Avi Abelow | Meta | August 5, 2026
Avida Bechar, survivor of Kibbutz Be’eri, interviewed while recovering from his wounds and having lost his wife and son on October 7. Screengrab via Youtube.
On October 7, Hamas terrorists invaded Kibbutz Be’eri. Avida Bechar held the door tight to the safe room as Jihadi terrorists were on the other side trying to get in and kill his whole family. While Avida successfully stopped them from entering the safe room, he was unsuccessful in stopping them from shooting through the door, killing his wife and son, who bled out before his eyes, and getting shot himself leading to the loss of his leg. He and his daughter miraculously survived, as his wife, Dana, and his teenage son, Carmel, were murdered. Few Israelis have paid a heavier personal price.
So when Avida speaks about what Israel must do moving forward, everyone should stop and listen, including the President of the United States.
Reacting to the recent murder of two Jews in Judea and Samaria by the village Sheikh of the Arab village Tel, Avida asked the question that Israel has still failed to answer nearly three years after October 7.
What have we learned?
As he put it:
“The question isn’t who is to blame, but what have we learned from this attack?”
That question should haunt every Jew and Israeli.
For decades, Israel has measured success by tactical achievements: terrorists eliminated, rockets intercepted, ceasefires negotiated.
October 7 exposed the bankruptcy of that approach.
Avida understands why.
He said:
“If it were up to me, the village of Tel would no longer exist. I would absorb it into another village and take the land. The next attack would never come from there. The Arab understands one thing, land and territory. If someone goes out to commit terrorism, he must understand that he loses his land.”
For generations, victorious nations understood that aggression carries permanent consequences. Wars reshape borders. Those who initiate violence lose territory. The only language jihadis truly understand is the loss of land, that is the only language of defeat they respect.
As Avida understands it, after Oct. 7, the jihadis in Gaza should lose Gaza. After the terror attack by the the Sheikh of Tel who killed two Israelis, the whole village must be destroyed. That is how society punishes jihadism.
Yet Israel is repeatedly expected to fight the same enemy, from the same territory, under the same conditions, while the international community pressures us to preserve the very foundations from which future attacks are launched.
That has not produced peace.
It has produced October 7.
Avida also spoke about Gaza in stark terms:
“We never even defined what victory is. We never defined who the enemy is.”
Those words may be the most important part of his recent interview.
How can an army achieve victory if its political and military leadership refuse to define it?
How can soldiers sacrifice everything if the nation cannot clearly articulate what winning actually means?
Avida continued:
“We have an incredible generation of fighters. Just define clear missions for them and let them win. It’s time to stop groveling and start defeating the enemy.”
As someone who has served in the IDF reserves for decades and whose own sons have fought throughout this war, I know exactly what he means.
Israel’s problem has never been its soldiers.
Our soldiers have displayed extraordinary courage, determination, and self-sacrifice.
The problem is a political and military leadership unwilling to define the enemy and pursue decisive victory.
Terrorists are not the enemy. Tunnels are not the enemy. Even Hamas is not the enemy. And that is Netanyahu’s biggest mistake in his international diplomatic activity since October 7: focusing only on Hamas.
As Avida Bechar has said repeatedly since October 7: armed terrorists together with unarmed civilians of all ages massacred his family and friends. The entire jihadi population in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria is the enemy. That is why they have been massacring us for decades, the Fogel family, the Sbarro suicide bombing more than twenty years ago, and thousands of other victims of their jihadi ways, following Muhammad’s path as laid out in the Quran.
That is why they massacred us in 1929 and 1936, decades before we liberated Judea and Samaria, years before the State of Israel was even established.
And that is why jihadi protesters in New York, London, Sydney, Toronto, Los Angeles, and throughout the West chant “Khaybar, Khaybar ya Yahud” celebrating the Muslim massacre of Jews in Khaybar in the year 628 CE! Long before the Jews returned as sovereign in our God-given, indigenous, ancestral homeland.
Our enemy is jihadi Islam that began 1,400+ years ago. One can not destroy a 1,400-year-old ideology, but the jihadi Muslim population amongst us must be punished and removed from anywhere near us. That means losing land and being relocated to jihadi-supporting countries far away from us.
Finally came Avida’s most heartbreaking words:
“My biggest problem is that my son, my wife, and thousands of other people (on Oct. 7) will have died for nothing.”
No Israeli should be able to read that sentence without feeling a knot in his stomach.
That fear, that October 7 will ultimately change nothing, is precisely what must drive us to think differently.
Whether discussing Gaza or Judea and Samaria, or jihadi Muslims with Israeli citizenship, Israel cannot continue measuring success merely by temporary quiet.
We must finally define victory in a way that ensures our enemies understand they have permanently lost, not simply this battle, but their ability to continue using terrorism to advance their jihadi aspirations against the Jewish state.
The greatest tribute we can pay to Dana, Carmel, and every victim of October 7 is not another memorial ceremony.
It is learning the lessons that survivors like Avida Bechar have paid for with unimaginable suffering.
Israel ignored too many warnings before October 7.
The voices forged in that day of horror deserve to guide us now.
This time, we cannot afford not to listen.
As Avida spoke, I could not help but think about how quickly parts of Israel’s political and media establishment reverted to the same failed thinking that existed before October 7.
Two Jews are brutally murdered by jihadi terrorists in Judea and Samaria, and before the blood is even dry, the conversation on the political left shifts toward condemning the Jewish communities and the so-called “settler violence” problem, rather than focusing on the jihadi ideology that once again claimed Jewish lives, that does not differentiate between religious, secular, right-wing, or left-wing Jews.
Avida could hardly believe it himself.
“They murdered two people in Judea and Samaria, and I hear the same voices blaming the settlers again. It’s simply unbelievable.”
He then added something equally important:
“‘The (Israeli) Democrats’ learned nothing. But I’ll tell you something else, ask people on the right, and you’ll hear them say, ‘I don’t have a solution.'”
That observation should disturb every Israeli.
It is not only parts of the political left that continue clinging to the failed assumptions of October 6. It is also many politicians in the political center who hope to win votes from the right-wing, nationalist camp, yet remain conspicuously silent when those same false narratives are promoted. They attack fellow Jews, and avoid confronting the deeper ideological jihadi roots of the conflict because they are already positioning themselves for future coalitions with those very parties advancing those destructive narratives.
Silence in moments like these is not leadership.
Avida’s challenge is directed at all of us.
We must start asking what we have truly learned.
Because if, after October 7 and every subsequent terror attack, we still cannot honestly say that a 1,400-year-old jihadi Islam is our enemy, and they must not be able to live near us after feeling the defeat of losing land, then we have failed those who paid the highest price.
We will overcome and we will be victorious. Be part of the solution in helping me share these truths.
Strengthen your faith. Strengthen your understanding that Israel is the solution while jihadi Islam is the evip enemy that must be defeated globally.
Am Yisrael Chai!!!
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