By The Jewish Faculty and Staff Association | Guest Contributor
For the Jewish people, Simchat Torah is supposed to be a joyous holiday. Meaning “The joy of the Torah,” the holiday celebrates the end of a cycle of reading from the holy text and the beginning of a new journey of prayer and learning. In a usual year, synagogues are filled with singing, dancing and laughter. This year, however, Simchat Torah was marked by a heinous terrorist attack against thousands of innocent men, women and children in Israel. Instead of singing and dancing, Israelis — as well as citizens from dozens of other nations — of all ages, from young children to elderly Holocaust survivors, were massacred in their homes, on the streets and at a music festival.
The perpetrators of the attacks are a genocidal terrorist organization called Hamas. The goals of Hamas are clear, as are its tactics. Hamas seeks the elimination of both Israel and the Jewish people. Do not take our word for it; listen to the leaders of Hamas in their founding charter: “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.”
The group not only calls for the “obliteration” of the state of Israel but also plays on centuries of the vilest anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracies to call for the murder of all Jews around the world. This is not a complicated matter. They say it plainly and with pride. Hamas rejects the idea of peace and the right of Jews to exist as a people. Once again, listen to them in their own words: “Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. … There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”
Sadly, for the Jewish people, this is not a new story. Some of the victims of this latest terrorist attack were survivors of one of the 20th century’s greatest horrors: the Holocaust and the Nazi attempt to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the Earth. Listen to the leaders of Hamas speak, read their proclamations, watch them celebrate the death of young Jewish children, and you will see and hear the echoes of Hitler, the pogroms in Russia, and centuries more of vile and violent hatred against the Jewish people.
There is honest and healthy debate to be had about Israeli politics and the path toward permanent peace in the region. But Hamas wants to play no role in that discussion. Hamas wants nothing but the death of the Jewish people. It has said so for years, and this Simchat Torah, we watched in horror as they sought to make good on their word.
We cannot dismiss what Hamas says as hyperbole or propaganda. The Jewish people have paid the price before when the world turned a blind eye or refused to believe the genocidal declarations of antisemitic groups. Never again.
