OPINION:
Wednesday marks three years since the day that Hamas murdered more than 1,200 people in Israel and took another 251 hostage.
Now, 1,096 days on, what is the situation for the Jewish state and the Jewish people?
Things are not great, though that could be the Jewish motto.
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Approximately 2.2 billion people worldwide — 46% of the world’s adult population — now hold “antisemitic attitudes,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. That was more than twice the number the ADL found in the same survey a decade ago.
Last year was the “deadliest year for Jews outside Israel” in more than three decades, with a total of 23,000 antisemitic incidents across the globe’s seven biggest Jewish diaspora communities, according to the J7 Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism.
Inside Israel, where citizens have left in relatively large numbers over the past three years, the national spirit flags. Commodity prices have skyrocketed. Housing is critically scarce.
There is more than a whiff of leftism in the air.
Recent polling shows the new centrist-liberal Yashar party, led by former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, leading Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud in most surveys. Predictions show Yashar gaining more Knesset seats than Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud in this month’s Israeli general election.
This does not bode well for Israel. That is because two comparatively bright spots for Jews and their continued existence are in the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon. Though significant work remains, Israel under Mr. Netanyahu has made meaningful progress in both.
Hamas still rules Gaza, despite the IDF controlling 64% of the area, but the terrorist organization has been weakened considerably.
“If Hamas tries anything, it will encounter IDF forces at the front,” a senior security official recently told Israeli news outlets Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth. “Our defense no longer begins at the border fence, but inside Gaza. We have stable and very strong control here.”
Israel has eliminated two-thirds of the terrorists responsible for the Oct. 7 massacre, its military intelligence revealed Sunday.
The IDF has also diminished Hezbollah’s power in southern Lebanon, having eliminated most of the group’s top commanders, including its secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, and seriously damaging its special operations unit, the Radwan Force.
In Lebanon and Gaza, the IDF has destroyed key terrorist infrastructure, including miles of underground tunnels. In Lebanon, it has established secure buffer zones, reducing the number of rocket attacks on northern Israel.
Globally, multiple attacks and would-be attacks on Jews and Israelis have occurred in recent days and weeks. On Sept. 30, a jihadi pilot reportedly tried to crash a Tel Aviv-bound FlyDubai flight containing 174 passengers — 27 of them children — into the Ben Gurion Airport or a multistory building.
That the accused attacker, identified as Omani pilot Hamam al-Hammami, failed in this goal and that all 174 people were safe after the plane made an emergency landing in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, was primarily because of the quick thinking of a few ordinary passengers. They reportedly used headphone cords and zip ties to restrain the pilot.
In September, in Berlin, a woman wearing a Star of David pendant around her neck was reportedly attacked with a broken glass bottle as two men yelled epithets.
In August in Florida, a Jewish New Yorker was punched in the head while his suspected attacker spewed antisemitic slurs and anti-Israel remarks at him.
In July in London, a Jewish building superintendent was stabbed in the back and reportedly called a “Jewish terrorist.”
So “things are not great” is putting it mildly. Yet here is the kicker: Israel is winning. It is beating back the terrorists who have tried since the modern state’s inception to drive it and all its inhabitants “into the sea.”
In a way, the violent, vociferous Jew hatred we see from all corners of the planet is the best evidence of that victory.
Quitting now — which is what removing Mr. Netanyahu from power this month would amount to — would undo all the hard work Israel has done and all the progress it has made in the past three years.
On this important and terrible anniversary, here is hoping that Israelis continue to fight the good fight. Those of us out here in the diaspora are behind you.
• Anath Hartmann is deputy commentary editor for The Washington Times.
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