Two years ago, on October 7, 2023, the morning broke like glass in my chest: Hamas terrorists had torn through Israel’s border, unleashing a slaughter that claimed the lives of 1200 men, women and children. It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

Another 251 people were taken hostage, hauled into Gaza, swallowed by the tunnels.

In Kibbutz Be’eri, over 80 souls were extinguished. At the Nova festival, 378 youths were butchered under the same desert sky where they had danced.

Entire families were burned alive. A grandmother was forced to watch her grandchildren executed before her own life was snuffed out. Women were raped, their bodies mutilated, paraded like trophies – the barbarity live-streamed on social media.

And then there were the babies. Kfir, nine months old, and his four-year-old brother, Ariel. Torn from their mother’s arms, they were suffocated with bare hands. Their tiny bodies came home in coffins so small they could be held in one arm.

“It’s a scar ripped into the soul, a wound that bleeds every day, a howl without end.

For me, October 7 is not a distant nightmare. My own family was nearly murdered in Kibbutz Re’im, backs pressed against the safe-room door as terrorists tried to break in.

If October 7 had happened here, the streets you drive every day would be a grave. Schoolbags on the footpath. A pram tipped, its blanket warm. A birthday cake with candles that no one will ever blow out. The St Kilda Festival ending in a field of bodies, guitars drowned by carnage.

In Australia, synagogues overflowed with grief. Strangers clung to each other, memorial candles flickering against the dark. Each flame was a name, each tear a headstone.

But then came a second blow: an explosion of antisemitism. As if the smoke and hatred of the massacre drifted across oceans and settled in our streets, choking us again. Voices denied the horror, excused it, minimised it. The blade plunged into our hearts even deeper.

I refuse to let October 7 become a date on a page. It’s a scar ripped into the soul, a wound that bleeds every day, a howl without end. So what do we do with this weight?

We cry out for lives stolen, for the 48 hostages, some dead, and those alive fading into shadows, starved, beaten, wasting away.

Tonight, as you kiss your child, remember Kfir and Ariel, and the more than a thousand Israelis who never came home.