Community keeps moving forward

Two years on from October 7, 2023, the wounds are still raw. For our brothers and sisters in Israel, the physical scars are everywhere – 48 hostages, many no longer alive, remain captive in Hamas terror tunnels. Border kibbutzim are still half-empty, with destroyed sections a daily reminder of the horrors they endured. The site of the Nova Festival is now a shrine to the beautiful young souls murdered.

The mental scars run even deeper. Families mourn loved ones lost on that tragic day, or while in service since, protecting their homeland. Many Israelis remain displaced, unable to return to the communities they spent years helping to build. Young mothers struggle alone while their husbands are sent to fight in Gaza for months at a time. Soldiers return from the front lines suffering PTSD, forever affected by what they have witnessed. The nation is struggling to stay ahead in what is becoming an acute mental health crisis.

Adding more insult to this already fraught situation, Israelis have watched the world turn against them and towards their butchers. As Israel fights to get its citizens back, it is routinely accused of war crimes, deliberately targeting civillians and hospitals, and the worse canard of all, genocide. Western nations, including our own, have lined up to reward Hamas’s gory killing spree with recognition of a Palestinian state.

At home in Australia, antisemitism has reached levels that are unheard of in the last two years.

But if Jewish history has taught us anything, there is always light. This too will pass.