President Franklin Roosevelt, speaking to Congress in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan, described that date, December 7, 1941, as "a day which will live in infamy." It was an apt choice of words; it rallied the American people, and in the wake of that speech, the United State declared war and we waged it, turning all of our industrial might against the Axis powers until they lay utterly crushed.
Today, we observe the third anniversary of another day which will live in infamy: The October 7, 2023 attacks by the Islamic terrorists of Hamas, out of Gaza, into Israel, resulting in the greatest mass murder of the Jewish people since 1945 and which produced a laundry list of atrocities that decorum prevents me from describing here.
So now, three years later, where are we? How has the civilized world dealt with this clear and present danger that is Islamic extremism? Various news organizations are marking the day by noting the numbers: the numbers killed, the numbers injured, the numbers taken as hostages.
Three years ago, Hamas carried out the deadliest attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust. Today, Israel is remembering the victims of Oct. 7 while building new ways to ensure their stories are never forgotten. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people, injuring thousands, and taking 251 hostages. Of those killed, at least 809 were civilians, including at least 280 women and 40 children. Now, the places scarred by the attack are becoming places of remembrance. At the Nova festival grounds, photos and personal memorials honor those killed. Trees are being planted for victims, while Israel has passed a law paving the way for a national memorial, museum, and archive dedicated to preserving testimony and artifacts from that day. Three years after the attack, Israel is working to make remembrance permanent, preserving the names, faces and stories of those lost for generations to come.
— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 7, 2026
Three years ago, Hamas carried out the deadliest attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust. Today, Israel is remembering the victims of Oct. 7 while building new ways to ensure their stories are never forgotten.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people, injuring thousands, and taking 251 hostages. Of those killed, at least 809 were civilians, including at least 280 women and 40 children.
Now, the places scarred by the attack are becoming places of remembrance. At the Nova festival grounds, photos and personal memorials honor those killed. Trees are being planted for victims, while Israel has passed a law paving the way for a national memorial, museum, and archive dedicated to preserving testimony and artifacts from that day.
Three years after the attack, Israel is working to make remembrance permanent, preserving the names, faces and stories of those lost for generations to come.
That's all to the good. But what else has been done? What has been done to address the threat? On the tactical side, Israel has been seeking payback. The Jewish nation estimates that 6,000 Hamas terrorists took part in the attack. Israel has located 4,000 of them to date, and they have not arrested them, they have not brought them to trial. They have treated the Hamas murderers as one would any mad dog; they are being killed on sight. That's how this kind of thing should be handled; these people are not a formal military nor are they simple criminals, they are armed irregulars operating in a conflict area without uniforms, and under the traditional laws and usages of war, may be killed without any other recourse.
Israel has been admonished for these acts, for daring to resist against armed extremists who want every Jew in Israel murdered or enslaved. That's hideously unfair to Israel, which, we might note, is the only nation in that part of the world that not only has an elected government, but in which members of religions other than their state religion can participate in that government. The Israeli government and the Israeli military have always allowed Israeli Muslims, Israel is roughly 20 percent Muslim, and under Israeli law they are treated as any other citizen. Try to find any majority-Muslim nation that does likewise. Even so, even now, three years after the Hamas atrocities, American and European leftists complain about Israel committing genocide, about Israel being an apartheid state; if that's their claim, a moment's research will tell one that there is no genocide, save the one Israel is preventing by force of arms — the genocide of the Jewish people that Hamas and other groups would willingly commit. And if Israel is an apartheid state, then they are the worst apartheid state ever, since non-Jews freely live in Israel and are citizens in every sense of the word.
But in the years leading up to 10/7 and the years since, the problem behind the attack is spreading. There is a weird alliance of sorts between the American and European far left and extremist Islam, a sort of alliance of convenience that the leftists don't seem to realize would end very badly for them, especially for the inexplicable "Queers for Palestine" half-wits. Now, right now, the influx into Europe in particular, the waves of "migrants" entering much of Western Europe and the United Kingdom, are beginning to run afoul of some serious pushback by the people of those countries. The governments of those countries, however, continue to allow the influx, they house and feed the invaders at taxpayers' expense, and if local people object to the invaders being placed in their towns, near their homes, their churches, and their schools, in some cases the authorities have actually locked down the free people of a town who dare to protest. And now, even now, as we observe the third anniversary of that horrible day, riots are raging in France, and a quick look at photos and videos of those riots tells one very plainly that many of the rioters are not of French descent.
Three years ago today, a date which will live in infamy, a horror occurred. I remember, as though the images were burned into my brain, on that day and the days following, sitting here at this desk, watching events unfold, and realizing the utter horror of what I was seeing. I know many of my colleagues look back on that day with equal horror. We will live with the memories of those images, those video clips, for the rest of our lives.
And even so, we have to remember, the threat is still out there, and not only in Gaza, not only in the Middle East. There are people like this here, among us. And the solution to this conflict, in the end, will by necessity not be a social solution, a political solution, or a religious solution. It will be a military solution. It has come to that. And, it has already begun, as the theocrats in Tehran are learning to their regret.
This is, as I have been saying and writing for years, the fundamental, defining conflict of our time: a conflict, not of civilizations, but of civilization vs. barbarity. It's a conflict we have to win, we must win, lest the world be plunged into a new Dark Age, and there's no guarantee that there will ever be a new Renaissance to lift us out of it.
This day, of all days, we must remember this.
