Trigger Warning: War is not for the faint of heart. Atrocities even less so. There will be no photos or clips in this post of the Arab atrocities perpetrated against Israeli civilians. Yes, Arab atrocities. Thousands of regular Gaza residents rushed through the fence alongside Hamas terrorists on October 7th; not Palestinians as that’s a political statement and not based on historical reality and not only Hamas militants. Regular Arab residents of Gaza. There will be, however, heartwrenching stories. The world needs to know these stories. You need to know these stories. Please don’t turn away.

It’s been over two weeks since we all woke up to a different world than the one in which we went to sleep on October 6th.

A world where thousands of young people, whose only crimes were being Jewish and wanting to join each other in dance and music, ran for their lives, chased by gunfire, many of them falling dead or, worse, alive, to be raped and dismembered or taken captive.

A world where entire families crouched in terror in a locked room in their homes, listening to terrorists inside their homes destroying all their belongings and trying to get into the locked rooms. Some succeeded. They went on to torture, and burn alive, fathers, mothers, grandparents, and children of all ages.

A world where boyfriends threw themselves on grenades to save their girlfriends.

Where grandparents jumped into their private vehicles to drive into the line of fire to rescue their grandchildren.

Where middle-aged lawyers and other non-combatants drove back and forth through the fields where the Nova music festival took place, under fire, in order to rescue wounded young people.

A world where Arabs joked, laughed, and ate a family’s Shabbat meal in front of them as the family, including young children, sat with their hands tied behind their backs and were repeatedly beaten by other Arabs.

Where infants were beheaded in front of their mothers’ eyes.

Where a heavily pregnant woman’s belly was torn open, and the fully formed fetus stabbed to death before the woman was shot and killed.

To call the perpetrators of such atrocities animals is a grave insult to animals. The word ‘inhuman’ falls way short of this reality.

At least 1400 people were murdered on October 7th, most of them Jews, but also foreign workers from Thailand, India, and other countries. Not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been mercilessly and horrifically killed in one day.

A five-year-old boy buried his parents and all his siblings. A fifteen-year-old boy, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, who went out for an early morning run that day, buried his entire family. Many entire families were buried side by side with no one left alive to say Kaddish (the Jewish prayer of mourning) for them or to sit shiva for them. Parents buried two daughters, their only children, and others their two sons.

And then there are those held captive by Hamas inside Gaza – over two hundred of them; men, women, children, babies, the elderly, those with special needs. One can only imagine the conditions they are enduring. It literally keeps me up at night. It should keep us all up at night.

Shockingly we are seeing demonstrations in the United States and other places supporting Hamas. It’s unfathomable but true.

The biggest difference between the Arab atrocities carried out on October 7th and the evil carried out by the Nazis is that today Jews have a strong army and a country of our own.

Yes, our army was caught unaware.

We were fooled into complacency by our own hope for co-existence and the belief that the Arabs could abandon their age-old hatred and join us in creating a utopia in the Middle East. But the army has rallied and reorganized in dedication to put an end to Hamas once and for all.

We’re already seeing cries of sympathy for the “innocent Palestinians” and warnings to Israel not to carry out the incursion into Gaza which is necessary to uproot and destroy the Hamas. Social media has begun to tip from shock at the atrocities perpetrated on Jewish civilians to crocodile tears for the Arab residents of Gaza who have sheltered Hamas rockets in their basements and on their roofs, in their schools, hospitals, and mosques. celebrated the murder of Jews in the streets, and trained their children in summer camps and schools to kill Jews.

What other army in the world has given adequate time for civilians to evacuate the area to be decimated by bombs? Did the Allies exhibit such humanity to the citizens of Dresden? Were British civilians treated so humanly before the blitz?

What other country delivered humanitarian aid to their enemy in time of war?

As Golda Meir said, “If we have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have a bad image.”

Every person living In Israel today carries huge sadness, immense anger, deep grief, and destructive stress around every day. Every single person wants to be useful to others. Wonderful initiatives crop up daily and immediately there are more volunteers than each project can handle. We each cope with the horror and tragedy in our own ways – mostly in positive ways.

Our people are so strong. Even the evil to which we have been witness cannot defeat us.

You have an important choice. To stand on the side of Western values – human values – or to stand on the side of atrocities and terror.

It’s never been clearer.

Where will you stand?