“It was a pogrom.” These were the words of Brandeis University Professor Ilan Troen describing the events that led to his daughter Deborah’s death. They were on the phone when she and husband, Shlomi, were murdered by Hamas terrorists who launched a brutal attack on Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.
The word “pogrom” stems from organized, government-sanctioned attacks of Jewish villages in Russia during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Pogroms also describe the actions of European Crusaders who attacked and burned Jewish villages on their way to the Holy Land. Pogroms meant wanton violence against Jewish people. Children were not spared. Women were not spared. The elderly were not spared.
Troen’s word choice was accurate and poignant. This was not a military conflict. It was an attack on civilians. As I type these words, there are 900 dead, a number sure to rise. Of those who were not killed, around 100 were taken hostage. The dead and the hostages include men and women, young and old. To be clear, the hostages include infants and the elderly. These are not the actions of peacemakers. Hamas are not noble freedom fighters. Their charter calls for the extermination, not just of Israel, but of all Jewish people. Based on the motivations and the sheer barbarism, it was absolutely a pogrom perpetrated with the same ferocity as the Cossacks and the Crusaders before them.
Pogroms, we thought, were in the past. In 1905, the Kishinev Pogrom in Russia shocked the world. Such uncivilized behavior, in the 20th century, was believed to be in the dustbin of history. Kishinev became a catalyst for modern Zionism as Jewish people resolved to be helpless victims no longer.
In 1948, the new state of Israel was born. For the first time in 2,000 years, Jewish people had national borders and an army to protect them. Even those who did not move to the Jewish state, knew, if threatened, there was a place that would take them in. This was glaringly necessary following the Holocaust, during which country after country turned away Jews, consigning them to Nazi death camps. Eclipsing every pogrom, the Holocaust led to the death of 6 million Jews — men, women, young and old all killed for the crime of being Jewish.