When you contemplate what it is like to not be aware, you have imagined death. What fills us with utter horror, is the end of awareness.
On October 7th, 2023, in the hours before dawn, I woke up with a sense of dread and found my clothes soaked in sweat. Something was wrong. Very wrong. Instinctively, I grabbed my iPhone and opened YouTube, my first stop for news. The headline screamed out immediately: the oppressed Palestinians had broken out of their open-air prison and attacked the Israeli population. As I absorbed the shocking images and commentary on the inconceivable atrocities, I grew numb with each passing minute. Striving nevertheless, I crawled across the internet looking for some justification that would soothe my faith. I stopped searching when I came across a Telegram channel. Here, my courage ebbed as I scrolled through the jubilant messages celebrating the perpetrators and their most horrible acts of torture against men, women, and children. The footage was soul-crushing. I could not speak. Life drained out of me. I closed my eyes, but the scenes swirled in agony. I asked myself later how I got myself into this. Why did I not look away? In part, I was transfixed, and in part, I wanted to persist. It felt like a dream, but in case it was real, I had to get to the bottom of it. If it was a dream, it might be trying to tell me something. There was no choice.
Around 8 am, the brilliance of an incongruously sunny morning snapped me out of my misery. My wife was waking up, and I told her to open YouTube. Something big had happened. Having thus passed the baton, I painfully pulled myself to my feet and made my way into the garden. There I hoped to return to normal. I soon found myself dimly watering the plants and picking the spring harvest for the week ahead. My wife followed me downstairs and, with a cheerful smile, offered me some tea. “Did you watch the news?” I asked again brusquely, ignoring her kindness. She apologized for being too busy that morning, but there was more to it. Perhaps she wanted no part in the burden I was carrying. At the time, I told myself she was soft, but I later found out that she was smart. Clearly, I was already in distress, and both of us did not have to suffer the same pain. I had to walk this path by myself.
My courage was almost depleted. The caravan of violence, perpetrated by its Hebrew namesake, Hamas, was burnt into memory. The more I tried to wrap my mind around it all, the deeper I was tossed into grief. That night, and over the course of the next few weeks, I failed to find my mooring. It was a month before I could meditate, gather my thoughts, and write this piece. During this difficult time, social media was a particularly dangerous beast. For stating the facts, believers and idiots called me an islamophobe and a racist. However, I had no time to worry about that. The questions agitating in my mind were pressing. I had to understand how anyone could perpetrate such horror. How could such people have supporters? And how do we distinguish a terrorist from a freedom fighter? And most of all, what is ‘terror’?
Most explanations for terror begin with the self-defeating disclaimer: “An explanation is not a justification.” I refuse to hide behind such equivocations. I assert with clarity and confidence that terror is a mix of shock, disgust, and fear. It is clear, that above all things, we recoil from death. We are shocked by the recklessness of those who invite it and loudly dispense it, and disgusted by their indifference to it. Death is the end of experience, and when you contemplate what it is like to not be aware, you have imagined death. What fills us with utter horror, is the end of awareness. We imagine that end when we can no longer perceive change or movement. A black flag, a final breath, a severed head, and complete darkness are all invitations to understand it. Terrorists declare through their words and actions that they do not experience the bright line between life and death. You and I experience the fullness of life through our connection with the rest of creation, and we value that experience. One act of madness is easy to dismiss as an aberration – a mental issue, a childhood trauma, or some other mundane explanation. But when we witness hundreds of them, together at one time, recording everything live, congratulating each other, indiscriminately ravaging and killing without warning or explanation, we confront unadulterated, unmistakable, terror.
Terror, the unexpected incoherent end of experience, sharpens what we value most, into focus. We recognize the sentience in our pets, siblings, and friends, in how we experience them, and how they experience us. When we discover that some people do not possess this sentience, wish to end ours, and may live covertly among us, we are paralyzed with confusion. Above all, terrorists desire to witness the end of experience, to end existence, in themselves through martyrdom, and in us through murder. To preserve this world, we must grant their most cherished wish without hesitation.
At the time of this writing, a conflict against terrorism is underway. In its wake, not only are those complicit facing repercussions, but innocent people are also caught up in the violence. This raises a crucial moral question. Our compass hinges on a fundamental principle: the value of life. Those who cherish life and equal opportunity for all are worth far more than those who glorify their own death in martyrdom, the murder of the innocent, and the debasement of experience. Ideas that maximize the evolution of humanity must shape the future. This war must not become an act of mindless, violent, cold murder, for that too is terror.
