What the Attack Revealed About the World—and About Ourselves
“The mirror does not lie; it only reflects what we refuse to see.”
— Author’s Reflection
Written by Jerry Elman, October 7, 2025
Intro
The state of the world today—and the bullshit I see every day from people on the right, the left, and even the middle—has convinced me to remove my filters when I write. Especially when I focus on Jew-hate and our modern failure to address it. We as Jews are not victims. We are as much of the problem as anyone else—especially American Jews.
On October 7, 2023, Israel faced unimaginable horror—but what followed exposed something deeper about us as Jews and about the world we live in. This piece isn’t filtered or polite. It’s a reflection on what that day revealed: our blindness, our failures, and the courage we now owe to truth.
Preface
October 7, 2023, was not only an assault on Israel—it was a moment of reckoning for Jews everywhere.
The brutality of that day shattered illusions that history had moved on from Jew-hate, and it exposed how little we have learned about confronting it.
But it also forced us to look inward—to ask why, generation after generation, we continue to rely on the same failed responses: political lobbying, victimhood narratives, and hollow slogans.
What we saw on October 7 was not only what the world thinks of Jews, but what Jews have come to expect of ourselves.
What Broke, What Was Revealed, and What We Must Remember
I have spent years writing about how Jew-hate mutates—it changes its costume to fit the era while keeping the same bones. I’ve traced how a century of British promises and reversals planted landmines across the Middle East and then walked away, leaving everyone else to step on them.
I’ve written about my parents’ survival, the silence that followed, and the way that silence settled on the children who came after.
But nothing prepared me for October 7, 2023—how quickly the past stood up inside the present and spoke in a voice I knew.
“October 7 didn’t begin a story—it revealed one we’ve refused to finish.”
That day ripped away the illusion that Jews are safe if we behave—that if we speak softly enough and apologize often enough, the mob will choose another target.
It also exposed another lie: that Palestinian dignity can be built on the destruction of Israel, or that the world’s betrayals can somehow be repaid by killing families in their homes.
October 7 made clear what my book manuscript argues from its first page: when promises are broken and maps are drawn to please empires rather than safeguard people, the bill eventually comes due—always in human lives.
I carry this not only as a writer but as a second-generation survivor. Trauma is a strange archivist; it files sounds and images in our bodies.
The footage from that day—the panic, the smoke, the screaming—pulled old files:
- my father’s memories of flight to the forest and fighting back,
- my mother’s unspoken dread and fear,
- and my own lifetime of bracing for a blow you can’t see but always feel coming.
If you are a child of survivors, you know what I mean: the way your muscles read danger before your mind does. October 7 activated that alarm. It still rings.
But this reflection isn’t about fear. It’s about clarity—four truths that sit at the core of my work.
1. Jew-hate did not pause for progress
It adapted. It traded armbands for hashtags and declared itself “anti-oppression.”
The speed with which some people celebrated the massacre—or rushed to justify it—wasn’t spontaneous. It was the result of years of excusing rhetoric that paints Jews as colonial interlopers, Israel as uniquely monstrous, and Jewish pain as negotiable.
When a culture normalizes the dehumanization of Jews, slaughter becomes a think piece.
Old hatred. New grammar. Same disease.
2. Leadership matters—and the world’s failures are not evenly distributed
In my book manuscript, (I still have not decided to publish it) I show how the British drew lines, made promises, and then reneged—leaving both Jews and Arabs with incompatible expectations and a matchbox of grievances.
That imperial habit—rule, split, abandon—set patterns that Arab leaders and the international community too often repeated: choosing conflict narratives over state-building, proxy wars over compromise, spectacle over dignity.
October 7 was not just the work of terrorists; it was the harvest of decades of leadership that preferred rage to responsibility.
And yet, even when we name those failures, we must keep our moral compass steady:
No cause, no grievance, and no history can ever justify the deliberate killing of civilians through terrorism.
3. Compassion cannot be rationed, but accountability must be precise
I hold two truths at once:
- My heart breaks for Palestinian civilians trapped in cycles they did not design.
- My heart also breaks for Jewish families hunted for being alive.
Compassion does not mean erasing accountability.
Those who slaughter families make that decision.
Those who teach their children that martyrdom is a future are not victims of circumstance—they are authors of tragedy.
And the world powers that fund, arm, and excuse terror while pretending to “manage” the conflict are complicit, not helpless.
If we want a future worthy of our children, we must start telling the truth about responsibility.
4. The hostages must remain at the center
From the first hours of that day until this very moment, people are being held—mothers, brothers, grandparents, children.
Hostages are not talking points; they are lives interrupted mid-breath.
Every rally, every negotiation, every headline should begin with their names.
When the world grows bored—and it always does—we must grow louder. Bring them home.
The Failure of Jewish Leadership After October 7
If October 7 revealed the persistence of Jew-hate, it also exposed something deeply uncomfortable within us—our failure as a Jewish people to confront it honestly.
For all our talk of Never Again, most of our established organizations still act as if that phrase is a fundraising slogan rather than a moral command.
They respond to every attack the same way: issue a press release, send out donation letters, lobby Washington.
The result? Nothing changes—except the bank accounts of those who build careers around managing Jewish fear.
Changing laws doesn’t change hearts. Punishing people doesn’t transform beliefs.
Real change begins where laws end—in the human heart. Yet our institutions no longer invest in human connection. They prefer press conferences to conversations, outrage to outreach.
I’ve spoken in places where Jews rarely go—small towns, rural areas, conservative circles that many Jewish leaders dismiss as hostile. When I do, people listen. They ask questions. They begin to see Jews as human again.
Yet for doing exactly that, many Jewish leaders, especially in my hometown, now see me as reckless or even crazy. Most refuse to talk to me at all. They never reply to suggestions. They feel talking to Jewish audiences or students is the answer—the safe places where they’ll be applauded, not challenged. But their silence and avoidance only prove my point: they’re more comfortable preaching to the choir than engaging with the people who most need to hear us.
That’s the work that changes culture—not a bill in Congress, not another meme shared to other Jews.
Our leadership has become trapped in mourning and moral superiority. Victimhood has become identity.
When you define yourself by suffering, you stop leading. You stop teaching. You start expecting pity instead of partnership—and pity never changes perception; it deepens separation.
When Allies Fail: American Jewry, Evangelical Support, and the Illusion of Safety
Israel fights the physical and moral battle for Jewish survival. Israeli fathers and mothers stand watch while the rest of the world debates semantics.
Meanwhile, many American Jews—living comfortably, distanced by oceans and institutions—fight a war of appearances. They post memes, sign statements, attend fundraisers. They bitch about what “others” are not doing. But they won’t take any personal risk. Many try to hide the fact they are Jews. And today is nowhere near the days when Jews were forced to put stars on their clothing. Those who perished and survived the holocaust would be so disappointed at the choices we are making today to hide out existence. But then again we do keep saying “never forget.” We forgot long ago.
Perhaps they feel secure because leaders in Washington pat them on the head and because evangelical megachurches shout “Israel!” with fervor.
But this is illusion.
Too many American Jewish leaders and ordinary Jews accept the bargain without reading the small print: transactional political support is not friendship.
Much evangelical backing of Israel is tied to a theology that envisions Israel’s role in a cosmic drama culminating in the conversion—or annihilation—of the Jews.
For some of our loudest allies, Israel’s existence is not an affirmation of Jewish life but a step toward an apocalyptic end.
As long as their donations and political leverage help in the present, we look the other way. That is dangerous denial.
Support for Israel is not the same as support for Jews.
A Personal Note on Endurance
When I speak to rural audiences with little contact with Jews, I don’t start with geopolitics.
I start with my father’s work-scarred hands, my mother’s eyes when certain subjects came up, and the years I lived believing my pain was my fault.
October 7 reopened that wound, but it also clarified my purpose.
I can’t stop every lie. But I can keep telling the whole story—ancient, colonial, modern, and intimate—until someone who never thought about Jews beyond a caricature recognizes a human face.
Closing Reflection
October 7 didn’t begin a new story for the Jewish people—it revealed how much of the old one still lives within us.
From the broken promises of empires to the silence of survivors and now the complacency of modern leadership, our struggle has always been about more than survival—it has been about moral clarity and courage.
The mirror of October 7 showed us both our endurance and our blindness. It reminded us that strength without self-examination is arrogance, and remembrance without change is theater.
Until we face that truth and stop hiding behind platitudes, the cycle will never end.
The real test for Jews everywhere is not whether we can survive another wave of hatred, but whether we can finally build the kind of understanding, unity, and integrity that make survival mean something more than endurance.
Only then will Never Again become more than words—it will become who we are.