Remembering October 7th

On Friday evening October 6, 2023, I played soccer with a group of dads in Brooklyn and had a great time. I went to bed around 11:00 PM EST after a long enjoyable day. On Saturday morning October 7, 2023, I was woken up by my 5-month-old baby at 6:00 AM EST and the first thing I saw was a message on my phone from my mom saying, ‘We’re okay’, which was sent at 11:53 PM EST or 6:53 AM in Israel.? I immediately knew that something bad had happened.??

?I quickly opened my tablet and could not believe what I saw with news alerts reporting a Hamas terrorist attack in Israel. Even though initial reports estimated ‘at least 20 killed and hundreds wounded’ as the hour unfolded the seriousness of the situation began to permeate.? By 6:50 AM EST my mom’s messages put things in perspective ‘… it’s still going on. We were woken up by a siren at 6:20AM and then our neighbor from across the street was pounding on our door because she doesn’t have a shelter’. My dad, a Middle East history expert, added ‘this isn’t going to end quickly’.?

?It took a long time for the world to fully understand the extent of the horror of what had happened on October 7 and the degree of the atrocities, damage and destruction committed by Hamas.?Hamas had taken 1,200 civilian lives, including children and elderly, and over 250 people were taken hostage with over 100 still held in incredibly inhumane captivity.?Israel is a small country, smaller than the State of New Jersey, and any type of a tragedy or conflict can personally impact a large portion of society. In my case, aside from hearing of personal losses that occurred to friends of family members, it took a few more weeks until I discovered some very difficult news. While I was going over a list of known hostages captured by Hamas in a Wall Street Journal article, I recognized one of the names listed – Sagui Dekel Chen. I knew Sagui well, he was a former teammate of mine on the Israeli National Baseball Team.? We played together in a tournament in Italy in 2004.??

In the early morning on Saturday, Sagui was working when he saw a heavily armed group of men trespassing into the kibbutz. He ran home and made sure his wife and kids went inside the shelter, and then went back outside to face the armed men and defend his home. He was kidnapped and is still being held by Hamas in Gaza.? There has been no news or signs of him since then. His pregnant wife and two kids survived in the shelter.? His mother was captured by Hamas but managed to escape right before being taken into Gaza.? His father, who used to live in Park Slope Brooklyn and was abroad that day, has met with the Biden administration numerous times and published an?essay in the New York Times?sharing his perspective.?

?As we mark the tragic anniversary of this horrible day, the deadliest single day for world Jewry since the Holocaust, the situation has not gotten any better.? Sagui’s family and many other families of the hostages are still going through this nightmare and begging for a deal to secure the release of their loved ones. The war expanded and my family and friends continue to be subjected to fear from missiles being fired at them from multiple fronts, and far too many Palestinian and Lebanese civilians’ lives have been ruined by war and made worse by the cynical use of civilians as human shields by terrorist organizations.??

?I can only pray that next year will bring better news and a return of the hostages alive, back to their friends, families, and homes. I pray for the end of the war and a path to a return to normalcy with an eventual road to healing. Sagui’s wife gave birth to their third child earlier this year, and I hope and pray that he will get to meet his baby one day.? I pray that one day Sagui is woken up early on a Saturday morning to being safe at home with his young family.?