When I returned to Israel in August, I found a country still carrying October 7 into every conversation about its future. Security. Family. The next war. The topics changed, but the fear underneath all of them did not.
Americans should recognize that feeling. We carried it after September 11. We understood that an ordinary morning could become a turning point in a nation’s history.
On the third anniversary of October 7, we owe Israelis the same understanding. And we owe ourselves an honest account of what happened.
Hamas-led terrorists attacked Israeli communities and a music festival, killed roughly 1,200 people, and abducted 251. They took children, parents and grandparents. The dead included people who had gathered to dance and people who had gone to sleep believing their homes were safe.
Those facts should anchor every discussion of the war that followed. Too often, they disappear beneath the latest headline.
Forgetting can happen through repetition as easily as silence. Repeat a story that begins with Israel’s military response often enough, and the attack that prompted it fades. Eventually, the country defending itself becomes the only actor anyone is asked to judge.
That is why the media’s handling of this war matters so much. Journalists decide which images endure, which allegations receive scrutiny and which corrections reach the people who believed the original story.
Consider Nicholas Kristof’s May 11 New York Times column, “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians.” He published allegations of widespread sexual abuse, including an extraordinary account alleging that a dog was used to rape a Palestinian detainee. Kristof acknowledged that some accounts could not be corroborated. His conclusion nevertheless compared the abuse of Israeli women on October 7 with what he asserted happens to Palestinians daily.
That comparison still demands our scrutiny. Allegations of abuse deserve investigation. Their gravity also demands that readers can distinguish testimony, corroboration and a columnist’s own conclusions.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert subsequently said the placement of his comments misrepresented his views and appeared to validate claims he could not confirm. The Times defended its reporting and later said its review found no errors
Readers should know the truth. My objection is to the authority that comparison acquires when one of the world’s most influential newspapers publishes it. A disputed allegation can travel as a settled fact long after the qualifications fall away.
We have seen that problem before.
After the October 17, 2023, explosion at Gaza’s al-Ahli hospital, the Times prominently published claims blaming an Israeli airstrike. Its subsequent editors’ note acknowledged that the initial coverage relied too heavily on Hamas’s claims and gave readers an incorrect impression of what was known.
The BBC was also forced to apologize for a correspondent’s speculation that an Israeli airstrike had caused the explosion.
Those admissions establish failures of verification without requiring anyone to guess at a reporter’s intentions. A correction also leaves an obvious question: How many people who absorbed the accusation ever encountered the correction?
When a terrorist organization’s claims receive that kind of amplification, journalism becomes another instrument in its war.
The answer is rigorous reporting, including on October 7 itself.
In March 2024, a United Nations team reported that rape and gang rape occurred at several locations during the attacks. It also found clear and convincing information that some hostages suffered sexual violence in captivity.
The same mission determined that two widely reported allegations from Kibbutz Be’eri were unfounded. That finding belongs in the record too. Correcting particular accounts strengthens the record. It gives no one grounds to erase the findings the investigators did substantiate.
Americans should insist on that distinction. We should demand evidence, correct errors, and refuse to let a correction become a pretext for dismissing an atrocity.
For Americans, the stakes extend beyond our relationship with Israel. Terrorists want to break society’s confidence that it can protect its people. Propaganda then seeks to break its allies’ confidence that those people deserve protection.
An alliance cannot survive on military assistance alone. It also requires the resolve to defend an honest account of the danger our ally faces.
In August, I wrote about Israelis bracing for the next storm. Their concern made sense to me. October 7 had already shown them what a catastrophic failure of security could cost.
Distance gives Americans the luxury of changing the subject. Israelis live with the consequences.
We should remember the families, preserve the factual testimony, and examine the reporting that shapes our understanding of their loss. We should teach our children what happened and why a democracy must be able to protect its citizens from people who deliberately target them.
October 7 belongs in America’s memory. The victims deserve it. And an honest account of history demands it.
John Bachman is the host of John Bachman Now on Newsmax. He is also the author of Turning Point: How Reagan Liberated Grenada and Won the Cold War.
