In carrying out its attack on Israel, Hamas was furthering the work of Hitler’s Third Reich in exterminating the Jewish people. Adolph Eichman, the architect of the Holocaust, whose ashes ironically lie on the seabed off the Mediterranean coast of Israel would have been proud of them. My wife said at the time that Hamas was taking a page out of the Nazi playbook, and I replied that “yes, they are, but they are also writing new ones.”

On the morning of Oct. 7, Hamas executioners crossed from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel intent on slaughtering innocent civilians wherever they found them; at home, asleep in their beds, in their cars or enjoying music in the open air. Everyone; the young, the old, teenagers, small children, newborn babies, expectant mothers were fair game in their bloody mission of extermination. The “lucky ones” if those are the right words, were herded back into Gaza to be used as pawns by Hamas.

I awoke that Saturday morning to the sight of missiles impacting in Israel. Then we saw pictures of Israeli bombs and artillery shells exploding in Gaza City. Later came live coverage of surviving Israeli civilians fleeing the carnage and heading north into central Israel and some degree of safety.

All this brought forth memories of another October Saturday in 1973 when Egyptian forces crossed the Suez Canal attacking Israeli forces while Syria attacked in the north on the Golan Heights in the Yom Kippur War. Israeli forces suffered severe early loses but in the end were victorious.

In 1967 during the 7 Days War and in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War Americans depended on the likes of Walter Cronkite in New York TV studios explaining the war using maps, interviews with administration officials and reporters on the scene trying to make themselves understood over crackling telephone hookups. In 1967 the pictures of the fighting we saw was film shot by news cameramen and flown to New York and shown a day late on the nightly news. In 1973 coverage was much the same with some grainy film transmitted by satellite.

But this new war is more immediate. We saw scenes of Hamas executioners carrying off men, women, and children into captivity taken with smart phones. We saw both Israeli and Palestinian dead. Fox’s Trey Yingst in a live feed described a “house of horrors” on a Kibbutz its floors smeared in blood, uneaten food sitting on the dining room table and pictures of children playing sports taped on the refrigerator door.

The anti-Israeli protests that began in this country and elsewhere shortly after the initial attacks are very disturbing. At Cornell University Derron Borders a diversity and inclusion director came under fire over social media posts supporting Hamas and dismissing the terror group’s slaughter of innocent civilians as a “resistance.” Protesters at a massive anti-Israel rally on the steps of the Sydney Australia Opera House were heard to shout “Gas the Jews.”

Shortly after the attacks students at Harvard and other colleges and universities charged that Israel was “entirely responsible” for Hamas’ mass slaughter of Israeli citizens. These students condemned Israel as a perpetrator of imperialism and supported the Palestinians’ fight for land, likening their existence in the slums of Gaza to apartheid. Some denied the slaughter that occurred in Israel on Oct. 7 was real.

Following an ugly incident at Stanford University a lecturer was suspended late last week after asking Jewish students to raise their hands and then making them stand in a corner while calling them “colonizers” and downplaying the Holocaust and defending murderous Hamas terrorists as “freedom fighters.”

Many of these students and even their professors are probably under the impression that following the Holocaust European Jews were moved to Palestine robbing the Palestinians of their homeland.

That is not the case. Palestine is also the Jewish homeland, and they have a long history in Palestine dating back to the 13th century B.C. In 135 A.D. following a failed Jewish revolt against Roman rule Emperor Hadrian expelled the Jews from Palestine. Both the Jews and the Palestinians are descended from the Canaanites and are closely linked genetically.

Over the centuries many Jews desired to return to their ancestral homeland, but it was not until the late 19th century with the rise of antisemitism in Europe and the beginning of the Zionist movement that the purchase of land and Jewish immigration to Palestine began in earnest. This became a torrent with the rise of Hitler in Germany. In 1948 Palestine was to be partitioned into Jewish and Palestinian states. The Palestinians and the Arab states rejected this, but Jewish leaders agreed leading to the Formation of Israel on May 15, 1948.

One wonders how these young students who are supposedly among the best and brightest could be so stupid. Perhaps it can be attributed to the intellectual rot thinking that pervades our education system. Some of these young people who casually call for “gassing the Jews” are likely only aping ignorant people who casually call those with whom they disagree and hate racists, fascists, or white supremacists.

Finally, I stand with Israel in this war against antisemitism.

Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com