Three years after October 7, remembrance is not enough on its own. In Israel Today, Ali A. Abbas and Tom Wegner make a case that pairs moral clarity with strategy: the most powerful answer to terrorism is not to let it dictate the future. It is to build the trust, relationships and shared regional interests that terrorism was intended to destroy.

What terrorism is really after

Its political objective, the authors write, is to make Israelis believe that Arabs are permanent enemies, and to make Arabs believe that engagement with Israelis is betrayal. Every attack is meant to harden those two beliefs until neither side can imagine a different future.

That is why they say the answer cannot be only military or security-based. There must also be a political and human answer, and that answer is connection.

Relationships that outnumber the damage

The diagram below shows the authors’ logic. Terrorism tries to cut the links between peoples. The response is to add more links than can be cut.

Preparing the ground for Iraq–Israel ties

That conviction is why The Virtual Embassy of Iraq in Israel and the Abrahamic Movement have joined efforts. Their aim is to prepare civic, intellectual and human ground for a day when formal Iraq–Israel relations may become possible.

The authors are clear about the limits. Such a day is not imminent, and diplomatic relations are established by sovereign governments, not by civic initiatives. The civic work is groundwork, not a substitute for diplomacy.

A different destiny for the next generation

The authors close with a hope rather than a prediction: a Middle East in which October 7 does not determine the destiny of the generations that follow. “That would be more than a response to October 7,” they write. “It would be the beginning” of that region.

Tom Wegner

Co-author and leader of the Abrahamic Movement, a strategic advisor and author who is founder and president of the Middle East Center.