This month has moved through a lot of ground: 9/11's forgotten victims, Nigeria, Sudan, the Middle East's vanishing Christian communities, South Asia's overlooked front, Western victims of both deadly assaults and rape jihad, decades of media and academic failure. On their own, these can look like unconnected regional stories, each with its own local explanation.

Then, on October 7, 2023, a wave of Gazan jihadis, Hamas and freelancers, crossed the border into Israel, slaughtered over 1,200 people in 24 hours, sometimes in the most sadistic manner imaginable, and uploaded it to the internet for the whole world to see. For Israel this was a devastating catastrophe: security and intelligence forces had failed on a massive scale; the details of the attack were excruciating, and the hostages taken by Hamas back to Gaza were an open wound. For Israeli progressives it was a staggering blow to any hope for peace. Many in the peace camp lived adjacent to Gaza and worked to bring Gazans to hospitals, and yet, the very same people they helped joined their merciless enemies. The peace camp died with those 1,200 victims. For a moment, even the media paused to express sympathy for the victims.

This day is the month's capstone: October 7 marks the second most deadly single attack on a democracy in the history of Jihad, one carried out not by flying airplanes into buildings or trucks through crowds or bombs in trains, but hand to hand, the direct face to face rape and slaughter of women, children, men, Jewish, Thai, Arab Muslim. And it is the first to be recorded by the perpetrators and advertised world wide. The Jihadi war on democracies and their infidel inhabitants entered yet another phase.