Tuesday marks the second anniversary of the October 7 massacre, when Hamas terrorists violated a longstanding ceasefire agreement and swarmed across the Israeli border to plunder and kidnap, kill and rape. Israeli casualties (mostly civilians) numbered around 1,200 killed, 3,400 injured, and 251 captured (including foreign nationals), making it the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust and the second deadliest terror attack of the 21st century after 9/11 (although it claimed a larger proportion of lives among Israel’s much smaller population).

Indeed, many Israelis treat the day as “Israel’s 9/11.” It was a day that seared its sobering realities into the memories of a generation. It was a day that roused the Middle East’s only democracy to confront the brutal menace of jihadi terrorism that assailed its every flank. It was a day that provoked a peaceful people to a campaign of righteous retribution against enemies who sought their “annihilation.”

The gruesome horrors of October 7 are well-documented, often with video footage filmed by the terrorists themselves (or the various hangers-on who accompanied them, including U.N. employees). The terrorists inflicted barbarous cruelty on their victims, severing body parts, beheading babies, and — above all — displaying devilish revelry in their crimes. They killed the elderly, women, and children indiscriminately.

Hamas terrorists then dragged hundreds of hostages back to Gaza, where they endured months — or even years — of further brutality while Hamas played politics with their lives. Israeli prisoners faced starvation, mockery, and physical and psychological torture without even a pretense of justice or human decency. “Inhumane doesn’t even begin to sum it up,” said Victoria Coates, vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation, on “Washington Watch.” “We all know the reason we have to get there [to a peace deal] now is the hostages” who remain.

Indeed, after Israel’s early military operations were hindered by the Biden administration’s foot-dragging, not to mention Hamas’s barbaric practice of hiding behind human shields, the Israeli government was forced into the humiliating position of negotiating with its terrorist enemy, agreeing to release dozens of captured terrorists for every innocent civilian unjustly captured.

Hamas’s goal was to release the hostages as slowly as possible, as its most effective bargaining chip against Israel’s superior military capabilities. Thus, on the two-year anniversary of Hamas’s attack, Israel was still negotiating for the release of several dozen hostages who remain in Hamas’s clutches, of whom only half are believed to be alive.

“The timing of this can’t be lost on people,” said FRC President Tony Perkins, who was recently ranked among Israel’s top 50 Christian allies. On “the second anniversary of the October 7th terrorist attack against Israel, we’re still talking about hostages being held.”

The ongoing hostage negotiations serve as a continuous reminder to the world about the reason why Israel’s current war in Gaza began and which party is the bad actor. Hamas is currently “looking for cracks that they can exploit” in President Trump’s 20-point peace plan, explained Coates, because they refuse to accept what the plan’s essential points: that Hamas must lay down its arms and play no role in the post-war government of Gaza. Trump has “been very clear: this is the plan. There’s very little room for negotiation,” Coates insisted.

Yet, inexplicably, a majority of voices around the world continue to blame Israel for defending itself. In fact, an international chorus continued this week for accusing Israel of genocide, when only Hamas wants to commit one. These voices included figures as different as Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s top diplomat, to Zohran Mamdani, the current frontrunner in the New York City mayoral race. The campaign to blame Israel culminated last month at the U.N. General Assembly, when eight Western nations recognized a non-existent Palestinian state for the first time.

The anti-Israeli rhetoric has corresponded with a dramatic rise in anti-Semitic violence, even in situations that have nothing to do with Israel. In the first 12 months after Hamas’s October 7 attack, Jewish Americans experienced a 200% increase in anti-Semitic incidents. After two years, a majority (57%) of Jewish Americans now believe that anti-Semitism has become a normal Jewish experience, and more than one-third say they have witnessed actual or threatened anti-Semitic violence in the past 12 months.

Fortunately, while the security of Jews scattered around the world noticeably deteriorated, the security of Israel improved dramatically. One by one, Israel dispatched its most formidable adversaries. It crippled Hezbollah with its brilliant pager attack, covertly assassinated Hamas leaders as far away as Tehran, and then demolished Iran’s missile and air defense capabilities before a U.S. strike buried Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

These military successes paved the way for President Trump in September to achieve the most significant diplomatic breakthrough on the Israel-Palestine question since at least the Abraham Accords.

“All credit to the president and Secretary [Marco] Rubio for using the United Nations General Assembly — maybe for the first time — a useful purpose, which was to have a lot of bilateral meetings with Muslim majority nations in the region to hammer out this 20-point plan,” cheered Coates. “Thank heavens for President Trump getting in there and saying, ‘Here is a deal. The Arabs can agree to it. The Israelis can agree to it.’ We’ve never been there before, collectively, for a sort of grand bargain between the two parties. This is new.”

Trump’s diplomatic breakthrough stood in contrast to the cowardly European recognition of Palestine, Coates continued. “You had posturers like Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer recognizing some fictional Palestinian state at UNGA. You had the president and the secretary actually carrying out diplomacy to try to get to an end to this war.”

Of course, the success of the 20-point plan is not guaranteed, because “anything that’s dependent on Hamas is … a concern,” she added. “But what’s okay about it” is that “Israeli forces stay in Gaza until certain conditions are met, and Israel has to certify those.” Even Israel’s commitment to not occupy or annex Gaza is something “I can live with,” Coates said, if it “paves the way” to “the Israel-Saudi deal that we would all love to see happen.”

The most important remaining variable is how long Hamas will be able to string this process along. “They’ve done this before,” Perkins observed. “This not the first time that they have said, ‘Yeah, yeah, we agree with this in principle,’ only to fail to come to the table.”

To that, Coates expressed confidence in President Trump’s promise that “all hell would break loose” if Hamas strung the deal along. “The difference this time is President Trump has demonstrated this year that, if you try to string them along and do some kind of diplomatic dance, he’s going to call you on it. We can ask the Iranians how they feel about it going over their deadline.”

“Everybody thought [Trump] was desperate for a deal. Guess what? He wasn’t. He was desperate to end the Iranian nuclear program that was a direct threat to the United States,” Coates elaborated. “I think he sees Hamas as a direct threat to Israel. Israel is a great and good partner of the United States. If he can get this resolved diplomatically, he would prefer to, but he’s going to get it resolved.”

In the two years since Hamas attacked Israel, the world has shifted dramatically. In most corners, anti-Semitism rages, placing Jews in greater danger. But Israel’s security has dramatically improved, in part due to its close partnership with the Trump administration. “The United States stands unwaveringly with our close ally and partner Israel,” declared U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee Monday evening. “On this day of all days, we renew our pledge to Israel and the Jewish people: You will never stand alone. As @POTUS @realDonaldTrump says — we will always remember and never forget October 7, 2023.”