(ANALYSIS) Does anyone remember Oct. 7, 2023? Do you recall the heart-stopping morning news, declaring that Hamas terrorists had carried out the most horrifying, brutal massacre imaginable?

While America slept, thousands of hate-crazed Hamas terrorists launched over 5,000 rockets from Gaza into Israel, homing in on small, peaceful Israeli towns, kibbutzim, and villages adjacent to Gaza. Then Hamas murderers arrived by the thousands, viciously raping, torturing, and slaughtering some 1,200 Israeli civilians.

Hamas burned infants and children alive before their parents’ eyes. Hamas repeatedly gang-raped girls and women; they slaughtered entire families after torturing them. Hamas killers also kidnapped some 250 more victims of all ages — from infants to the elderly — carried them into Gaza and locked them into filthy, subhuman terror tunnels.

And that wasn’t the end of it all. Since that horrible day, attacks on Israel by Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, and other Iran-funded terrorists have multiplied without respite.

Today, and in the coming days of remembrance — as if we could ever forget — memorial services are taking place in Israel, in the U.S., and in other nations in heartfelt remembrance of national bereavement.

But the Hamas invasions and abductions weren’t the end of the brutal story — far from it. Since that day of infamy, Israel has been continuously attacked by various radical Islamist groups and countries, including Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, and more.

Clearly, Iran has proudly sponsored much of this inhuman violence.

To read the rest of Lela Gilbert’s piece, please visit The Washington Stand.

Lela Gilbert is Senior Fellow for International Religious Freedom at Family Research Council and Fellow at Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom. She lived in Israel for over ten years, and is the author of "Saturday People, Sunday People: Israel through the Eyes of a Christian Sojourner."