Bearing Witness

What I Saw on the Tour of the 10/7 Massacre

Jul 02, 2026

I did not want to bear witness. Frankly, I am tired of bearing witness.

As Jews, we are asked to bear witness over and over again to the atrocities committed against our people. I have spent 46 years bearing witness to the Holocaust through museums, exhibits, books, films, stories, lectures, and images. My survivor Hebrew school teacher regularly drilled the horrors into my skull. I remember being a child reminding myself, “It was a long time ago, and far away.”

That is not the situation with October 7.

Jews are blamed for October 7. It is celebrated and the unapologetic veneration of the events is a winning political platform. Jews are increasingly assaulted, harassed, and killed around the world as much of polite society claps. And, Israel, home to more than half the world’s Jewish population, is the dirtiest word on the planet (next to, of course, Zionist).

The aftermath of 10/7 continues in real time, with much of the world watching in glee, ignorance, silence, or full participation in the intended eradication of Jewish life.

Bearing witness to the sites of October 7, two days after America elected TO CONGRESS a woman whose only qualifications were CELEBRATING HAMAS, felt like pouring the stinging Dead Sea water directly into my eyes.

But, as always, it is the people who need not bear witness to their own demise that take the tours. And, so, here I was.

My friend developed an extraordinary GPS walking audio tour app called Audiostride, and I had the privilege of being personally escorted along with her voice in my ear. Her tours are rich with history and detail, but offered in manageable, easy-to-follow bites.

But due to the scale of the terrorism, tours of the October 7 sites are not simply one or two stops. This one had 24.

We began with my friend pulling to the side of the road in a town called Sderot, where 79 people were slaughtered that day, and she told me she would wait in the car while I climbed a dirt hill to view a memorial — as well as view Gaza through binoculars.

**I could not take a photo through binoculars but you can see Gaza on the horizon.**

It was a striking experience. Through the binoculars, one can clearly see bombed out buildings on the frontlines of Gaza - the buffer zone from which Hamas attacked and likes to shoot rockets regularly. But, just beyond that, from my vantage point, buildings stood tall, and I could not see what was happening at the same time: the mostly failed “June 26 Revolution,” which called for demonstrations against Hamas across the Strip. While hundreds did risk their lives to protest, the threats were too heavy for most. And Hamas continues to rebuild power and retain control over much of Gaza.

But let’s get back to where it started. And if you’re response is “Well, it started long before October 7,” you are technically correct — but I hope you are starting about 3000 years ago and reading sources better than Wikipedia. (This is my favorite quick summary - and it’s musical!)

We went on to see the Chabad Center in Sderot, where several water pipes-turned rockets were turned into a menorah. Let me repeat that: Hamas has, for many years, been dismantling their own infrastructure including WATER PIPES to turn into rockets aimed at Israeli civilians. Yes, I have heard this many times. But now I have seen it with my own eyes. And you can too.

The tour of Sderot continued with the story of a young girl whose entire family was murdered in front of her. Of dozens of elderly people slaughtered in front of a library when a shelter malfunctioned. Monument after monument after monument - in just this one little town. I truly did not want to go on. But I steeled myself to go further.

Kfar Aza is a kibbutz initially established in 1951 by Jewish immigrants and refugees from Egypt and the Morocco. Before the 2023 massacre, the village had more than 700 residents. On October 7, Hamas destroyed the gate in the town’s perimeter fence and indiscriminately killed residents, torched cars and homes, and forced entry to homes using rocket-propelled grenades. More than a hundred civilians were murdered, while others were kidnapped and held hostage.

Aviv (54), Livnat (49), Rotem (19), Yonatan (17), and Yiftach (15) Kutz were murdered by Hamas terrorists in their home that day. An entire family was wiped out. After initially counted among the missing, neighbors from the kibbutz found them together in a bed, with father Aviv providing a protective embrace.

On the day they were murdered, Aviv organized an annual kite festival along the fence with Gaza to show them that they just wanted to live in peace.

You can not enter Kfar Aza because people are trying to move on with their lives and strangers can not just prance about on tour.

“How can they just continue to live there?”

“Because it is their home.”

And so, on the outskirts of the Kibbutz, we read the names of the murdered, inscribed in their own handwriting. The Kutz family all in a row.

This is when the breakdown really started. I began crying, screaming, and begging to “go home.”

“Home where? My house? Your hotel? New Jersey?,” my friend asked.

“I don’t know. But I know I can not do all of these stops. Let’s just go straight to the NOVA site and then we can figure it out.”

And so we did.

I walked through the sea of memorials, nearly 400 people in the prime of their lives. Hersh, Eden, Danielle, Shani…as Jews, we know their names and faces by heart.

I walked around hysterical crying, heaving, completely untethered from the ground beneath me. When I came upon Shani Louk, whose design I have inscribed into my body, I fell out.

Suddenly I felt arms around me. An Israeli woman, “you were her friend?” she asked. “No, I didn’t know any of them. But I knew all of them.” “Me too,” she said.

There was more. The “car graveyard.” The roadside monuments. Landmark after landmark to never forget.

But the vast majority of visitors will likely remain those who choose to remember, to understand, to accept the truth as it is and not how the world would prefer it be rewritten.

So, I ask you, whether Jewish or gentile, no matter what you have heard or read or chosen it was easier to believe. Bear witness. Because it is better to live lonely with the truth than lauded among the lies.