It’s impossible not to write about it — and yet, today it’s almost impossible to say anything that isn’t banal. Everything that might have been said has already been said, and anything that goes beyond mere emotional release seems nearly out of reach. Truly, everything has been said before us.

And yet, Hamas — the Herostratus of our time — has succeeded. The date October 7, 2023 will remain engraved in the chronicles of human cruelty, standing beside St. Bartholomew’s Day, Khatyn, and Babi Yar.

There is, however, one bitter difference. In those darker centuries, Europe’s streets were not filled with hundreds of thousands — indeed, millions — of young men and women, eyes aflame, shouting slogans such as “No genocide of Nazism!” or “Hands off the Inquisition!”

Today, they march.

On October 7, the civilized world witnessed one of the most savage terrorist assaults in its history — an event that dragged modern society back to a tribal age, when carving unborn children from their mothers and devouring the bodies of enemies could pass as social ritual. And yet, paradoxically, a large part of our so-called “civilized” world — virtually the entire left-wing spectrum — has accepted this barbarity as a new normal, excusing the sadistic cruelty of Hamas on the basis of a supposed predicate crime committed by the victims themselves.

Thus, October 7 became a double tragedy: the tragedy of the Jewish people — who gained yet another generation of martyrs, tortured and slaughtered for no other reason than being born Jewish — and the tragedy of the European family of nations, which in one instant lost its moral compass and branded its left-wing ideology with a dark, crooked cross — disturbingly reminiscent of the Nazi swastika.

The European Left died on October 7, 2023.

The blow to its reputation was as fatal as those once inflicted by Stalinism, Maoism, or the Khmer Rouge. In truth, there is no moral distinction between justifying Hamas and justifying the Great Terror, the Cultural Revolution, or Pol Pot’s slaughter. This was not merely the death of an ideology, but its descent into a long, cold sleep from which it may never awaken.

That, I believe, is the true legacy of October 7.

The bullets were aimed at Jews — but they struck Europe, and partly America too, which remains apart from Europe only thanks to Donald Trump. For now.

Looking back with the cooled mind of two years’ distance, one realizes it was neither accidental nor unexpected. The Left had been walking toward its own suicide for decades, ever since the Soviet Union collapsed. Between the playful Corbynism of yesterday — with its cozy, drawing-room antisemitism — and today’s mass anti-Israeli rallies, burning with well-organized ideological antisemitism, runs a clear, unbroken genetic line.

Let us not delude ourselves with talk that this is about anti-Zionism, not antisemitism. Once the Left has uttered “A,” it will inevitably proceed to “B,” and eventually to “Z.” However it begins, it ends — and not in the far future — in the same old way: with Jewish pogroms.

Perhaps that will finally sober a part of the intellectual Left and force it to retrace its steps.

Or perhaps not.

If not — then one can only hope that the right-wing tide in Europe lasts a little longer than anyone expects.