"Sexual trauma always raises the question: 'Did it happen? Show me the evidence'."

"People ask for video clips or photographs.The survivors do not owe anybody anything. They only owe themselves the chance to recover. There was a clash between the well-being and mental health of survivors and the demand -- from foreign governments, journalists and others -- for stories and evidence."

"The stories belong to the survivors. Some survivors of sexual violence from Nova [Music Festival] do not want to speak publicly. They do not want the stigma. That should be accepted and respected."

"The public does not understand the scale [of the atrocities], because it is not only direct victims, it's survivors from captivity, Nova, the kibbutzim and the military."

"It is also first responders and people who handled bodies."

Orit Sulitzeanu, executive director, Association of Rape Crisis Centers, Israel 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu places a wreath at a memorial ceremony for the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, at Mount Herzl Cemetery, Jerusalem, on Monday, October 5, 2026.   Debbie Hill/Pool/Reuters

 

Videos? There were videos galore, taken with body cams worn by some among the thousands of Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas into southern Israel on October 7, 2023 for the very purpose of chronicling the sadistic bestiality they planned to carry out among Israeli girls and women. Videos that were proudly shown on social media so they could elicit praise from the admirers of terrorism. Many of whom would later deny that this was terrorism, merely a long-overdue reckoning of an oppressed people; oppressed because the Jewish state would not turn over its ancestral heritage to Arab colonizers.

 

The Israelis who lived near the border of Gaza in collective farming communities -- kibbutzim, were firm in their belief that kindness and helpful understanding of the plight of Palestinians living in poverty in Gaza would result in mutual friendship. Hiring Palestinians for agricultural work, giving them the opportunity to earn fair wages, to enable them to raise their families with a guaranteed income providing the necessities of life, and more. And to demonstrate just how accepting the kibbutz residents were, eating their meals alongside the invited Palestinians in the collective dining rooms.

 

Friendships were indeed made, and trust went with it. Among the kibbutznik help offered to Palestinians requiring medical attention whereby they would be driven to Israeli hospitals to receive needed medical care, for hospitals in Israel treat everyone in medical need. There appeared to be no cautionary approach but one of open wholesale acceptance. That there are no real differences between the Israelis living on the opposite side of the border to Gaza, and Gazans themselves. All are human, and worthy of care and consideration.

People attend a memorial service in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, southern Israel, where many community members were killed and abducted on Oct. 7, 2023. (Ariel Schalit/The Associated Press)

 

And then came that early morning rocket barrage; not too unusual at any time, but a diversion on this occasion, to mask a more direct threat, that of thousands of dedicated terrorists from Islamic Jihad, the PLFP, Fatah and Hamas who flooded across the border after bulldozing down the protective barriers and dispatching the Israeli border guards who fought superior numbers and died or were taken captive as hostages. 

 

From there to the kibbutzim where unaware Israelis became targets for instant death. Among the terrorist horde were ordinary Palestinians, some of whom knew the layouts of the kibbutzim quite intimately, some of whom had drawn maps to instruct the invaders where each kibbutz's security center could be found, the security members neutralized before the intruders fanned out and shot at people waiting for buses, barged into homes to torture and kill children in front of their parents, parents in front of their children.

 

Where homes with their residents locked into safe rooms were torched and everyone inside burned to death. The site of the Nova Music Festival nearby, swarmed with terror operatives opening fire on those attempting to flee, firing through the walls of small huts where young men and women gathered to huddle together in the faint hope of not being discovered and survival. Where women caught fleeing were gang-raped, their bodies mutilated, limb from limb.

 

A newly completed study from the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel expected to be released in the new year was geared to studying possible recovery of survivors of sexual violence of that fateful day when savagely depraved men with no conscience shoved metal rods into women's vaginas, even grenades. And nor did the captured men escape sexual violence before their gruesome tortured deaths. The ARCCI's  2024 report -- Silent Cry: Sexual Violence Crimes on October 7, assembled an account of sexual and gender-based violence during and after October 7. The awaited report examines long-term impacts of the sexual trauma.

 

"The health system -- like therapists, hospitals, security personnel -- did sensitive work. They initially met and questioned released hostages. They were generally trauma-informed: they understood not to ask what did not need to be asked. But three years later, what is hugely missing is a national initiative to help people navigate mental health, rehabilitation, employment and bureaucracy. If people do not have someone helping them through the system, they can hardly survive. This will take a decade", explained Orit Sulitzeanu.  

 

The scale and scope of the widespread suffering of those who directly experienced and survived the atrocities, including those who were witness to them, represents a national tragedy as well as a national responsibility to care and to nurture wounded psyches back to health, if at all possible. The horrors of the acts of inhumanity that took place on October 7 are well enough known internationally. Skepticism yet abounds, and what's perhaps worse, disinterest.

 

Commuters in Tel Aviv conduct a moment of silence on the highway as part of a memorial ceremony on Wednesday. (Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images)

 

A severely wounded country reacted as would any other nation following the broad and unforgivable human rights violations that beggar the imagination and brought pain and suffering throughout the country and traumatized the wider Jewish community throughout the diaspora. And yet despite the shock and pain, Jews once again found themselves abandoned by the larger, broader community in countries where they have lived for generations upon generations. 

 

Israel which had suffered such a devastatingly grim wound found itself facing hostile condemnation by its putative allies who aligned themselves with the Palestinian propaganda machinery painting Israel as the aggressor and Palestinians the long-suffering victims who had merely acted out their frustration of a people denied their future state. Terrorists shielding themselves behind and among a civilian population with the direct purpose of saving themselves while submitting civilians to risks of fallout from the response to an unspeakable act of terrorist atrocities used the deaths of those they had manipulated into occurring, as proof of their victimization. 

 

Polls taken by Palestinian polling agents clarify certain realities; in the wake of October 7, with all the details freely available, Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza are in the greater majority in agreeing that the October 7 atrocities had their support, as would reiterations of that vile event. When hostages were being taken into Gaza, both live and dead Israeli men and women, Palestinians were overjoyed and celebratory. Some took to beating the dead bodies of men and women, used as objects for trade in freeing Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons. 

 

The family of Hilly Solomon visits her memorial photo and plaque at the Nova festival memorial site early Wednesday in Reim, as Israel marks the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. (Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

 

"This story has become connected to bigger political arguments about Israel and Zionism. But atrocities are atrocities, whatever one's politics. They should be examined first as human acts."

"Sexual violence does not necessarily leave something a survivor can show the world."

"That makes it easier for people to place everything in apolitical context and say, 'You are lying'. I think that is horribly sad."

Orit Sulitzeanu, Association of Rape Crisis Centers, Israel 

The 'Peacemaker-in-Chief'

"This was the granddaddy of them all. And frankly, I thought this was probably going to be the toughest, and maybe in many ways, it was."

"The prayers of millions have finally been answered. At long last, we have peace in the Middle East." 

"I've been involved in a lot of success. I have never seen anything like what's going on today." 

"Today, for the first time anyone can remember, we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to put the old feuds and bitter hatreds behind us -- and to declare that our future will not be ruled by the fights of generations past." 

"Israel, with our  help, has won all that they can by force of arms. You've won. I mean, you've won. Now it's time to translate these victories against terrorists on the battlefield into the ultimate prize of peace and prosperity for the entire Middle East." 

"The total focus of Gazans must be on restoring the fundamentals of stability safety dignity, and economic development so they can finally have the better life that their children really do deserve after all these decades of  horror."

"I intend to be a partner in this effort." 

U.S. President Donald Trump 

U.S. President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he arrives at Ben Gurion International Airport, near Tel Aviv, on Monday. (Evan Vucci/The Associated Press)

 

The final release of the remaining Israeli hostages from Hamas hands in Gaza is indisputably a diplomatic tour de force, and no one can take that credit away from Donald Trump, the self-lauded master of the deal. From the unitary height of his position as the most powerful, influential man on this planet he exerted the weight he wields to convince all those involved in this ageless saga of suspicion and hatred, sectarian and tribal, to agree that terrorism cannot be permitted to destabilize an entire region, the tremblors of which may threaten the very peace of the entire globe.

 

That accomplished, the equally large challenge of future prospects in that tiny segment of the Middle East was addressed on the surface with the attendance of world leaders from Europe and the Middle East attending the global summit on the future of Gaza, in Sharm el Shiekh. In the absence of  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who declined to attend on a Jewish holiday, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Emir Shiekh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani of Qatar, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pledged their commitment to a future Gaza. 

 

Twenty living Israeli hostages, young men to middle-aged men, captured by Hamas terrorists marauding through southern Israel on October 7, 2023, from kibbutzim and from the Nova Music Festival, were finally freed from the shackles of captivity after two years of starvation, shackles, privation and torture. The exchange price for their release was steep, the freeing of 1,700 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, among whom were murderers of Israelis. The disparity in numbers represents the usual fare paid by Israel for the release from captivity of their nationals from the hands of Palestinian terrorists. Experience has proven that the vast bulk of Palestinians released from Israeli prisons return to the very lethal predations that saw them imprisoned to begin with.

 

Nimrod Cohen, an Israeli hostage released from the Gaza Strip holds an Israeli flag after coming off a helicopter at the Ichilov Hospital, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

 

Now the issues at hand relate to the future of Gaza, to the vital  necessity of having Hamas disarm and surrender their weaponry, which they adamantly refuse to do, much less to vacate the Strip where they have over their years of governing it, transformed the land underground to a labyrinthine maze of tunnels for haven/escape from retaliatory attacks by the IDF following rocket strikes into Israel. Tunnels under hospitals, schools, private homes, apartment blocks, and mosques, where command posts, headquarters, weapons depots, communication stations and more were located. And more recently, subterranean dungeons for Israeli hostages.

 

There are pledges from Middle East nations and Western nations to help fund civic infrastructure, from the West, along with the ME nations to send peacekeepers to Gaza. No one has any solution how best to force Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to depart Gaza, to disarm, to disown their death charters for the destruction of Israel, for the deadly elimination of Jews everywhere. For his part, President Trump is 'confident' that the ceasefire he personally oversaw would be permanent. Skepticism abounds, however, among those with the experience of decades of conflict. 

 

It took no time at all for the realization to sink in that although the living hostages were restored to Israel and to their own lives as free men with a future ahead of them, Hamas failed in its signed obligation to transfer the 28 bodies of those whom they had murdered while in their custody; one woman and the rest Israeli men with the misfortune not to have been able to endure the hardships and psychological deadening of their inhumane incarcerations. The agreement was for the wholesale restoration of all Israelis, alive and dead. That old adage 'time will tell', certainly will. 

 

A crowd gathers around a bus carrying Palestinian prisoners who were released from an Israeli prison as part of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, upon his arrival in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

 

Surprise, Violent Intimidation Works! Jews Need Not Apply...

"For Judaism, the Menorah was chosen over the Star of David due to its purely religious significance, while the Star of David carries political connotations with the State of Israel."

York Region School Board

 

"When the theatre received some threatening phone calls and letters over renting their venue to the Hamilton Jewish Federation for a Jewish cultural film festival, instead of standing up to the hate, they caved to it."

Judy Zelikovitz, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

 

"[The Exhibition had] got a complaint from a group of Vancouver artists who didn't think I should be showing because of the war in Israel and Gaza..."

"She told me they were fearful of being vandalized."

Dina Goldstein, Vancouver art photographer

 

It's open season on disinvitations going out to artists of every form of expression in Canada if they're Jewish, have an Israeli background, empathize with the victims of October 7's rapist dream, even if the art they produce is met with public acclaim for its innovative aesthetic, and presents as authentically unique. The world was treated to a dramatic hate-fest in the recently concluded Eurovision Song Contest when the Israeli entrant in the event held in Sweden was met by mobs who demanded the exclusion of Israeli singer Eden Golan, and other contestants disavowed her eligibility to compete, as an Israeli. 

 

In the final analysis, though she was unmercifully hounded by ravening detractors, requiring a large detail of police protection, she was declared fit to compete and did her country proud. Her vote-expressed popularity by the greater popular vote from the television audience accounting for half the score's total, saw Israel at second place, which ended up balancing the total score which brought a fifth place win to Eden Golan, overturning the contest judges' low approval count. Justice righted injustice in that instance.

Closer to home for the Canadian public, Dina Goldstein, a Vancouver photographer whose Dollhouse photo series staged through a series of tableaus of whimsy featuring domestic scenes using actors representing a Barbie-and-Ken spin-off pair that held a large public appeal, was cancelled for inclusion in an exhibition at the Vancouver Centre of International Contemporary Art. Born in Tel Aviv, organizers of the exhibit, citing fears of vandalism cancelled the appearance of her art. 

In The Dollhouse    Art Mur

 

Jewish holidays are denoted by the York Regional District School Board with an icon of a menorah. Holidays of other religions are marked with representative symbols such as a cross for Christians, and the star and crescent for Islamic holidays. Administrators had avoided using the Star of David for Jewish holidays although it is Judaism's traditional symbol, for fear of alienating non-Jews, and reminding students of its link to Israel. A public backlash convinced the school board to change to the Star of David.

Non-Jewish playwright Christopher Morris who wrote The Runner -- the story of an Israeli volunteer paramedic attending the aftermath of a terror attack, deciding to treat the suspected Palestinian perpetrator instead of her Israeli victim -- which had enjoyed great acclaim for its "accessible yet poignant conduit for audiences to better understand the people and the fractured lives that are to be found in the fissures of this heightened political and social division", which failed to save it from the ignominy of cancellation.

The Belfry Theatre in Victoria, British Columbia faced a strong backlash when it decided to capitulate to protesters who had vandalized the venue with "Free Palestine" stickers and graffiti in their 'cultural boycott' of any performance art that had the even remotest link to Israel. Despite that the petition presented to the Belfry to recant the cancellation had far more signatures that the petition that demanded the play's cancellation, they upheld the cancellation justifying it by claiming the play "Does not ensure the well-being of all segments of our community."

 

The Playhouse Cinema in Hamilton had agreed to host a three-day Hamilton Jewish Film Festival in early April. Three weeks prior to the festival's start, the festival was informed they would not, after all, be welcome in view of "safety and security concerns at this particularly sensitive time", citing "numerous security and safety related emails, phone calls, and social media messages" targeting the Playhouse Cinema. Israeli filmmaker Yahav Winner, (murdered by Hamas on October 7)'s The Boy was to have been screened.

Leah Goldstein in 2005. Photo by Mark van Manen/Vancouver Sun

In Peterborough, Ontario, an International Women's Day event was to have featured cyclist Leah Goldstein  who had three years earlier become the first woman to win the solo category of the gruelling endurance Race Across America. Pre-event promotions had featured the address by this award-winning cyclist who planned to describe her life story of overcoming 'bullies, sexism, and terrorism'. She was cancelled for the sin of having been born in Canada, but raised in Israel.

Massive international pressure overturned a decision by the International Ice Hockey Federation to cancel the Israeli national team which had some Canadian players on board because, they were informed, their safety could not be guaranteed at the arena in Bulgaria where the tournament was located close to a "large student population from the affected areas in the Middle East". Although their decision was reversed, for future tournaments the IIHF has crossed Israel off the roster even though Israel swept the tournament, winning gold.

International Ice Hockey Federation