In a moving and powerful speech, Shimon Elkabetz, who lost his daughter in the October 7th massacre, addressed the Sovereignty Youth and called not to forget what monsters we are facing.
Shimon Elkabetz, former commander of IDF Radio who lost his daughter, Sivan, and her friend, Naor, in the October 7th massacre in Kfar Aza, moved the participants of the 7th Youth for Sovereignty Conference held in Sderot with a painful speech.
Elkabetz related about the massacre carried out in the house after Sivan and Naor were pulled out from under the bed by the terrorists. ZAKA workers needed ten days to clean the house of blood.
In his remarks, he mentioned the cornerstone of Hamas's charter: murdering Jews. In his view, just as we learn in our schools values of protecting flora and fauna or honoring the elderly, we must learn and teach that beyond the fence live monstrous beasts whose sole aspiration is the destruction of Israel and murdering its inhabitants.
Elkabetz spoke about the culture on which Israeli society was raised, a culture that accepts the positions of generals, commentators and teachers with complete seriousness and without question, a culture that crashed on Shabbat morning, October 7th. In his remarks, he again repeated statements he said at his daughter's funeral, reminders that the same horrific acts carried out in the massacre were also carried out in the 1929 riots and likewise in the Farhud in Iraq. "They kill, they rape, they dismember, they desecrate," he said, and recalled the Kishinev pogroms in which fewer Jews were murdered than in Kfar Aza alone.
"The Nazis who exterminated six million Jews did everything to conceal their deeds. The monsters of Hamas walked around with cameras and documented live all the horrors they perpetrated. Nowhere in the world is it written that a girl should see her grandmother wallowing in her blood while overcome with fear with a terrorist standing above her with a Kalashnikov in grandma's living room and on grandma's Facebook. Nowhere is it written that a 23-year-old girl, my daughter, writes to friends in her chatgroup 'They're in my house, urgent help.'"
In addition, he mentioned that during all the pogroms we had no army and state, and also on the morning of October 7th we had no army and state. On the other hand, he recalled those who left their homes with pistols to save their slaughtered brothers and sisters in the Gaza envelope. "I don't know in what homes people like these are raised," he said.
Elkabetz calls on the conference participants and all of us to return to the principles of halakhic discourse, discourse of raising uncertainties, contrarian thinking, penetrating discussion just as Moses, Job and others did, without accepting the words of commentators and generals as Torah transmitted to Moses from Sinai. "The story of blindness led us to negligence and negligence led to massacre. We need to reconfigure our entire operating system after the Shabbat of October 7th. The spirit will prevail but alongside it we need to understand that just as we write about the beautiful hair of fallen comrades and elegiac literature about destruction, let them be the ones who write about their destruction and their dead. Let them remember one hundred years from now, and let what they did on October 7th be burned in their memories for generations."
In his remarks, he tied the evil that led the 5,500 terrorists who breached the Gaza fence to the evil of the two terrorists who carried out the murder of the Fogel family and to the evil of the terrorist who murdered Tzeela Gez and her baby Dvir Chaim, may God avenge their blood. "Only a twisted and sick mind is capable of acts of that kind. We need to alter our thinking. The problem is not with them. When we draw childhood heroes, they draw planes smashing the Twin Towers. There's hardly a house where our soldiers didn't find Hitler's books. We were blind and now we need to fix it," said Elkabetz, emphasizing the role of ethical youth connected to their heritage and love of humanity as those who will lead the State of Israel in future generations, and as such they must remember October 7th and its significance.
Regarding Judea and Samaria, Elkabetz said that these days the army operates with concepts different from what existed in the past. "The story of alleyways must be no longer. Not a single alleyway must remain. Only wide roads and huge streets so that the mice who slaughter us when they have the opportunity will have no place to hide. After October 7th we cannot conduct ourselves as before." Addressing the Sovereignty Youth, he called upon them to listen to their inner voice and not stop questioning what is told to them. Then, in the future, the families they establish and the children they bring into the world will signify the victory over the enemy.