No, it didn't start on October 7th.
38 years to the day before Hamas dragged hundreds of innocent Jews into Gaza, Palestinian terrorists found another elderly Jew who couldn't run from them.
His name was Leon Klinghoffer, a 69 year old Jewish New Yorker who was partially paralyzed after two strokes, recovering from colon cancer, and confined to a wheelchair.
In October 1985, Leon and his wife Marilyn, who was herself fighting cancer, boarded the Achille Lauro for a Mediterranean cruise celebrating 36 years of marriage.
On October 7th, the ship docked in Alexandria, Egypt, where hundreds of passengers disembarked for an excursion to Cairo and the pyramids. Leon couldn't manage an excursion like that, so he and Marilyn stayed aboard.
That afternoon, four armed Palestinian terrorists from the Palestine Liberation Front seized the ship. They rounded up the remaining passengers, separated Americans and Britons, collected their passports and threatened to begin executing the Americans one by one. At one point gasoline was poured around the hostages as the terrorists threatened to burn them alive.
When the hostages were ordered upstairs, Marilyn tried to take Leon with her, but his wheelchair couldn't make it up the stairs. She begged the terrorists not to separate her from her disabled husband, until one pointed a machine gun at her and ordered her to leave him behind.
It was the last time she ever saw Leon alive.
Leon was now alone, partially paralyzed and unable to escape. On October 8th, the terrorists shot him in the head and chest. Marilyn later testified that she heard two gunshots and then heard something hit the water, never realizing that she had just heard her husband being murdered and thrown into the Mediterranean.
The terrorists forced members of the crew to dump Leon's body and wheelchair overboard.
The terrorists then tried to hide the murder. Marilyn wasn't told what had happened, and after the hijacking ended Leon's friends went looking for him only to be told that he had become ill and been taken to the ship's hospital. The doctors had never seen him.
Back in New York, Leon and Marilyn's daughters initially received word that both of their parents were safe and opened champagne in relief. Then a television reporter called and told them their father might actually be dead. Days later, a body washed ashore on the Syrian coast, and fingerprints and dental records confirmed it was Leon.
When Marilyn later came face to face with the hijackers in Italy, she spat in their faces. She later told President Ronald Reagan what she had done, and Reagan responded, “You did? God bless you.”
Leon was a World War II veteran who had served in the U.S. Army Air Forces as a navigator aboard B 24 bombers over Europe.
He eventually came home in a flag draped coffin with a military honor guard, and Marilyn was presented with the folded American flag. At his funeral, their daughter Ilsa told him, “The world knows you now as a hero, but you were always a hero to us.”
Four months after Leon's murder, Marilyn died of cancer at 59.
Leon wasn't Israeli, wasn't a soldier, wasn't in Gaza or the West Bank, and wasn't even physically capable of running away. He was a disabled Jewish American and World War II veteran sitting helplessly in a wheelchair while on vacation with his wife.
Exactly 38 years later, Palestinian terrorists crossed into Israel and murdered elderly Jews, children and entire families, kidnapped civilians and dragged hostages back to Gaza.
So no, it didn't start on October 7th.
At least, not this one.