Note: this post is being continually updated as new information surfaces. Last updated March 25 2024.
As you may have heard, this weekend Jews saw the greatest single-day loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust.
At the time of this writing, more than 800 Jewish civilians have been executed in cold blood, thousands injured, and over 130 kidnapped.
On what should have been the joyful holiday of Simchat Torah, the terrorist group Hamas carried out multi-pronged attacks against Jewish civilians in Israel. It began when Hamas infiltrated southern Israel and opened fire at a music festival. From eyewitness accounts,
Shooting began. Many were executed on the spot. 260 bodies have been found, so far, on the site of the rave.
Many of the young men and women started running in the flat expanse of the western Negev desert. Faced with the spectacle of kids fleeing for their lives on a largely flat surface, the terrorists began rounding up the rest of their victims.
Others were captured and bound and kidnapped. “I saw videos with a male getting held by a group of Arab kids. Like, they’re like 16, 17,” one survivor recalled. “They’re kids, but they’re young men already, and they’re holding this guy, and he looks as his girlfriend is being mounted on a bike and driven away from him. God knows what she’s going to experience … Women have been raped at the area of the rave next to their friends bodies, dead bodies.”
Several of these rape victims appear to have been later executed. Others were taken to Gaza. In photographs released online, you can see several paraded through the city’s streets, blood gushing from between their legs.
One survivor records what happened: "The terrorist entered and sprayed us at point-blank range. I was in the second row. Everyone in the first and second row died, apart from me. Third and fourth row were also shot."
Soon, several videos leaked of bloodied, battered women being paraded through the streets of Gaza by their hair while their tormentors shouted, "Allahu akhbar!"
Still more videos and images surfaced of women with their limbs broken, stripped and bloodied, their heads blown out by a bullet, stuffed into truck beds and paraded around Gaza:
Soon, things grew even darker.
Hamas infiltrated homes, kibbutzim, and small towns. They executed children in front of their families:
The kids are crying and asking mom & dad if their sister will ever come back.
Hamas terrorists live streamed their butchery as they went into homes and murdered hundreds:
Israel released recordings and raw footage of Hamas' demonic depravity, including phone calls from Hamas terrorists gleefully telling their parents how many Jews they murdered.
One woman was captured, raped, and executed, all of which was livestreamed by the terrorists. The video sadly made it it to her family.
Elderly people weren't spared either, including one Holocaust survivor who was kidnapped and later executed:
Magen David Adom, Israel's version of the Red Cross, testifies that some of their first emergency responders were themselves executed.
Some elderly were murdered and their family only found out via Hamas live streaming their executions:
In a cruel twist of fate, one elderly couple from the United States who had advocated for Palestinian rights was murdered by the very people she advocated for.
Parents, kids, elderly, and even whole families were murdered:
Many others were kidnapped and abducted to Gaza.
Friends and family of the deceased greived:
Messianic Jews in Israel also suffered loss.
In one heroic tragedy, a Jewish family escapes through an upper room as Hamas terrorists break through the door. The children and wife escape. As the husband exits through the window, terrorists shoot him dead:
During all this, Hamas fired over 3,000 rockets in 48 hours:
Hamas' cheering fans in the West
Meanwhile, Hamas' enablers -- largely Western intellectuals, socialists, Marxists, and Muslims -- explained away the demonic depravity as understandable. Najma Sharif, a Somali-American writer who pens pieces for NBC and TeenVogue magazine said,
Harvard student groups, including the leftist group Harvard Jews for Liberation, issued a statement blaming Israel for the demonic depravity carried out by Hamas:
70 Harvard faculty members signed a letter blaming Hamas' demonic depravity on Israel, and calling on the Harvard president to condemn Israel for its actions.
At Stanford, one professor called out Jewish students in his class, moved them to a corner of the room, telling them that Israel has murdered more people than were killed in the Holocaust.
In a now-deleted post, Yale university professor Zareena Grewal justified the demonic depravity:
Cornell university's director of diversity and inclusion Derron Borders praised Hamas' demonic depravity:
Cornell university professor Russel Rickford praised Hamas' demonic depravity, saying Hamas' butchery of Jew civilians excited and energized him:
In a Cornell students' forum, several anti-Semitic comments and death threats were posted.
(Follow-up: the messages were found to be posted by Patrick Dai, a safety office at Cornell.)
At Albany university, one professor blamed Hamas' demonic depravity on Israel and the Jews.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, pro-Hamas rallies heard shouts of "glory to the martyrs":
Brandeis University, founded by Jews after the Holocaust, but now overcome by progressive politics, refused to condemn Hamas.
In my corner of the world, at the University of Washington, students called for the genocide of Jews in Israel.
Students at UCLA shouted, "Intifada! Intifada!", calling for an Islamic holy war against Israel and the Jews. (For frame of reference, the last intifada killed over 1000 Israelis.)
Berkeley issued a milquetoast statement generically condemning violence, never mentioning Hamas. For frame of reference, compare their statements on the death of George Floyd:
Jewish left-wing activists who had previously stood in solidarity with the Palestinian cause are stunned to find their political allies are unable to condemn Hamas' demonic depravity and butchery.
Jewish Currents, the leftist paper formerly known as Morgen Freiheit, which had praised the Hebron massacre of 1929, was unable to condemn Hamas' demonic depravity, and instead cast doubt on the reports of eyewitnesses. (This, despite other independent reporters confirming the beheadings.)
Indeed, one captured Hamas fighter confesses they committed acts forbidden by Islam. Which acts? He answers, "the kidnapping, the raping and whoring of children." He then goes on to say Hamas cut the heads off other victims.
Emergency responder Yossi Landau testifies that at the Be'eri kibbutz, they recovered "about 280 bodies. I would say 80% were tortured", including "two piles of 10 children each, tied to the back, and burned to death."
He testifies later of the first house they entered:
"The first house we saw was a couple, a father and mother, sitting there, knees on the floor, but now head down, hands tied to the back. On the other side of the dining room was seven year old boy, and a girl, I'd say about six years old, sitting against the parents. Hands tied to the back. Same position. Their bodies were tortured...and when I mean tortured, I would say missing body pieces. An eye just taken out. Fingers being...[crying]. I'm not finished. In the middle, there was a table. Those terrorists were sitting and eating the meal the Saturday meal that was prepared for this meal. They took it and ate the meal while torturing these children."
Forensic reviews of the remains confirmed the torture, one forensic scientist saying, "In their final moments, they were burnt to death like this. Cremated alive in their own homes, clutching one another:
Shortly after, US officials, including President Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken were shown photos of Hamas' handiwork. (Of course, neither this nor the eyewitness accounts didn't stop various anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists from claiming the photos were AI generated. It would seem no amount of proof is sufficient for some anti-Semites.)
Black Lives Matter, the leftist organization recently exposed for fraud, predictably sided with the terrorists.
Leftists, Marxists, and Muslim groups held impromptu rallies to support Hamas:
At one leftist rally for Hamas, Colorado state representative Tim Hernandez refused to condemn the demonic depravity.
The leftist Democratic Socialists of America rallied in New York City for Hamas. One speaker on a microphone praised Hamas' demonic depravity, saying "they killed a few hipsters." The crowd cheered.
Their follow-up statements are perhaps even worse.
So egregious, Michigan congressman Shri Thanedar renounced his membership with the DSA.
These groups celebrated the deaths of Jewish civilians.
At one such rally in New York's Time Square, a protester held up Nazi imagery in solidarity with other Jew-haters:
In Australia, chants of "gas the Jews" rang out at a large rally in front of the Sydney Opera House.
The leftwing Huffington Post piled on, comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.
And this is not in isolation, but a continual pattern of the Times using whitewashed euphemisms for the demonic depravity of anti-Jewish violence. The New York Times wasn't alone in covering for Hamas. The Anti-Defamation League's Jonathan Greenblat appeared on MSNBC to call out their rationalizing the demonic depravity of Hamas.
A professor praised in the New York Times mocked reports of infants burned in ovens.
The dean of the prestigious Columbia University Law school whitewashed the demonic depravity.
Likewise, Ryna Workman, the student president of the NYU Law School Bar Association refused to condemn the demonic depravity, instead blaming Israel and the Jews.
After the October 7th attacks, the Oakland Education Association released a statement in support of the demonic depravity, condemning "the genocidal and apartheid state of Israel":
Many Jews are waking up to the reality of ugly left-wing antisemitism and its praise for Hamas' demonic activity:
No words can express what we see. Reality speaks for itself.
The world will forget all this one day soon, but Israel will not. I hope Christians will not forget what happened today and stand by the Jewish people. Like Nazy Germany before it, the genocidal, demonic spirit of anti-Semitism and all its depravities must be destroyed, or it will destroy us. I hope Israel has the stomach to destroy Hamas forever for what it's done.
Blessed are you Lord, God of our fathers
Who causes the wicked to fall into the traps they set for the righteous
Preserve, protect, and defend Your people, Israel
As you have in ages past, do also today