Remember, remember the 7th of October

Alex Look was one of eight murdered Canadians. Criticism of Israel has obscured the original cause of the war - Hamas' brutal massacre of the innocents.

Canadian Alex Look was murdered by Hamas on October 7th, 2023

Memory loss is one way of coping with trauma but Raquel Look remembers the events of October 7th, 2023 all too vividly.

The Montreal resident’s 33-year-old son Alexandre was on vacation in Israel and had decided to attend the open-air Nova Festival, close to the border with Gaza.

Described by friends as a “larger than life personality”, Alex was living in Mexico but held ambitions to “make Aliyah” - the process of Jews immigrating to Israel.

At 11.30 am, Raquel got a call from Alex saying the festival site was being attacked with rockets, forcing him and his friends to head for a bomb shelter close by.

Raquel told me in an interview that she didn’t think too much of it because rocket attacks were not uncommon. She spoke with Alex for an hour and a half as more and more young people arrived at the shelter. A guard from the local kibbutz arrived to warn that gunmen were attacking the festival site.

It turned out armed militants in military fatigues had surrounded the festival grounds and were ruthlessly and indiscriminately shooting those trying to escape, executing the wounded at point blank range.

“Alex was trying to stay upbeat, asking what I was going to make for dinner when he got home. But then, he said: ‘Mom, I can’t speak, they’re back and there’s a lot of them’. He fought the first one outside the shelter and disarmed him but then I heard multiple shots and grenades. And then nothing.”

Raquel said a number of people in the shelter survived because Alex acted as a gatekeeper. “I met some of the survivors when I went to Israel at the beginning of May. They said he made a plan and did what he said he would do. It is a miracle anyone survived. I went to the shelter and I can’t imagine 10 people in there - but there were 40. Those who survived were under the dead bodies. They (the terrorists) kept coming back and throwing grenades. And they were elated as they did so,” she said.

If the events of October 7th are etched in Raquel’s memory, they appear to have slipped the minds of many others.

It is not to diminish from the humanitarian crisis in Gaza to point to the barbaric frenzy of killing that gripped Hamas’ al-Qassam brigade on October 7th.

That is why on August 21st - the designated United Nations International Day of Remembrance and Tribute to the Victims of Terrorism - special efforts are being made to remind people of the horrors of Israel’s darkest hours since the Holocaust.

In total, 1,195 people died and 250 others were taken hostage. Eight Canadians died in the massacres that took place all along the Gaza border - Alexandre Look, Vivian Silver, Ben Mizrahi, Judih Weinstein Haggai, Adi Vital-Kaploun, Neta Epstein, Shir Hana Georgy and Tiferet Lapidot.

Raquel said she is “shocked, disgusted and angry” that the Canadian government has responded by saying it will recognize a Palestinian state next month.

“Hamas is saying we got everything we wanted through our weapons. If Hamas is saying that, you are probably on the wrong side of history,” she said.

Hamas has publicly thanked Canada - Ghazi Hamed, a member of its political bureau, told Al Jazeera “the initiative of several countries to recognize a Palestinian state is one of the fruits of October 7th. We proved that victory over Israel is not impossible and our weapons as a symbol of Palestinian dignity.”

The designated terror organization has also been emboldened by Western support for the Palestinian cause, at a time when its resolve appeared to be wavering. There were suggestions in February from some Hamas figures that it need not be involved in the future governance of Gaza. However, at an Al Jazeera forum in Doha, Osama Hamdan, another political bureau member, rejected a security arrangement with Arab/Palestinian Authority forces; said it would not disarm; and, pledged to rebuild to attack Israel again.

It has now agreed to a new ceasefire, under the threat of a major Israeli assault on Gaza City, that would see 10 living, and 18 deceased, hostages released.

But violence and deranged anti-Semitism are so deeply entrenched that you can sympathize with the view that only Hamas’ total defeat can bring change.

The Canadian government’s commitment is predicated on the Palestinian Authority’s promise to hold elections, and on Hamas playing no role in the future governance of Palestine. But it is no position to have any impact on either condition, particularly the second one.

The Netanyahu government has been criticized for not working to create an alternative legitimate Palestinian government in Gaza but it is far from clear there are any potential partners in peace.

A more valid critique is that the Israeli government did not frame the taking of hostages as part of a global campaign against arbitrary detention - a recent United Nations initiative that Canada pioneered. Of the 250 hostages, 138 held foreign passports, including 15 Argentinians, 12 Germans, 12 Americans, six French and six Russian nationals. The Israeli response to October 7th was almost entirely military, when critics argue it should have launched a more concerted diplomatic, legal and political campaign to win international support for its retaliation.

The use of the International Day of Remembrance to honour victims of terror is a belated attempt to do just that.

But it will be hard to shift the negative perceptions of Israel held by more than half of all adults in 20 of 24 countries surveyed this spring by the Pew Research Center.

Raquel Look said many Jewish people no longer feel safe in Canada, and local, provincial and federal governments have done little to protect them.

More broadly, she believes there should be no discussions with the Palestinian about statehood until all the hostages - dead and alive are returned - allowing burial and proper closure.

“I had to wait three weeks to get my son’s body back and that is a level of torture I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” she said.

A man walks past photos of hostages taken on October 7th.

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