On October 7, 2023, in the evening, I got a WhatsApp message from a friend in America.

She didn’t tell me she was horrified that 1,200 people — including not only Jews but also Muslim,s Christians and Thais — were killed, raped, kidnapped, tortured in Israel.

Young people at a dance festival, farmers taking care of cows and crops, elderly people waiting at bus stops, families waking up on Saturday morning…

She wasn’t concerned about that. She didn’t even ask about my family and me. Her concern was only about what would happen in Gaza.

In the hours after the October 7 invasion, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, a campaign that had already been in place began to shape public opinion around the world. I always thought it was a strange coincidence that at every demonstration, from Australia to Vancouver, protests against Israel had the exact same chants, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” (The question to ask is, free of what? The answer: free of Israel, democracy, coexistence, Christians, Bahai, Druze and Jews.)

Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, said,

“A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.”As Warren Kinsella points out in his book, “The Hidden Hand: The Information War and the Rise of Antisemitic Propaganda,” the propaganda was prepared in advance, and launched on October 7. Thousands of fake accounts on social media shifted the focus away from Hamas’ genocide of Jews so that the victims of the attack — Israelis — were stripped of our legitimate right to self-defense.

No genocide, no starvation, and no truth: many of the “journalists” killed were actually active Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists who participated in the October 7 atrocities. Photos of malnourished children were deceptively used to mask pre-existing medical conditions despite mothers being visibly well-fed. (What kind of mother would eat in front of her starving child?) Israel even paused combat for polio vaccinations. The casualty figures are massively inflated, and any destruction in Gaza rests entirely on Hamas for embedding its soldiers (who never wear uniforms, so they can look like civilians) inside hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Islamic terrorists don’t care about their own people. They only care about destroying Israel. And destroying the West next.

They don’t call for peace. Ever. They don’t want compromise. They don’t want a two-state solution. They don’t want Israel to withdraw to its 1967 borders. They don’t want Israel.

In my work as a reporter at The Times of Israel, I’ve had the privilege of witnessing people in Israel show resilience, courage and creativity. I’ve talked to people who are still doing research, even after their labs were destroyed by Iran in June 2025 for the sake of humanity in cancer and outer space, and Israeli surgeons who travel to Zambia to train pediatric heart surgeons.

We will soon have elections and hope for a change in the government. And to keep surviving and thriving and living and growing and hoping and giving and celebrating life. We will endure.