I’m certain that you don’t know this about me: I was born several decades ago on Simchat Torah. In fact, during childhood my mother would affectionately call me her “Simchat Torah” baby and alternatively, but no less affectionately, “Pumpkin,” signifying the proximity of my date of birth during that year to Halloween. A truly Jewish-American nickname experience.

As such, being a child of the 1970s and an amateur purveyor of Jewish history, well aware of what transpired in the 1973 Yom Kippur attack, the war that followed and the public outcry and rage at the Israeli government, then led by Prime Minister Golda Meir and her Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan, I had a very idiosyncratic thought in the days after October 7th. That is to say, shortly following the attempt to wrap my mind around the brutal events that transpired, including the massacre, the abductions of innocent Israeli citizens and a slew of other horrors known to all (even if denied cynically by some already on October 8th for the purpose of spinning a political narrative), in my mind arose a selfish and embarrassing thought: “Just don’t let this be called the Simchat Torah War”.

Never could I have envisioned the level of gaslighting and cynical strong-arming revisionist “his-story” enfolding before my eyes during the last few weeks in my beloved chosen country, our Israel.

If you are unaware (or don’t have time to keep up with the headlines here in Israel, perhaps because there are similar tactics being used on the U.S. political and media stage, and the human mind can only sift through so much misinformation and convenient rebranding), let me summarize.

The current government and its head(s) have been actively pushing the narrative of the October 7th War as the War of Rebirth, Redemption and/or Revival (all synonyms for the Hebrew word תקומה) for a while now, along with the unattainable goal of “absolute victory”.

During the past few weeks, this attempt to color the narrative of a dark day with rosy hues for future generations, has reached new levels of cynicism and revisionism. Netanyahu and his spin machine have been presenting very specific passages of government protocols from before the massacre to the members of his government and to the press. All this while at the same time, the government has been in the process of creating a committee, ostensibly investigating the events of October 7th. Not a State Commission of Inquiry ((ועדת חקירה ממלכתית , as legally mandated, but rather one wherein the proverbial cat can stay close and guard the proverbial cream of information and informants, the so called “Government Commission of Inquiry” (ועדת חקירה ממשלתית). Oh, what a difference a word makes!

But the last and most recent straw came in the past few days. And it is the most infuriating and cynical of all steps of rebranding to date. All of a sudden, this government, who called the events of October 7th on the international stage throughout the past two years “a massacre” and “a Holocaust”, all of a sudden, they’re done with that narrative. A new proposed bill to be voted in to law, directly handed down from the Office of the Prime Minister, rubs out the use of the word Massacre from the graves of the fallen soldiers and from the future official remembrances, including museums to be built and ceremonies to be held.

Today it was reported that if the family of a fallen soldier does not wish the words “Fell in the War of Revival” to be written on the official headstone in a military cemetery, then nothing will be noted regarding that soldier, except his/her name and the date of birth and death. Officially, if there is no legal stipulation allowing a family to change the wording, a family cannot make a request to have written that their brave, beloved child was a soldier in the events of October 7th, was killed defending innocents in the massacre or anything to that effect.

Think about it: What if in the mid-1970s, the government of Golda and Dayan had refused to take any responsibility for its part in the oversight, and the Yom Kippur War had been rebranded “The Second War against the descendants of Pharaoh” or some other nonsensical rewriting of history? It is tantamount to saying that soldiers whose families protest the use of gaslighting terminology, just disappear from the ability of future generations to identify them!

The prominent French historian Pierre Nora (1931-2025) wrote passionately about the concept of “lieux de mémoire” or sites/realms of memory. Nora notes that because organic collective memory has disappeared in modern times, in order for there to be a collective connection of a people to their past, there must be official sites of memory – archives, monuments and commemorations. In his writings, Nora specifically exalts and praises the Jewish People as essentially “a light among the Nations”, in this field. He points out that the Jewish People are prominent leaders because of our way of preserving our narratives and our history by way of holiday traditions and ceremonies, like Our Passover Seder and other rituals. We are a People that understand how truly important it is that the power of memory reside in the hands of the people, the common man, woman and child. And how important it is not to forget. Or lie to ourselves about our suffering throughout the generations and at the hands of whom.

It is said, “To the victor go the spoils”. Among other things, this means that the victor gets to write the history, the narrative. But if we know ANYTHING from our long history of persecution and triumph, it should be that we cannot become spoiled because of our victory. There was a massacre. We had no choice but to overcome. Just like we always have.

Because since the days of Masada and before, and even in our most recent history of persecution and genocide in the 20th Century, we have learned not only that we cannot forget, but also that we MUST not.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)