Wednesday marks three years since the Oct. 7 attacks, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. When Hamas terrorists breached southern Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people—many at a music festival, in their homes, and in their beds—and taking 251 hostages into Gaza, Sarri Singer recognized the pattern immediately.
Singer, a survivor of a 2003 Hamas bus bombing in Jerusalem that killed 17 and wounded over 100, had also been working near the World Trade Center on 9/11. She has spent two decades studying terrorism's global reach. Yet, she says, the world has learned little.
A Familiar but Ignored Threat
The Oct. 7 massacre was widely framed as a regional conflict—a story about Israel and the Middle East. That framing, Singer argues, is comfortable but dangerously wrong. The deliberate targeting of civilians, the livestreamed cruelty, the hostage-taking, and the online celebration that turned atrocity into recruitment material were never confined to one geography. Terrorism studies what works and exports it.
Since Oct. 7, similar ideologies have inspired attacks far from Israel. On New Year's Day 2025, an ISIS-inspired attacker drove a truck into crowds on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, killing 14. Synagogues, Jewish events, and public spaces from Washington, D.C., to Manchester and Sydney's Bondi Beach have become targets.
The response follows a predictable script: shock, vigils, a brief debate on security failures, then the world moves on—without confronting the jihadist networks or the ideology that justifies such violence.
Three Urgent Lessons
Singer, who has sat with survivors of attacks in London, Paris, Mumbai, Bali, Boston, and Israel, distills three lessons that remain unheeded.
1. Call terrorism what it is
After Oct. 7, many respected institutions avoided the word “terrorism,” instead describing the murder of families as “resistance” or “context.” Last week, when a pilot attempted to crash a plane full of civilians, media outlets called it a “security incident” or a “cockpit scuffle” rather than a terrorist act. This blurring of lines, Singer warns, tells future attackers their violence will be debated, not condemned.
2. Stop funding your enemies
Terrorism is an enterprise that runs on money. The tunnels and rockets used on Oct. 7 were built over years in a territory that received billions in international aid, while Hamas diverted concrete, fuel, and cash meant for civilians. The United Nations itself fired UNRWA staff over evidence of participation in the massacre.
Well-meaning donor money, through diverted aid or payments that reward attackers' families, often strengthens groups that target the donors' own citizens. Singer learned this firsthand when she joined the parents of Taylor Force, an American killed in a terrorist attack in Israel, in suing her own government to enforce the Taylor Force Act. Survivors should not have to go to court, she argues; every democracy must scrutinize whom its foreign aid empowers.
3. Treat recovery as national security
Terrorists aim to instill fear, break families, and erode trust in institutions. Nations have improved at the immediate aftermath of an attack but remain terrible at what follows. Survivors lose jobs, face untreated trauma, and navigate a maze of agencies alone long after cameras leave. A society that visibly stands with its victims long-term is harder to terrorize.
Lessons from Israel
Israel, painfully, has become the world's most experienced practitioner in all three areas. Its advances in trauma and bereavement care since Oct. 7 offer lessons for every nation. Singer insists that refusing to learn from Israel because of political disagreements is a luxury no government can afford.
Anniversaries invite speeches; Singer would prefer accountability. On this third anniversary, the question is not only how we remember the murdered and kidnapped, but whether we will admit that what happened was a warning to all of us—and act accordingly.
