Israel

Remembering October 7th

Preface by Karl-Heinz Paqué

Exactly 14 months ago, on the 7th of October 2023, the worst massacre against Jews since the Holocaust took place - by the terror organisation Hamas. This past weekend, commemorations of this atrocity were held all over the world, also in Berlin (organized by the German-Israeli Society at the Brandenburg Gate). Still today, more than 100 Israeli hostages are held in captivity.

Below we publish a speech written by Ariel Segal, a senior political advisor to Yair Lapid, the chairman of Yesh Atid, the Israeli liberal party, which is not part of the Netanyahu government, but in most active opposition to it. I personally met her at the recent congress of Liberal International in Santiago de Chile.

Ariel Segal, a musician and writer, makes a passionate case for freedom and peace. She speaks as a member of the large and growing generation of young liberal Israelis, who long for a home country that leaves the spiral of death and violence behind it.

Bring them home! 🎗️

Karl-Heinz Paqué

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Ariel Segal's speech

"Ladies and gentlemen,

My name is Ariel Segal, from Tel Aviv, and I serve as a parliamentary advisor to the Israeli Leader of the Opposition, Yair Lapid. I am truly honored to be here, working alongside you to promote our shared values of liberalism, freedom, human rights and democracy.

I'd like to tell you a story. Not a story about nations, or governments, nor about leaders nor statesmen. It is a story about people, my people, the people of Israel.

About people who so desperately desire an end to this war, who long day and night for the hostages to return home and live freely, and for the hundreds of thousands of evacuees from north and south, to find their way back to safety in their homes and communities.

This is the story of people who want the suffering to stop. On both sides. People who share the same values as you. People who continue forth every single day, demanding the return of the hostages, insisting upon change. People whose rational, moderate voices are too often drowned out, overshadowed by the words of extremists', which echo across the media and on social networks.

It is the story of the living hell that has become our life for more than a year now, since the terrorist organization Hamas attacked Israel, carrying out the cruelest, most inhumane massacre perpetuated against Jews since the Holocaust.

This massacre led to one of the most horrifying wars we have faced in the history of our beloved country – the only homeland to the Jewish people in the world. A war forced upon us. A war that I, and the "Yesh Atid" party I represent here, urgently wish to come to an end with our hostages returned home to us.

On October 7th, on the Jewish holiday of Succot, we all awoke at 6:30 in the morning to a relentless barrage of rockets across the country – 2,200 rockets fired in just twenty minutes. The hours that came after, changed us forever. They brought with them horror, grief, and pain we had never known, and even today we have yet to find the strength to piece the fragments back together. During those hours, thousands of Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israeli territory, invading kibbutzim and cities.

Many of the Israelis living in these kibbutzim were peace activists. On October 6, a large group of them had made plans to fly kites of peace and hope along the Gaza border, as a sign of belief in a better tomorrow. The next day, these same Israelis were tortured and murdered by Hamas terrorists in their own homes, butchered in their pajamas. Entire families were extinguished with a barbarism that cannot be comprehended.

The images of that day are unspeakable: children’s bodies bound together, a dead pregnant woman’s stomach ripped open, her baby stabbed while still connected to its mother by its umbilical cord, women bleeding from gunshot wounds to their genitals, their breasts mutilated, men castrated. This is only part of the evidence as to the sexual violence, gang rapes, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7th.

I want to tell you the story of the more than 240 Israelis who were kidnapped to Gaza – children, the elderly, women, and infants, helplessly taken from their beds and homes. Since then, dozens of them have been murdered in captivity. Today, 101 hostages remain trapped in the depths of hell in Hamas’ tunnels. Those who survived and returned shared harrowing testimonies of horrific physical and sexual abuse, unbearable fear, hunger, and relentless suffering. Some were even held in cages. Even today, the Red Cross has neither visited nor viewed the inhumane conditions in which they are being held.

I would like to tell you the story of kibbutz Nir Oz, home to 400 Israelis. One in every four members of this community was murdered or kidnapped. The community left behind is a heartbroken one, displaced from their homes, yet unwilling to give up on their dreams of a peace-filled future.

I want to share with you what happened just a few kilometers away from Nir Oz, in a pastoral forest. That night, 4,000 young people gathered to dance among the trees at sunrise, taking part in a music festival whose message was one of peace. A festival that turned into a massacre which involved some of the most horrifying slaughters of that day. Nearly 400 young people were murdered there.

Survivors’ testimonies describe the screams of the women as they were raped, followed by the haunting silence of death. First responders describe scenes of women burned, decapitated, and found with their legs splayed open – the now-mute witnesses of unfathomable brutality.

I want you to know about Ruth, a 17-year-old girl with muscular dystrophy, intellectually disabled, wheelchair-bound. Ruth was also a devoted fan of music festivals. On October 7th Ruth attended this festival with her beloved father, Arik, who cherished spending time with his daughter at the festivals that made her happiest. They never returned. It took 12 days to identify their bodies. Hamas terrorists murdered them with unimaginable cruelty. Ruth’s wheelchair was found far from where their bodies were discovered.

Israel is a small country – the only democracy in the Middle East. It has been scarred by wars and is surrounded by threats on many fronts, yet it is also the one and only homeland we Jews have ever had, and remains so today, even after thousands of years in exile. It is deeply precious to us.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is not an army of salaried soldiers. It is an army of the people. All Israelis are all required to enlist when we turn 18, to contribute our part in ensuring the survival of our homeland and safeguarding the security of our state. Every day since October 7th, we wake up to yet another obituary, another father leaving behind orphaned children, another shattered family weeping by a grave, another heartbreaking image in the newspaper of young people who will forever remain twenty years old.

We are a nation overwhelmed by grief and funerals. We so desire an end to this conflict, long for the return of the hostages, and yes, peace.

I want to tell you about what happened nearly a year after the horrors of October 7th. Millions of Israelis civilians spent hours cooped up inside bomb shelters, listening to the deafening sound of hundreds of ballistic missiles launched at us by Iran. I, too, sat in the shelter of my apartment building, wondering where I could run to, if terrorists suddenly appeared, hell-bent on murdering me, just as they had done to other Israelis a year before.

Only 30 minutes before the start of Iran's attack that night, a brutal shooting had occurred on the Tel Aviv-Jaffa light rail, in my hometown. Those terrorists murdered seven people and injured 15 more. One of the victims was Inbar, a 28-year-old woman who shielded her infant son, Ari, with her body, saving his life at the cost of her own.

How much more pain must we endure? How much more loss?

I want to tell you the story of Majdal Shams, a small Druze village in the north of Israel. At the end of July, I visited there. The road leading north was a war zone, a desolate path with fires clinging to the underbrush in what was once one of the most beautiful areas in our land. At the end of summer, there should have been many tourists there. But not this summer. The day before, a rocket fired by Hezbollah struck a soccer field next to a playground, killing 12 children who were playing football on a Saturday afternoon. Dozens of others were injured, leaving the village forever scarred.

When we visited there, the parents of the murdered children asked us for one thing: to bring back the hostages and to bring peace. They asked that there be no more weeping of mothers.

One of the most beautiful Jewish psalms asks, “Who is the person who desires life?” and then provides the answer, “[They who] seek peace and pursue it.” We are asking for that peace.

The situation in the north has resulted in devastating casualties and unprecedented destruction. All residents of northern Israel have been evacuees for more than a year now. The same horrific plans for massacring civilians, carried out by Hamas in the south, were intended to be executed in an even more brutal manner by Hezbollah terrorists in the north. The relentless rocket fire from both the north and south has become an almost daily occurrence—the soundscape of our lives. And with it, Israeli civilians lose their lives in attacks every day. On this occasion, I would like to welcome the ceasefire in the north.

We did not want this war, but we have had no choice but to fight it. And now, we want to gather our broken pieces, rebuild our hurting country, and also pursue the peace we grew up dreaming of and will forever strive to fulfill. And then, we will create it.

You see, as I mentioned at the beginning, I work for the Leader of the Opposition in Israel. I cannot be mistaken as someone who is supportive of the most disastrous government in our history which currently leads our country, but I am here to represent the moderate, centrist majority in Israel – the majority which shares the same prayer and dream for a different future. The Israelis that believe in the liberal values this organization promotes, and will never stop working to advance them.

Thank you very much."