Three years after Oct. 7, we are watching history being hijacked in real time. 

The sheer volume of hashtags, slogans, political overtures and sweeping accusations against Israel and the Israel Defense Forces is overwhelming. The noise seeks to drown out the people at the center of the story on Oct. 7. 

Oct. 7 was not a distant event that happened far away. Millions of us watched it unfold on television and social media, some of it in real time. 

I witnessed the immediate aftermath firsthand in the days that followed. 

What I saw after Oct. 7

On Oct. 8, I mobilized through the reserves and returned to active-duty service to put my 37 years in the Israel Defense Forces into action. I joined the IDF Southern Command and went south. 

I had led soldiers into combat. I had lost soldiers. I knew what war looked like. What I saw in the communities near the Gaza border was different. 

I saw the devastation of families murdered in their homes. I saw the destruction left behind by terrorists who had crossed into Israel with the intention of killing and kidnapping. I saw soldiers fighting to regain control of communities and military bases. I saw what Oet. 7 had done to the people of Israel. 

Those were not statistics. They were people. 

Yet three years later, much of the public conversation has moved far away from them. 

Hashtags and slogans have become shorthand for complicated geopolitical arguments. Sweeping accusations against Israel and its soldiers are repeated as fact, without the history or context behind them. The war........

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