Dave Brown

Today is October 7th. Three years ago, at 6:29 on a Saturday morning, on the Sabbath and the festival of Simchat Torah, history changed forever. Under a barrage of thousands of rockets, Hamas terrorists broke through the border from Gaza and went from house to house, hunting human beings. Around 1,200 people were murdered in a single day, most of them civilians. It was the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. They were young people dancing at sunrise at the Nova music festival, where more than 360 were gunned down as they ran. They were families in Be'eri, Kfar Aza and Nir Oz, killed in their homes, in their beds, and in the safe rooms where parents held the doors shut with their bare hands. Homes were burned with people still inside. Women were raped. Grandparents and children were shot side by side. 251 people were dragged into Gaza as hostages, among them Holocaust survivors in their eighties and a nine-month-old baby. Some were held in tunnels for more than two years. Many never came home alive. This was a massacre and an act of war, launched against civilians by the wicked and evil terrorist organisation Hamas, who filmed it, celebrated it, and vowed to do it again and again. No nation on earth would be asked to live beside that. No government could look its people in the eye and leave their murderers in power, or leave their sons, daughters and grandparents in the tunnels. Israel did not choose this war. It was brought to her on a holy day, at dawn, to families asleep in their beds. She had not just the right to fight it, but the duty. Today we remember every name, every face and every empty chair at every table. May their memory be a blessing. Never forget. Never again.