Three years after the October 7 attacks that killed 1,200 Israelis including 46 Americans, The Daily Wire published a searing commemoration piece Tuesday arguing that the celebrations that erupted in Gaza that day were not confined to Hamas — and that echoes of them are still visible in New York City and suburban Texas.
The piece, titled “The Day They Danced,” opens by challenging a phrase that has become shorthand in some quarters for Palestinian civilians: victims. According to the article, Palestinians in Gaza “kissed the floor with joy” as Hamas paraded bodies through the streets, and it quotes a viral post from an account named Vivid that urged readers to “remember this the next time you see someone call them the victims.”
Of the 1,200 people killed on October 7, 2023, according to the piece, 46 were Americans. Twelve American hostages were taken, the article states, and endured what it describes as kidnapping, starvation and torture stretching over hundreds of days. One of them, the piece notes, was a four-year-old girl held captive for 50 days.
Recorded phone calls and scenes of celebration
The article reproduces what it identifies as a recorded phone call between a Hamas terrorist in Gaza and his father, with the son telling his parent that he had personally killed Jews and had called from the phone of one of his victims. The piece frames the father’s response as pride, and the article says such conversations are evidence of a society-wide embrace of the attacks rather than the actions of a fringe militant group.
It also describes scenes in which Palestinians helped drag bodies through the streets, kicked remains and transported corpses for what the article calls further butchering. The piece warns readers not to “call it resistance” — language that reflects a broader argument among supporters of Israel that some media outlets and activists downplay the scale of civilian participation on October 7.
Among the specific atrocities the article revisits is video of two girls running from a gunman. According to the piece, the man shot the first girl in the back as she fled, then executed the second after she turned and begged him to spare her life. The article presents the footage as a direct rebuttal to characterizations of the day’s violence as a military operation directed only at combatants.
Mayor Mamdani and the social media post
The article reserves particular criticism for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who the piece says marked the third anniversary of the attacks with what it calls a “watered-down tweet” about Israeli lives lost before pivoting to a lengthy eulogy for Palestinian deaths and accusing Israel of genocide. The piece argues that describing Israel’s campaign as genocide inverts the reality of October 7, when Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s southern border in roughly 120 locations by pickup truck, motorcycle, tractor and paraglider while civilians streamed in alongside them.
It further claims that the mayor’s wife liked Instagram photos celebrating the attacks, citing a post from Spencer Pratt that raised the allegation. The article suggests those private views may be more revealing than the mayor’s public statements, though it does not provide independent verification of the claim.
The piece writes that “only one party attempted a genocide” and that “only one ideology treats the murder of civilians as a holiday” — rhetoric that places it firmly within a strand of pro-Israel commentary that rejects the genocide framing widely used by critics of Israel’s military campaign.
A Texas coffee shop and a latte offer
Beyond Gaza and New York, the article targets a coffee shop just outside Austin, Texas, called Coffeyeh. According to the piece, the shop gave free lattes last year to anyone who walked in wearing a keffiyeh and could tell the owners what day it was — an offer the article characterizes as transforming the anniversary of the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust into a “costume-and-coffee special.”
The article notes that 251 hostages were taken that day, including children and Americans, and cites a post from an account called SDS identifying the shop’s owners as Ziad Bader and Kareem Soufan. It concludes with a call for their deportation, illustrating how the third anniversary has intensified debates over speech, immigration and the boundaries of political expression.
A closing argument about grief and pity
The piece ends with a rhetorical escalation: “They danced while the bodies were still warm. They danced on the anniversary. They will dance the next time they think their god is pleased.” It closes by declaring that the author owes no sympathy to those who celebrate the graves of his countrymen, writing that “pity is for the dead, not the dancers.”
The Daily Wire piece is one of many published around the third anniversary of October 7, as outlets across the political spectrum revisit the attack, the ensuing war in Gaza and the sharply divergent ways Americans have chosen to remember — or contest — that day’s meaning. What distinguishes this account is its insistence that the celebrations, not merely the attacks, are the central story, and its contention that those celebrations have continued in the United States.
Whether that framing persuades readers or repels them, it reflects a continuing fight over memory: who gets to be called a victim, what counts as resistance, and how far the boundaries of acceptable commemoration extend.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-day-they-danced