Three Years Later, How Do You Feel?

Do you remember the gut punch you felt on Oct. 7, 2023, when you learned what was happening in Israel?

In that moment and in the days that followed, as the full scope of the horror unfolded, did you wish for vengeance?

Be honest.

Do you remember the intensity of that emotion?

When I went to bed at 11 p.m. on Oct. 6 (7 a.m. Oct. 7 in Israel), alerts on my phone showed maps with red dots across Israel.

I did not know that, a half hour earlier, an estimated 3,800 Hamas fighters and perhaps 2,000 others, including civilians, had breached fences separating Gaza from Israel and carried out a pogrom against nearby kibbutzim, towns, and an outdoor music festival.

I woke to reports of a steadily rising number of casualties. In time, the number of men, women, and children slaughtered reached some 1,200, with another 251 (dead and alive) kidnapped and held captive in Gaza.

“My country, where were you? Our world, where were you?” Shoshan Haran asks in the preface to her recently published book, “Mission in Captivity: One Woman’s Struggle to Survive and Save Her Family in Gaza.”

At Kibbutz Be’eri, Haran’s husband, sister, and brother-in-law were murdered — their bodies not found and identified for more than a week — and she was taken hostage with six other family members.

There was no shortage of evidence — video from cameras worn by the terrorists, the phones of Israelis trying to escape and the phones terrorists took from Israelis they killed, from security cameras at the kibbutzim and Israeli police narrating the carnage at the festival site, as well as homes with blood-splattered bedrooms, bullet-riddled walls, and woodwork charred by incendiary grenades and fire.

There also were interviews with the emergency responders who collect human remains for handling under Jewish law and briefings by forensic pathologists, who displayed graphic images as they described the gruesome task of identifying burned and mutilated bodies.

Three days later, at an Oct. 10 Jewish community rally in Sandy Springs, a local politician declared, to resounding cheers, “Israel is going to do what Israel is going to do.”

I wrote in a column: “The reaction of 1,100 inside the Byers Theatre and more than twice that number watching on the lawn outside suggested that many had no problem with something more than an eye for an eye.”

Israel launched air strikes against Hamas on Oct. 7 and three weeks later mounted a ground invasion of Gaza. In the weeks and months that followed, the death toll rose well into five digits, some 1.5 million people were displaced, infrastructure was reduced to rubble, and a humanitarian crisis ensued.

In a Nov. 21, 2023, column I asked: What is the Proportional Response? I had no definitive answer then and I don’t have one now.

I wrote: “No reasonable person should take pleasure or feel justified by the knowledge that Palestinian civilians, particularly children, are being killed as Israel wages war, no matter the degree of rage over the barbarity displayed” on the day Israels call the “black Sabbath.”

Depending on your vantage point, Oct. 7 may feel like a recent event or something already consigned to history.

We will learn on Oct. 27 how Israelis feel three years later, as they elect the next 120-member Knesset and, in turn, determine which party will form a majority coalition in parliament, and who will lead the government.

If it seems inconceivable that those in power on the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust would stand for re-election, bear in mind that there has been no national commission of inquiry, no formal inquest into the political, military, and intelligence failures that preceded Oct. 7 and, ultimately, who should be held responsible.

Israelis will decide whether to retain or dismiss their government — no matter how interested or opinionated the rest of us may be.

That includes the 56 percent of Jewish American voters who, in a September survey, expressed a “great deal” of concern that “Israel’s actions under [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu have increased antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment in the U.S.”

That also includes Jewish Americans who feel that Israel is justified in doing what it has done, irrespective of any impact in the diaspora.

On Oct. 30, 2023, at Ahavath Achim Synagogue, close to 2,000 people attending a vigil for the hostages heard from relatives of three hostages.

Two members of Shoshan Haran’s family brought a message from the sons of Haran’s murdered sister, Lilach, and brother-in-law, Eviatar Kipnis.

“Her sons asked us not to [seek] revenge on behalf of their name. In the darkest of times, the darkest parts of our personalities sometimes get out,” Dafna Sella said. “Our family sent a message of peace. I feel like I need to ask you, on behalf of Lilach and Tari, don’t seek revenge.”

Judging from the muted reaction in the sanctuary, her plea did not match the mood of the audience.

Do you remember the gut punch you felt on Oct. 7, 2023?

In that moment, did you wish for vengeance?

How do you feel three years later?