What if Avida Bachar was right?

"I will say a hard thing," said Avida Bachar about a year and a half ago, who lost his son and wife in Be'eri and was himself seriously wounded, "It is lucky that October 7 happened in Be'eri. If the massacre had happened in Gush Etzion, I would have said 'Why do they live there?', 'They deserve it', I would have said all the hardest things in the world."

What a moment of honesty and courage from a man who has endured so much. "It is lucky that it happened at my home, it is lucky that this lesson, for which I paid a very high price, I learned."

What if Avida Bachar was right? And what if he is still right? Many echoed this statement of his last week, wondering if we have learned nothing. A terrifying dance of demons has been taking place since the murder of Major Yuval Ezra and Master Sergeant (res.) Benyahu Malet about ten days ago. The climax of this dance was, of course, on Saturday, when the clods of earth on Benyahu's grave (may his memory be blessed) were not yet dry. It started with classic victim-blaming in the style of "what were they doing there," "it's Area A anyway" (it is not), "what do they have to look for there."

"Gentlemen, this is not a terror attack," determined in an interview the former commander of the Central Command, Avi Mizrahi, "If the settlers had not arrived inside Tel, do you think there would have been a terror attack there?". True, Mr. Mizrahi, perhaps it would have been better if we had locked ourselves in Be'eri and Kfar Aza?

It continued with accusing the hikers as if they had come to provoke, as the retired major general and current refuser Nimrod Shefer said, "It is easy to imagine what would have happened to a group of armed Palestinians who had come to 'hike' in a settlement."

Never mind that these were families with children, never mind that it is a complete lie, and never mind that even if they had provoked, that is certainly not a reason to murder them. Does the refuser Shefer need a memory refresher on how it ends when a group of armed Palestinians comes to hike in a settlement?

At the same time, the Left expressed condolences to the victims on both sides, Israelis and Arabs alike, as if there is no attacking side here and another that was attacked.

The hikers were attacked by a mob from the village of Tel, and even afterwards, when help arrived from the army and the standby squad, they did not shoot, on the contrary. After all, Benyahu Malet (may his memory be blessed) lowered his weapon strap to drive away the rioters without shooting, and those who grabbed, shot, and murdered - were the Arabs, of course.

But the ugliest part is the stage where they blame the settlers for the murder of Yuval Ezra (may his memory be blessed). Yuval's father, Haim, said that in the comments to posts about his son's fall, he encountered hatred of a magnitude he did not believe existed. His son heard about Jews who were in distress, ran to help them, and was shot. In the comments, he discovered that on his son's back, hatred-filled Israelis were fighting.

Haim asked us to remember:

"Enemies are outside, inside us there are only rivals. Jews are not enemies of each other."

The people of Havat Gilad themselves came to Yuval's funeral. They laid a wreath on behalf of the settlement, which itself lost one of its sons who was called to the scene, the security officer arrived to stand by a fallen brother-in-arms, and Benyahu's widow recorded a message to Yuval's family, while mourning her own loss.

It was a difficult week, and not only because of the terror attack. Claims against the recklessness of hikers, if there was any, can be heard even without the foam of hatred. After all, just the day before, a Jew who arrived to extinguish an intentional arson by Arabs was seriously stabbed. After all, every day there are attacks on shepherds, stone-throwing, or arson. After all, when the Nukhba rushed towards the Gaza envelope kibbutzim, they rejoiced that they were going to murder the settlers.

In the eyes of the enemy, we are all worthy of death, and in the eyes of retired major generals, there is a difference between blood and blood, between Kfar Aza and Havat Gilad.

"Then the Satan said: This fortified one - how can I overcome him," wrote Alterman, "Only this I will do: I will dull his mind and he will forget that justice is with him."

There is a broad and too dominant faction of Israelis whose minds are dulled, who do not know how to distinguish between good and evil, between victim and attacker. There are those who have not woken up from October 7.