As though it’s two parallel universes . . .
The one, ours, where in a sense it’s still Oct. 7. A world where the consequences, reverberations and very real ripple effects of that day still collide with our lives, be it on a collective level or for survivors and other families intimately impacted on that day, to the very personal, individual level — grappling with maimed bodies, lost loved ones or scarred, traumatized IDF soldiers.
Oct. 7 is the red thread corded through our lives these past (almost) three years.
So much is seen, understood or refracted through that profoundly painful prism.
Then, it seems, there is much of the rest of the world, suppressing the Oct. 7 trauma, the genesis of this current new age we find ourselves in.
Often, news is spoken of in a vacuum, without the obvious inception or correlations made, ignoring the reason for the news. As though global issues and threats and Iran and Hezbollah and military retaliations and anti-Semitic escalations all fall out of nowhere.
They’ve forgotten. Or deliberately suppressed or ignored, placing an amnesia or veil of silence over Oct. 7 by design — dispersing the connected dots. Much of the world is falling for this.
Yes, there are different layers of coping with the tidal waves of grief that still live. There are Israelis who muster the energy to move forward. Daily tasks. Perhaps a healing summer trip. Relaxing in the mountains or the quiet charming villages of, perhaps Italy, Austria or Alsace.
But there are those for whom the lava of Oct. 7 never ceases to boil within them.
They are branded by the trauma, stuck. A raw wound that refuses to heal, close or scar.
Not everyone recovers.
Even nearly three years later.
People enduring this torment may walk among us.
PTSD is very real.
And invisible.
But like a chronic choking vice, Oct. 7 has settled deep in the recesses of their souls as it tightens its hissing coil around their necks.
Survivor guilt. Holding on. It’s excruciatingly exhausting.
This week a tragic entanglement of two brothers lives told the story that many are still carrying.
One brother’s joyous wedding night as he married his bride, the other brother, Bar Ashraf, present and participating in the festivities, warmly hugging his family. Only to disappear afterwards.
Within the frantic search for her brother’s whereabouts, three days after the wedding, his sister’s feet led her to Liron Barda’s grave.
She knew.
Liron Barda was tending the bar at the Oct. 7 Nova Festival when the rocket attack and ensuing butchering massacre ensued.
Liron was certified in First Aid. Instead of saving herself, she stayed on, putting her emergency First Aid skills to use, working furiously under raining rockets to save as many lives as she could. Until, she herself was murdered.
Liron and Bar Ashraf were inseparable, the dearest closest of friends. “Soul mates,” as his mother said.
Bar had taken his life at Liron’s grave.
His brother celebrated his union with his bride, the start of their joined lives together.
Wrenchingly, Bar went and reunited himself — in death — with his Liron.
In this heartbreaking tale of two brothers, the one brother’s week of sheva berachot merged with the other brother’s shiva days of mourning.
He couldn’t take the pain anymore. The mental pain so chronically inescapable and crushing overrode life’s greatest instinct and urge: to live. To survive.
That was the depth of his agony. And gut wrenchingly, there are other traumatized Nova survivors and traumatized IDF soldiers who have taken their own lives.
Why does it often seem like there is no room in the world we seem to be inhabiting for honest acknowledgement of Oct. 7 and the torment it has unleashed on Israel and so many Israelis?
Instead, it’s the diametric opposite.
What kind of society are we developing into?
I can’t keep up.
Another burnt Jewish owned kosher restaurant. More shul goers provoked. An Israeli in the Philipines heard speaking Hebrew, sickeningly beaten, by a bystander from Spain. A Jew stabbed mere feet outside his shul on Tisha b’Av.
Not to mention the the anguish of the loss of innocent civilian life in wartime.
And the many survivors who day in day out walk around carrying chronic, invisible pain.
This is the world we are living in now in 2026.
The real universe.
That the barbaric Oct. 7 butchering set into motion.
© IJN 2026
