More than two years have passed since October 7, 2023, and I still feel as though my world was divided in two on that day. It marked a before and after in my life, all the more so because I split my time between Jerusalem and Montreal.
At first, like so many others, I was in shock. But shock does not last. For me, it gave way to a constant state of alertness, grief, and uncertainty. I kept reading, watching, and listening, trying to understand what was happening as events unfolded, while realizing that the assumptions I had once lived with no longer held.
By nature, I am not quick to draw conclusions. I take time to observe, absorb what I am seeing, and sit with it before I speak. In some ways, that has helped me over the past two years. It has kept me grounded while everything felt unsteady and prevented me from being swept away, no matter how intense the emotions were.
Like many who care about Israel, I found that what I had been working on before October 7 was pushed aside. My attention shifted. I began following the news constantly on television, radio, social media, WhatsApp groups, and online platforms I had barely noticed before. I wanted to know what was happening, what was true, and what was being hidden or distorted.
The Story and How It Was Told
Over time, I began noticing something that disturbed me almost as much as the events themselves: the way the story was being framed.
I became much more aware of how Western media coverage is shaped not only by facts, but also by assumptions, language, ideology, and by what is emphasized and what is left out. Journalists often talk about balance, but I do not think most of us fully realize how much bias can shape reporting, sometimes subtly and sometimes quite openly.
I found myself asking different questions than I might have before: not just “What happened?” but also “Who is telling this story?” “What words keep getting repeated?” “What context is missing?” and “Whose voices are being included, and whose are being left out?”
Those questions matter because they shape how people understand the world.
Francisco Gil-White, a scholar I quoted in a previous post (07/05/2024), argues that much of what people think is true comes from the media. I think he is right. If what you are being shown by formerly trusted news sources, such as the CBC, is distorted, your perception will be distorted too.
History gives us a terrible example of this. Nazi Germany did not rely only on violence, It relied also on a well oiled propaganda ministry of newspapers, radio and film. When propaganda is repeated so often and so forcefully, lies can come to feel like common sense.
Der Stürmer, one of the Nazi newspapers, portrayed Jews as greedy, corrupt, and dangerous. It was Hitler’s favourite paper. It did not merely reflect hatred. It fed it, organized it, and gave it legitimacy. Its editor, Julius Streicher, was later convicted at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity and hanged, rightly so. Words matter. Repeated lies are never “just words.” As Proverbs 18:21 notes, “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.”
That truth feels painfully relevant now.
What shocked me after October 7 was how quickly people began minimizing the horrendous Hamas attack on peaceful men, women, and children in their homes. Before the dead were even buried, and before anyone fully knew what had happened to the hostages, some were already explaining it away. Elsewhere, people openly celebrated. And in some circles, the massacre was discussed in such detached terms that its human horror seemed to disappear. To them, Jewish life seemed to have no inherent value. Quite the opposite.
I do not think I will ever get over that.
I saw this developing on social media, in public demonstrations, and often in mainstream reporting too. Hostage posters were torn down. Jewish students on university campuses were made to feel unsafe. Rallies erupted in cities around the world, with no concern for what Israeli families had just endured. In some cases, slogans crossed the line from political protest into open hatred and violence. Schools and synagogues in Montreal and Toronto were also attacked.
Whether I am in Montreal or Jerusalem, I listen to CBC Radio One 24/7. I often come away frustrated. Not every report is unfair, but much of the coverage feels skewed against Israel; Israeli sources and mainstream Jewish community voices are not heard nearly enough. I listen to both.
This reality is central to my experience: not only have I witnessed war while living in Israel, but I have also confronted the unsettling realization that truth itself can be shaped, bent, or lost in times of crisis. That realization lies at the heart of what these last two years have meant to me.
Solidarity with Israel: What Broke and What Held
Before October 7, many Israelis and most Jews believed that Israel’s defences were strong enough to prevent an attack on that scale. That belief collapsed in a matter of hours.
The border was breached. Families were murdered in their homes. People were burned, tortured, kidnapped, and left helpless for hours. For Israelis, this was not just a military failure. It shattered their sense of security that the army and the government could protect them from the enemies that they knew surrounded them on every side.
Yet something else emerged alongside that loss.
I was in Israel on October 7, and what I saw in the days that followed is something I will never forget. Citizens mobilized immediately. People opened their homes. Volunteers appeared everywhere. Families sent sons, daughters, husbands, and wives into reserve duty. Reserve soldiers hastened to fly back to Israel to take up their posts. Almost right away, people began sending food, clothing, supplies, money, and whatever else was needed. Ordinary citizens stepped in even before official systems were fully operational.
That response has stayed with me. It reminded me that while Israel can be deeply wounded, it is not easily broken.
Many Jewish communities outside Israel also rose to the occasion, including those in Montreal. Our Montreal Jewish community mobilized quickly through rallies, vigils, fundraising, gatherings, prayer, and conversation. There was fear, but there was also determination: to stand with Israel, with the hostages, and with one another.
That solidarity was not abstract for me. In January 2024, I joined the Montreal Federation Mission of Support and Witness to Israel. That experience made everything feel even more real. Kibbutz Nir Oz had been a peaceful community, and now it lay in ruins. We visited it and were guided by a former member of the kibbutz who had known every family, where they lived, and what had happened to them on October 7. In Sderot, hearing firsthand accounts from the police who had been on duty that day, and watching footage from the cameras, brought home the terror of that morning in a way headlines never could. At the Nova site, the scale of the loss came into focus through the individual photographs of the hundreds of young people murdered there. Their photographs were mounted on row after row of wooden posts, standing in silence across the vast rolling green space beneath the clear blue sky.
But we witnessed also something else: Mayors caring for displaced residents, hospitals adapting to wartime pressure, universities developing practical tools to respond to trauma and dislocation, volunteer centers operating at full speed, and farms relying on volunteers because so many regular workers were gone. Again and again, what stood out was not only the suffering, but the determination to keep on going. Israel is not only a country at war. It is also a society in which people show up for one another with resilience and solidarity, even in the hardest moments.
Bring Them Home Posters and Signs: The Names We Carried
The hostage crisis weighed heavily on Jewish communities for a long time. Their faces were everywhere. Their names were spoken in synagogues, at rallies, around dinner tables, and in private prayers. Families travelled across countries and continents, pleading for attention and action. In Montreal, regular weekly public marches and gatherings helped ensure they were not forgotten.
As time went on, the reality changed. Some hostages came home alive while others did not. Some families were reunited; others endured unbearable loss. Even as the details changed, the anguish remained. The hostage crisis became a shared wound, not just a political issue.
But the hostage crisis was never the only source of grief. Alongside it was the grief of war itself: soldiers, barely out of their teens, being killed, civilians traumatized, families uprooted, and children carrying far more than they should. The losses keep coming, and even when the news moves on, the pain does not.
What Has Kept Me Going
More than anything else, it has been my Jewish identity that has kept me going through all of this.
I do not mean that in a vague or superficial way. I mean that Jewish memory, Jewish practice, Jewish community, and Jewish faith have helped keep me steady at a time when so much has felt shaken and unstable. When this crisis began, our rabbis urged us to strengthen Jewish life through prayer, reciting psalms, performing mitzvoth and acts of loving-kindness. That was wise advice. In times like these, action matters, ritual matters, and community matters. They help keep despair from taking over.
I also keep thinking back to a trip I took in the summer of 2023 with my Montreal synagogue congregation and our rabbi, Reuven Poupko, to Poland. We visited major Jewish historical sites, concentration camps, and other places marked by the horrors of the Nazi onslaught. Rabbi Poupko and our guide, Tzvi Sperber, both of whom have led thousands of Jews, young and old, on this journey, helped us understand not only the destruction but also the richness of Jewish life that had existed there for a thousand years before the Nazis destroyed so much of it.
That experience came back to me as I watched this Aish Living Legacy Experience video, recently posted by our guide, Tzvi Sperber, in which he embarks on just such a journey. The video captures something deeply important: not only the darkness of what was lost, but also the resilience, continuity, and enduring spirit of the Jewish people.
That memory has become even more important to me since October 7. Jewish history is full of horror, but it is also graced with heroic stories of survival, rebuilding, and the determination to embrace hope for the future. Our shared story is proof that communities can endure even in the face of distortion, adversity and tragedy.
That knowledge has given me strength.
Still Living in the Aftermath
As I write this in the spring of 2026, I do not feel that the events of October 7, 2023, are behind us. We are still in a state of war, and the consequences are still unfolding. The region remains unstable. The arguments continue. The grief remains, and the old confidence is gone.
But something else remains, too: solidarity, courage, and the refusal to surrender our humanity.
The world before October 7 is gone for me. I see things now that I did not fully see before. I understand more clearly how fragile safety can be, how quickly antisemitism can rise to the surface, how easily truth can be twisted, and how important it is not to lose one’s balance.
But I also see more clearly the strength of ordinary people, the depth of Jewish resilience, and the enduring power of belonging to a people who refuse to disappear.
That is where I find myself today: saddened, changed, more alert than before, but still standing and still believing that, despite everything, we do not give up on one another.
Am Yisrael Chai. The Jewish people live and continue to thrive!
notes and sources
Media Coverage, Narratives, and Antisemitism
The following are sources I consulted and referenced above in relation to media coverage, public narratives, and antisemitism:
Hirsch, Abigail. “Francisco Gil-White: Jews, Israel, Media Narratives, and Antisemitism.” AskAbigail Productions, 5 July 2024, www.askabigailproductions.com/francisco-gil-white-jews-israel-media-narratives-and-antisemitism.
“Der Stürmer.” Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/tags/en/tag/der-sturmer.
“Julius Streicher: Biography.” Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/julius-streicher-biography.
NGO Monitor, ngo-monitor.org. Founded in 2002, NGO Monitor describes itself as a globally recognized research institute that examines NGOs through the lens of accountability, transparency, and universal human rights. It is a project of the Institute for NGO Research, which has held Special Consultative Status with the UN Economic and Social Council since 2013.
HonestReporting, honestreporting.com. HonestReporting is a nonprofit media watchdog focused on coverage of Israel. According to its mission statement, it argues that biased or inaccurate reporting distorts public understanding of Israel and influences public opinion.
Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), www.memri.org. MEMRI is a nonprofit research institute that says it bridges the language gap between the Middle East and the West by translating and analyzing Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, and other regional media. Its work is often used to examine material that may not appear, or may appear differently, in English-language coverage.
Support, Solidarity, and Remembrance
Reuters. “LIVE: Pro-Israel Rally in Washington, DC.” YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUjClJAZVW0. This Reuters video documents a pro-Israel rally in Washington, D.C., held to show solidarity with Israel and condemn antisemitism.
“What Is Yom HaZikaron and How Does Israel Observe It?” IDF, www.idf.il/en/mini-sites/our-soldiers/what-is-yom-hazikaron-and-how-does-israel-observe-it. This official IDF page explains Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s memorial day for fallen soldiers and victims of terror.