Remembering the victims of the Oct 7th attack

[sunflower1022]

My thoughts are with the Jewish community on the second anniversary of this barbaric attack.

Adding my heartfelt condolences & prayers.

I remember seeing the video of Shani Louk and on Twitter. I remember the videos of the festival and the cheering and gloating before they thankfully got removed. I remember praying for the Bibas family each night until Hamas finally admitted they'd been murdered. I remember the attacks on the kibbutzim whose members had cared so deeply for the Palestinian people and whose survivors still protest for the rights of innocent people suffering under Hamas.

May their memories be a blessing. May their families find comfort. And I pray against all hope that their region finds peace.

🕯️

There is such ignorance about this hugely complex and old-as-the-hills middle eastern crisis that it's difficult to know where to start. The starving and murder of Palestinian citizens is wrong. The way they are having to live behind the wall in the West Bank is also wrong. Yes, it is akin to an 'open prison', despite those words often being dismissed as an anti-semitic dogwhistle. However, unlike some who are making these claims I've been there. I've seen it. I've met, conversed with, received the wonderful hospitality of some of the warmest, most welcoming communities you could hope to meet - on both sides of the wall. I've also seen the social inequalities between these communities within Israel itself.

As to Hammas, their actions are as deplorable. They are using the population as human shields. Their wholesale capture, rape and brutal murder of civilians in the October attack is medieval in its barbarity. Compare the treatment of women under the Taliban - there is no great difference here. (There is still a male guardianship scheme in operation in both Palestine and Israel). There is no justifying the horrendous treatment on both sides of innocent civilians who all suffer as a result. No one side of this crisis consists of innocent victims and one undisputed aggressor. Yet Israel is the only community apparently not expected to fight back, and blaming Jews for this issue is exactly tantamount to the old post 9/11 rhetoric that 'all terrorists are Muslim'. We wouldn't tolerate the latter - so why the former?

To suggest that commemorating victims of Hammas' repellent attacks is 'condoning a genocide' is precisely the same stupid one-sidedness which assumes UK Jews are all complicit in the actions of the IDL, or that Israeli Jews are all pro-Netanyahu (they're not): exactly the kind of bigotry the newly rebranded 'Left' (who are not left) so love to rail against.

The woman who tore down the yellow ribbons is nothing other than a common, or garden-variety, racist.

🙏🕯

May their memories be a blessing.

I was online this time two years ago - when the video from the terrorist go pros was being freely shared all over social media, popping up in my X feed. There are things I can never unsee.

Love and support to the Jewish community today.

I meant to locate my previous post on the thread about the yellow ribbon vandal. This isn't really the thread for that post, so will only add my solidarity with our Jewish community in the UK, my disgust at the anti-semitism which is currently tainting our society, and love to all those affected by the October terrorism.

My love and prayers for the victims of the Hamas incursion.

Thanks. This is a memorial thread. I wish people would see that. It is to remember the horror that those people experienced that day. Those have survived may well have significant survivor guilt or PTSD etc. The families who lost loved ones will be going through hell. The trauma lasts way beyond that day. So many good people would have been killed that day. Many of them young with their futures destroyed. Older people, loved grandparents, all dead. Killed just for existing.

Whatever your politics, surely everybody can see the heartache resulting from this massacre. If you don’t, then you’re not a good person.

And the cutting off of yellow ribbons blows my mind. Idiots.

Give it a fucking rest.

I also hope their families find comfort. I've seen those unspeakable things too. May they be at peace.

Sadly between North London and Hertfordshire, cutting down yellow ribbons has been going on for some time. This is the first time it's been properly filmed. (few grainy cctv's) It's likely that she was connected.

Her claims when filmed doing it, exposed the twisted ignorance of these people.

If it's happening in your area I'd like to remind that anyone of any race or religion, can without fuss or making a deal of it, carry ribbon, and replace what's been defaced as a simple act of solidarity with local communities that are being targeted.

I and many that I know, wont be forgetting, and wish peace for those left with this terrible set of events, especially those still held and their families.

I've never stopped thinking about the terrible events in Israel on 7 October and it seems almost unbelievable that 2 years on, there are still hostages being held. I hope that those survivors, and the remains of others killed in the interim, are returned home very very soon to enable what will surely be the long process of treatment and recovery (?) to begin for the victims, their families and also for the wider Jewish community whose peace of mind and security has been so significantly affected by the awful rise in anti-semitism since then.

They are remembered 🎗

How awful that this has been going on for some time.

Some people have no humanity.

The sentiment would be a lot more meaningful without the “but Gazans too”.

You don’t have to do that.

You can just express sympathy and empathy to Jews and Israelis.

Thanks. I live in northern England and have never seen a yellow ribbon memorial. I didn't know the cutting down had been happening, and so was very shocked. I know there is another thread on this particular event, so I don't want to derail this memorial thread 💛.

Agreed.

They are the reason I started this thread.

You'd think.
🕯️

Why would it be more meaningful? It was a message of peace to all, which is fitting for a remembrance.

Because this is a thread specifically for the Jewish community!

I can’t believe it needs spelling out!

It's Oct 7th, two years since a terrible atrocity, which is being commemorated on this thread here. I genuinely don't know why that's a problem for some people.

Thinking of those still held hostage and their families.

Just read an article about the ex hostage Emily Damari, who is gay. She says she had to constantly hide her sexuality while a hostage in Gaza (Western pro Palestinian protests, where a lot of the protesters were queer or gay, were shown on tv while she was there and her captors said they would kill anyone gay).
She is still having operations on her leg & hand as her bullet wounds weren’t treated properly or at all most of the time in Gaza.

I also remember the shocking & horrific way the beautiful Shani Louk’s dead body was displayed & abused on October 7th.. the many months it took for her Hamas killers to return her body & the fact the evil photographer of her dead body won an international prize.

Another thing.. the ex hostage Eli Sharabi (whose family were murdered on October 7th and who returned looking like a Belsen skeleton) saw so many white UN boxes of goods just stacked up stored in the Hamas tunnels not being given to the Palestinian people.

Can you imagine - being Jewish, a woman, and gay in the hands of a fascist group like Hamas? A living nightmare.
That's shocking about that photographer. Poor Shani, what a vile act.

This is what always gets me; those pro Palestine supporters that wave the rainbow flag. Are they really that stupid?

But yes, thoughts with the families. Always. 🎗️