The 7th of October was a terrible wake-up call, for Israel but also for the west.
On that day thousands of Hamas terrorists suddenly swarmed into Israeli town and villages near the Gaza strip, killing some 1200 Israelis, most of them children, women and elderly, while kidnapping some 250 more. Immediately after the attack, Hezbollah from Lebanon, other Iranian proxies from Iraq to Yemen and ultimately Iran itself, attempted to assist Hamas, by starting to shoot missiles at Israel.
It was an awakening from the dreams of the liberal order, about the equality of all cultures, that is supposed to lead all peoples to rational calculations about their material prosperity. That was the assumption behind repeated attempts to appease and reason with Islamist organizations and states, from Hamas to Hezbollah to Iran, expecting common interests, in fostering economic and social prosperity for their people. But fanatics cannot be reasoned with. From October 7th onwards, the Islamists have shown that they care not for the prosperity of their people, indeed that they are willing to sacrifice the well being and even the lives of their citizens, on the altar of their mad visions of an Islamic apocalypse that would destroy first Israel and then the whole of the west. In their vision, Israel is the outpost of western values in the Middle East and destroying it will prove to Islamists in Europe and America that they can achieve their ultimate goal of destroying the west.
Fortunately, the catastrophe of October 7th was also a rude awakening for Islamists from their delusional dreams about Israel being a liberal, individualistic and hedonist society, a brittle structure that will crumble before the Islamist bloodlust.
In fact Israelis showed the very opposite to be true, fighting against the odds in order to defend their nation. Even in the chaos of the first hours after terrorist attacks had began, when the Israeli army command still struggled to regain a clear picture of events and organize defenses, thousands of Israelis decided of their own accord not to run or find refuge from the attack, or wait for instruction from the government, but rather to pick up a gun and run towards the terrorists, in order to do what they can to counter them, often fighting to their last breath in a desperate attempt to defend others.
One of them was Eden Levy, a 19 years old staff sergeant, training new army recruits. When the attack begun, Eden and the dozen other instructors ordered all the young recruits to seek shelter, while the instructors faced hundreds of armed terrorists. Eden and five other instructors died while fighting, but they stopped the terrorists for hours, so that the base was ultimately not captured by Hamas, thus saving the lives of all of the recruits bar one.

Eden Levi
Another was Aner Shapira, 21, a soldier on leave who was at an open air party taking place near the Gaza border when the attack began. Like others partygoers, he found shelter from the terrorists’ bullets inside a concrete structure, then the terrorists started to throw grenades inside the structure. Aner took charge, told the others in the structure to keep away while with his bare hands he again and again caught each incoming grenade and threw it back out, knowing well it could explode at any moment. Seven times he caught another grenade and threw it back at the terrorists, but the eight grenade killed him. Nevertheless, by Aner’s sacrifice many of those in the structure survived, until help arrived.
Many more such acts of bravery occurred on that day. After such acts of selfless courage, by the end of that terrible day, some 4,000 armed terrorists attacking by surprise, had managed to kill about 1,200 Israelis. It was a terrible toll indeed – but one that was supposed to be even ten times larger, if not for the selfless heroism of so many young Israelis.
But October 7th was also a wake up call for the west, and especially those countries of Western Europe, that had chosen, up to that point, to ignore the nature of the threat, to believe its danger easily averted by superior technology and that time is on their side.
In fact the Islamists bid their time only in order to better prepare their murderous intentions, lulling Israel into a false sense of security that is still mistakenly felt by many Europeans. The terrorists overcame the massive Israeli technological superiority by reverting to medieval savagery, directing their main effort against unarmed civilians, indiscriminately butchering little children with their mothers, elderly with the infirm. They did not direct their effort at capturing strategic areas or neutralizing military capabilities, they had no tactical military goals or strategic plan, it was what can only described as a neo-Nazi type frenzy of hate, directed as murdering Jews only because they are Jews.
Despite the difficulty of taking in the events of 7 October, it is important to look straight into this horror, in order to avoid its repetition in many other places.
The false sense of security afforded by technological and economic superiority, the deluded belief that the enemy is moved by the same values and interests, the mistaken impression that time is on the West’s side – all these must be abandoned, or else many more and even worse October 7th will play out in the west.
Israelis have learnt their lesson the hard way, and they are now unwilling to wait passively for what the enemy will do, or to put their faith in false promises by the international community that is only interested in short term quiet and stability. Instead, Israel is now actively pursuing its enemies, not only in Gaza, but in Lebanon and in Yemen and eventually in Iran too.
Meanwhile, in the west, the reactions to the conflict that has been going on for the last year, have been typically weak, with most western countries either outwardly supporting Israel while trying to avoid a direct confrontation with the Islamist terrorist apparatus created by Iran, or in the case of the governments in countries like Ireland and Spain, actively attempting to reward the Islamists with the promise of a new terrorist-state of “Palestine”. This will not deter Israel from its path, but it does indicate to the Islamists that there may be softer targets than the Jewish state. If Israel is proving too strong to break, the ridiculous prostrating of some European governments at the feet of the terrorists, will convince Islamists to go after the low hanging fruit of Western weakness. If Spain is not careful, the sick Islamist fantasies of destroying Israel and throwing the Jews into the Sea, will be replaced by similarly sick fantasies about reclaiming Al-Andalus.
It is time to wake up.
Ofir Haivry, VP of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem, and Visiting Fellow at the Danube Institute in Budapest.
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