What you must know about Israel’s 9/11
I lived in Israel for six years, my wife Tamar is Israeli, and we have many family and friends in Israel, which makes the terrorist attack which occurred over last weekend very personal.
Our family is devastated and heartbroken over what happened, and we feel we need to share information to create awareness of what transpired this weekend.
In summary, Hamas, the terrorist organization that controls and governs Gaza (a small territory with 2 million Palestinians between Israel and Egypt), was able to achieve a very successful incursion into Israel on Saturday morning. Hamas and other terrorist groups attempt attacks on a very regular basis, but they are usually not successful. This was the most successful and deadly terrorist attack in Israel’s history.
Thousands of terrorists managed to cross the border, take control of 22 small residential communities (called moshavs or kibbutzim), and attacked a music festival that was intended to promote peace.
At the music festival, Hamas terrorists massacred over 260 people, raped many women, and took hostages back to Gaza. Some of the raped women were taken back to Gaza as hostages and others were killed.
The small communities that were attacked by terrorists are almost exclusively home to families and seniors with between 300-700 residents. When the terrorists arrived in these communities they went door to door, attempting to kill as many people as possible. They killed many whole families such as the Kadem family (photo below), typically doing it slowly so that kids would watch their parents or parents would watch their children being murdered. Many children were murdered in unthinkable and gruesome ways, including beheadings and beating their heads in with rifle butts.
Many other families and elderly people were taken as hostages and are currently being held in Gaza, such as this family, which includes a 9-month-old baby and 3-year-old child (photo below — their kids look a lot like mine).
Hadar Bardichsky and her husband put their 10-month-old twins in their bomb shelter (most Israeli homes have one) and waited in their living room to fight whoever came in the house as the shelter could not be locked from the inside. The parents were both murdered, but their twins were not discovered and rescued until 12-14 hours later.
Friends of Tamar’s family live in one of these communities occupied by terrorists. They hid with their two little girls under a bed for 14 hours, motioning to their girls to be quiet while listening to their neighbors being massacred and terrorists coming into their house looking for them. Fortunately they were not discovered and were rescued on Sunday at 4 a.m.
Based on the current count, more than 1,200 Israelis were brutally murdered (and at least 22 Americans) — the population equivalent of 48,000 Americans (as a point of reference, we lost 2,996 lives on 9/11). In addition, over 150 hostages are currently being held in Gaza by Hamas (mostly families and children), and more than 2,400 Israelis were injured in the attack (many critically).
The profile and number of hostages — 150-plus, mostly women and children, primarily civilians, including some Americans — is unprecedented. The hostages are being hidden in small groups within Hamas’ extensive underground tunnel system, making a rescue efforts virtually impossible. The likely outcome is that most of these hostages will be killed, as Hamas is threatening to execute a hostage and videotape the killings each time an Israeli airstrike hits Gaza. In addition, it’s expected that the circumstances the hostages are being held in are very difficult, to the extent that children and elderly hostages may have a hard time surviving in captivity.
In summary, the scope and nature of this massacre is hard to comprehend.
Several of our friends and family are currently engaged in the military response, or have been called up or volunteered and are preparing to engage in the response. Israel’s military is primarily made up of reservists. My close friend Amir, 59, and his son are in special forces units and were among the first to respond. The below photo is Amir Monday morning checking in on one of his sons. The prior day Amir had been fighting for 14 hours, during which the unit of 10 special forces reserves he led killed two terrorists, and took lead on two hostage situations (Amir leads interrogations and hostage negotiations for the special forces), interrogated multiple captives, and treated injuries in the worst scenes of injured civilians (families) he had ever witnessed in his 42 years in military service. Amir is one of the bravest people I know and is not worried about being killed as he’s escaped death too many times and is past due, but he is “so afraid for my sons” which, like Amir, will likely be going into Gaza shortly.
Other friends are rushing to get back into Israel to join their reserve units. Our friend Dagan, 63, landed at 5 a.m. Thursday on a flight from Asia and went straight to his unit (his daughter is already engaged in the response).
Gaza is a very small, very dense place, with Hamas assets carefully positioned in an extensive tunnel system, and within hospitals, schools, and apartment buildings to leverage as much human life as possible as shields. Virtually every road is booby trapped. As a result, any counterattack by Israel (and particularly a large ground incursion) will have a steep cost in human life — mostly Palestinian, and also Israeli soldiers. Many Israelis would like the Israeli military to eliminate all Hamas terrorists in response to the atrocities they committed this weekend, which is perfectly in line with their stated goal to kill all Israelis and eliminate Israel. The challenge is that achieving the goal of eliminating Hamas would result in extensive Palestinian deaths (probably hundreds of thousands) over a months-long ground incursion and likely requiring flattening much of Gaza.
In addition, once Israel initiates the intensive phase of a counter response — Hezbollah, the terrorist organization controlling Lebanon (on the north side of Israel) will likely attack Israel as well. Like Hamas, Hezbollah receives most of its funding, weapons, and support from Iran. It’s much easier for Iran to smuggle weapons into Lebanon since Iran has a lot of influence over Iraq and Syria, so Hezbollah has approximately 300,000 missiles, including much more deadly long range missiles that can reach anywhere in Israel with good accuracy, as compared to Hamas’ 30,000 rockets and missiles which are much less accurate and have mostly already been launched at Israel over the last few days. Israel has great anti-missile systems, but they can’t hit everything coming in when missiles are launched in big numbers ... so Hezbollah in Lebanon can cause a lot of death and destruction of infrastructure.
Israelis are very grateful to President Biden’s support and for sending the Aircraft Carrier Gerald Ford, which travels with an armada of war ships, to park on Lebanon’s shore. This will certainly make Hezbollah in Lebanon and the regime in Syria think twice before joining in the attack Hamas initiated.
One of the reasons Hamas attacked at this moment and was successful is due to the poor political leadership of Bibi Netanyahu, Israeli’s longest serving prime minister, who very successfully created a culture of villainizing those that disagree with him for political gain. This ultimately split Israeli society and weakened its democracy and military. Many reservists kept their promise to retire from service following the current government’s weakening of the supreme court a few months ago. Retiring reservists felt they could not fight for a government that they fundamentally disagreed with and did not trust. This massacre by Hamas resulted in all those reservists reactivating and temporarily bringing Israel together at this very dangerous time to respond forcefully. I hope that we Americans can learn from this, and challenge ourselves to be open to learning from those that disagree with us. America is the greatest country on earth … we are “a shining city upon a hill” as Ronald Reagan would say, and we are unstoppable when we are united. But as mighty as we are, like Israel, we cannot afford to be weakened by division.
As an American Jew whose European family was massacred in the Holocaust, I found it very insightful that President Biden recalled Prime Minister Golda Meir telling him in 1973 about Israel’s secret weapon… “we have nowhere else to go.” Embedded within this statement is a commitment not to allow the Jewish nation to be slaughtered as we were in the Holocaust. This weapon remains true today and will temporarily unify Israel and make Israel strong.
In addition to Israel’s inherent strength, it needs help, most importantly by giving it enough time to minimize Hamas’ ability to conduct another terrorist attack along the lines that it achieved this weekend for as long as possible. The only way for Israel to achieve this is by going into Gaza which will very unfortunately result in the deaths of Palestinian men, women and children. In addition to minimizing Hamas’ ability to achieve their stated goal of killing Israelis and eliminating the state of Israel, Israeli’s hope is that minimizing Hamas will create a power vacuum, and give Palestinians living in Gaza the opportunity to install a different governing body in Gaza, and conclude that success in killing Israelis is not a successful strategy for the Palestinian people living in Gaza, and that they will be better served by a governing body that focuses its energy more productively.
Finally, I would highly recommend listening to the following full speech by President Biden if you have not already.