Oct. 7 was a brutal, savage sneak terror attack by Hamas in which they raped, kidnapped and murdered Israeli civilians in their homes, in their beds, at a music festival, wherever they could be found, in the worst day of slaughter of Jews since Hitler’s Holocaust. That’s what Oct. 7 is and that always must be remembered as the world marks three years since the bloody pogrom.

But these past three years Oct. 7 has also come to be remembered as part of a series of wars and battles in the Mideast, from Gaza to Iran; the standing of Israel in the international community amid false claims of genocide; growing antisemitism directed at Jews globally, including here in New York; and the political fortunes of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu.

But Oct. 7 is about murdering Jews. That must never be forgotten.

The harrowing video compiled from the cameras used by captured or slain Hamas gunmen and from Israeli security cameras shows a shockingly cruel terror onslaught, not a military operation. These unlawful combatants intentionally targeted civilians to inflict fear, which is terrorism.

That was the plan of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, sponsored by Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei. He plotted to have the sneak attack resonate like other acts of treachery such as Pearl Harbor or 9/11 and to stop the strengthening of ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The Gaza/Israel boundary on Oct. 6, 2023 was quiet. There was a ceasefire in place that Friday. The next day was Shabbat and also the joyous Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. The morning’s peace was broken by Hamas with an explosion of murder.

The Hamas attack precipitated a major war in Gaza as Israel struck back to recover the hundreds of hostages stolen and where Hamas intentionally hid its fighters among civilians to maximize casualties in the population, knowingly sacrificing thousands of Palestinian lives to score propaganda points as Sinwar and Hamas took cover in their underground tunnels. Both Arabs and Jews were hostage to the crimes of Hamas.

Of the 251 hostages, just 168 came back alive, the last of them only last October, after more than two years of being held in dungeons for the offense of being Israelis.

Hamas also launched thousands of rockets aimed at civilians in Tel Aviv and elsewhere and the barrage in the air was joined by their allies Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen and the Iranians. They all targeted civilians, which is terror.

The horror of Oct. 7 has been eclipsed in the eyes of too many by what followed in Gaza. The worldwide festering of antisemitism has found fertile ground in the extreme left and extreme right, stoked by rhetoric and propaganda aimed at Israel. That is a harder disease to cure, a warping of minds against Jews, wherever they live and whatever their beliefs and actions.

The legacy of Oct. 7 has been lost in the fog of the divisive debate over Gaza and the future of the Middle East.

But Oct. 7 was about unthinkable brutality, the slaughter of infants, women raped, the elderly taken hostage. It was not war. It was not freedom fighting. It was terror.

The truth of that day must not be distorted or forgotten.

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