The Oct. 7 Massacre Was an Attack on the Entire Free World

In order to win this war, we must change it from one of the Jewish world to that of the free world.

The Oct. 7 massacre was first and foremost an attack on the Jewish state because it occurred at a location where Israel had withdrawn to the Green Line,* destroyed settlements, and proven to anyone who still needed proof what the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was about. The war is not about the 1967 borders, but about the 1947 borders, or perhaps even 1917. This is not a war over a plot of ground, but over existence.

The war began because our neighbors are not ready to recognize the existence of a Jewish state in any part of the land of Israel. Because the massacre on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah was one of the most horrific acts since World War II, it also showed what the nature of the conflict is to anyone needing proof. Kidnapping children, raping women, beheading men, and burning families while still alive demonstrated what we are up against — an enemy that lacks mercy, compassion and limits. This is an enemy devoid of morals, culture and humanity. We stand against absolute evil.

The Oct. 7, 2023 massacre was also an attack against the Jewish people. In every part of the world, it generated a huge wave of antisemitism that we have not seen since 1945. With the Jews again becoming victims whose blood could be shed, the dragon of Jew hatred left its lair in the mountains and began to spit fire in every direction. Elite universities in the United States took up the battle cry “from the river to the sea,” whose true meaning is the ethnic cleansing of the people of Israel from the land of Israel. In the European capitals, they claimed that Israel’s defending democracy is an apartheid and genocidal state. International institutions denied Jews the right to self-determination. The Hague conducted, and is still conducting, scandalous criminal proceedings that indict the victim and not the hangman. Throughout the world, Jewish communities, Jewish families and Jewish individuals feel surrounded by a ring of persecution and hate.

However, because the Oct. 7 massacre was such a brutal attack on the Jewish state, we failed to see that it had a third dimension: an attack on the free world.

The animalistic attack by Hamas demonstrated that the West faces imminent and immediate danger from people with 11th century values who have acquired the ability to conduct 21st century combat. Participation by Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Shiite militias shows that we stand against Iran, a regional superpower with many proxies, and the backing of two global superpowers: China and Russia.

This means that this just war is not only our war, and it is not only the war of the Jewish state and the Jewish people. This war is the war of everyone who wants to prevent the Chinese-Russian-Iranian-North Korean axis from destabilizing the global order. This historic war is the war of everyone who wants to prevent the new barbarism from threatening humanity with sophisticated conventional weapons and nuclear weapons.

Because Israel was struck by trauma on Oct. 7, 2023, it is completely focused on the first two dimensions of the war and has ignored the third.. The horrific pain and deep anxiety made us focus only on ourselves and our clear, just cause. The truth is that to win this war, we must also imbue it with the third dimension, which we have ignored. We must turn this war from one of the Jewish world to one of the free world.

This change is particularly essential given the turn of strategy in September and October, which has greatly strengthened Israel, but has also turned the battle into a high intensity regional war. Now we are directly challenging Iran; now we are in all-out war against Hezbollah; now we must define the course of Gaza after the death of Yahya Sinwar. We will not meet these missions without the intimate cooperation of the moderate Arab world and without a true alliance with the respectable Western world. Just as Britain could not defeat Nazi Germany by itself, neither can we defeat extremist Iran by ourselves.

The hour has come to complete the operations of the Israel Defense Forces, Mossad and Shin Bet with a comprehensive strategy and a proactive foreign policy. We need to redefine the battle in order to enlist the free world in a war of freedom, culture and stability with Israel as its forward stronghold.

*Editor’s Note: The Green Line or 1949 Armistice border is the demarcation line set out in the 1949 Armistice Agreements between the armies of Israel and those of its neighbors (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) after the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.