When Moran Stella Yanai spoke in Denver in November, 2025, I said to myself, I have to go. How many opportunities will there be to hear this first-hand testimony?
During all those months that we prayed and advocated for the release of the remaining hostages, it often felt like a fantasy. It still feels like a miracle that so many have been reunited with their families, that all of the living hostages are back home.
Some have found a way to speak publicly about their ordeals. It is impossible for me to imagine the kind of inner fortitude this takes.
By speaking out, recounting the horrors, they are doing an immense service to the Jewish people and humanity as a whole. When we listen to and publish their stories, read their books, watch their interviews, we play a role in helping ensure their testimony is heard, and part of the historical record.
Perhaps it seems unnecessary to concern oneself with the historical record. After all, Hamas itself videoed and livestreamed its massacre.
But the day after released hostage Romi Gonen recounted the brutality she experienced at the hands of Hamas, including sexual assault, a number of prominent so-called “pro-Palestinian” activists demanded of The New York Times that it rescind its reporting of sexual assault by Hamas, accusing the Times of racist reporting. For the Greta Thunbergs of the world, reporting that reflects poorly on a group of people — in this case, Hamas terrorists who are Arab — must be false. Never mind that we all saw the videos we wish we could unsee, we all saw the video of Shani Louk, may her memory be a blessing. The Greta Thunbergs of the world seek to tell us we don’t know what we know.
There’s a term for this, a term heard ever more frequently in this distorted world we live in: gaslighting. It’s when a bad actor slowly convinces a person that he or she is going insane. Last weekend, I finally watched the 1944 film that popularized the term (adapted from the Patrick Hamilton play of the same name). There’s a reason why Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar for the film. Her portrayal of a woman whose reality is slowly being eroded by her husband is so frighteningly good I had to pause the movie once or twice for a mental break.
Scariest is that the mechanism for gaslighting can be relatively easy to put into place, especially when the victim has suffered some kind of trauma. It’s why the testimonies of the hostages is so vitally important for each and every one of us to hear.
There will be people — there already are — who deny what happened on Oct. 7, 2023.
We must not allow them to have the last word.
Shana Goldberg may be reached at shana@ijn.com.
