In September 2023, just weeks before the massacre, Israeli officials even sought an increase in Qatari funding. The idea was that Hamas could be managed, contained and bought off.

 

How catastrophically wrong that judgement turned out to be. The warnings were ignored, the enemy was underestimated, and a policy intended to keep Hamas quiet helped sustain the very regime that was preparing for war. And so, on that terrible morning, the slaughter began — and the war that followed has dragged on, costing far too many young Israeli lives and leaving us all asking the same unbearable question: how could so many people have seen the danger, and yet so few have acted?

 

Pastor Dr. Mike Evans wanted to create an event to commemorate those we lost on that fateful day. He wrote a poem and knew it had to be turned into a song. He turned to Zvi for help and together with Zvi’s musical director Ronit Banit, they not only created a beautiful song but managed to put together people from many countries to sing it. Mike’s own story is one of sadness and belief, perhaps this song personifies his connection to Israel over the last 50 years.  Tonight, we will join 2,000 Christians from all over the world at the plaza of the Southern Wall in a memorial service when the song will be sung.  https://youtu.be/Az9n4X5w72o?si=IqwLYuZkXZ0hODsz

 

Since that day, that terrible day, Israel has changed. We are a nation in pain and the number of soldiers and their families, the Nova survivors and the people of the Gaza Envelope, the Southern Negev, need you, we all need each other to confront the hatred that is too familiar.

 

I send you love, because by loving each other, by standing together we can overcome those who wish us gone.

 

Sheila