This Oct. 13, 2026, Op-Ed by CAMERA’s Tamar Sternthal was published in The Jerusalem Post.
A Kfar Aza home destroyed in Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre (Photo by Tamar Sternthal)
Deganit Bar Hay, an Israeli survivor of the Hamas-led October 7 massacre, cannot barbecue because the smell of burnt flesh is still a trigger three years later, she told the Associated Press. Let that horrific thought sink in for a moment.
Hundreds of thousands of survivors of Hamas’s rampage of murder, maiming, rape, torture, kidnapping, burning, and destruction share her enduring trauma.
In Israel, three years afterward, one in five Israelis are still “struggling to function” due to mental health disabilities, a new study found.
But for the leading wire service, Deganit’s ongoing trauma is merely a footnote to what the news agency considers the real story: that is, the “tragedy in Gaza.”
Read the rest of CAMERA’s Op-Ed at The Jerusalem Post.