Usually, remembering gradually becomes less sad.
The first year, everything is raw. Every birthday or holiday is a first without the loved one you have lost. In time, you make the cruel discovery that time really does heal all wounds. Then suddenly there is a day when you did not think of the departed, and it feels almost like betrayal. As if your loved one is dying all over again because you no longer think of them every single day.
As the years pass, the memories fade. Occasionally there is still a pang of pain because you can no longer share something with that person. More often, you can smile at a precious moment that suddenly comes back to you. In the end, the grief turns out to be in the past and you live in the present. And that is as it should be. It would not be healthy to stay in that first pain for ever.
But 7 October is different. Every year I dread it more than the year before. Every year the grief is greater, as are the despair and the gloom. Will this ever get better?
Three years ago
In the first days after that Black Saturday, there was the shock of all the horrors in the kibbutzim and at the Nova festival. While the terrible news was still trickling in, the second shock came. Everywhere, hatred of Israel erupted. Images from all over the world: screaming mobs with Palestinian flags and hatred of Israel. People celebrating and handing out sweets.
Then the fighting began. Israel fought to bring the hostages home and to take out Hamas, and afterwards Hezbollah, the Houthis and, finally, Iran. At the same time, there was that other battle: the propaganda war. The Netherlands, too, said it stood behind Israel. Of course Israel was allowed to defend itself. But it had to be proportionate.
Have you ever heard of any other country being urged, after a horrific terrorist attack or an invasion, to be sure to fight back proportionately? Only Israel receives conditional support, after which the whole world hovers over the battlefield with a magnifying glass to see whether Israel is really abiding by humanitarian law of war.
And then came the lies
As early as 17 October 2023, our ‘quality media’ came out with the news that Israel had committed a war crime by bombing a hospital in Gaza City. Hundreds dead! Fact-checks followed. But far from all media issued corrections. And those that did often did so reluctantly. On 13 February 2025, the NOS wrote that this had ‘never been fully cleared up’.
But however outrageous that first lie was, at least there was widespread indignation about it. Even in the bubble of the ‘quality media’, it was mentioned that it might not have been true. Soon, more lies followed, and fewer fact-checks. The most important source on Israel and Gaza? Al Jazeera, Qatar’s propaganda channel.
After all, why believe Israel, a free democracy, when you can believe the terrorists instead? ‘The Gaza Ministry of Health’ became a ‘reliable’ source. Activists who demonstrably lied were given free rein in our ‘quality newspapers’. Parties that were once progressive marched in Red Line demonstrations without ever asking for facts again.
Antisemitism is allowed again
How far we have sunk… Amsterdammers of Moroccan descent posted videos online in which they cheered: ‘We’re going on a Jew hunt!’ Israelis were hunted down, beaten up and thrown into the canal, but our media worked hard to shift the picture. The Jew hunt was rebranded as the ‘Maccabi riots’, and in the end it was business as usual: ‘blame the Jews’.
The ‘quality newspapers’ publish antisemitic columns under the guise of press freedom, but they remove columnists who stood up for Israel. In the quality newspapers, too, there are absurd stories about the wickedness of Israelis, straight from Hamas’s playbook. But the NGOs and activists peddling them were long ago declared saints. And ‘do you have any idea how unreliable Israel is?’
The D66-led government is at the forefront of anti-Israel measures. UNRWA and the PA get their bags of money. Ties to terror? That must be hasbara. Our government knows who the bad guys are: Dutch people who still buy dates from Judea or wine from Samaria. Suddenly the Dutch tradition of tolerance is old-fashioned: six years in prison if you buy a souvenir from East Jerusalem!
Remembering in 2026
It is 7 October again, and we are commemorating the cruel slaughter of three years ago. In Trouw, a ‘quality newspaper’, I read that this was ‘proportionate violence’. The burning alive of entire families. The abduction of the elderly and of babies. The slaughter of hundreds of young festivalgoers. All the sadistic rapes. All of it was proportionate violence.
Our national news broadcaster, the NOS, released a video aimed specially at young people. The history of Israel through a propaganda lens. Palestinian terror barely exists, if at all, and Israel’s voluntary withdrawals have been skilfully airbrushed out. When omissions are not enough, there are always lies to be invented. ‘Do you have any idea how bad Israel is? It wants to occupy half the Middle East.’
On 7 October the anti-Israel activists will demonstrate. Their message echoes through Dutch railway stations: ‘Do you have any idea how bad Israel is?’ Just a moment while you decide which banner to carry. Simply ‘Hup Hamas’? Or perhaps ‘We support Hamas’ after all? And then the chanting: ‘5, 6, 7, 8, throw those Zios in the canal!’ Rest assured, nobody will hold it against you. Tomorrow it will be the Jews’ fault again.
We commemorate the pain of 7 October 2023 and would like it to grow lighter. But every day is a little darker than the last.
Usually, remembering gradually becomes less sad.
But 7 October is different.
This article was originally published in Dutch.
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