“Oct 7 2023”

The Hebrew word mechdal has no precise equivalent in English. It signifies a great catastrophe for which human beings are responsible by inaction, error, or irresponsibility. The Yom Kippur War of 1973, which began when an unprepared IDF was taken by surprise by simultaneous Syrian and Egyptian attacks, has often been referred to as a mechdal. The October 7, 2023, attack was an even greater mechdal.

The more you learn about the events of that day, the more it seems that almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong. In fact, things could easily have gone far worse.

As the war in the Gaza Strip is about to enter its 20th month, the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group has once again repeated its refusal to disarm. It says the weapons are needed to continue its fight against Israel. Those who believe that Hamas would ever agree to lay down its weapons are living in a dream world. There is, unfortunately, only one way to convince Hamas to disarm: military force.

Recently, two senior Hamas officials, Mahmoud Mardawi and Bassam Naim, announced their group’s absolute rejection of any proposal related to laying down its weapons. They said that other Palestinian terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip also reject any plan to disarm.

A teenager sentenced after attacking a rabbi in broad daylight last month in Orléans—while the rabbi was walking home from synagogue with his nine-year-old son—was already under investigation for three other serious offences, despite being in France for less than a year.

“Out! Out! Out!”

The voice in the Telegram video is insistent. Loud. Sometimes musical.

And the message unambiguous.

“All of Hamas, out!”

On the streets of Gaza, more and more Palestinians are expressing open defiance against the armed group that’s ruled the strip for almost 20 years.

Many hold Hamas responsible for plunging the tiny, impoverished territory into the worst crisis faced by Palestinians in more than 70 years.

After bringing death and destruction on the residents of the Gaza Strip, the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group is now trying to drag Arab Israelis and Palestinians in east Jerusalem and the West Bank into a violent confrontation with Israel.

Hamas and Iran’s mullahs will not be content until they see bloodshed and violence spread to areas outside the Gaza Strip. For them, this is a way of distracting attention from the catastrophe they brought on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for the past 18 months. They want the world’s attention to shift from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the two-million-strong community of Arab citizens inside Israel.

Ahead of Passover, the Jewish Democratic Council of America sent out a mailing headlined, “Pharaoh in the White House”.

According to JDCA’s head Halie Soifer, Trump was the reincarnation of the ancient tyrant at the heart of the Passover story because he was deporting antisemites.

“Legal residents and others are being illegally detained and, in some cases, deported without due process. Much of this is happening in our name, ostensibly to “fight antisemitism,” the former foreign policy advisor to Kamala complained.

Since the attacks of October 7th, antisemitic acts have exploded in France, with the Muslim community being overwhelmingly responsible for these attacks—a fact that has been hushed up by politicians and the media. Just recently, three highly symbolic events demonstrated the worsening climate for the Jews of France.