Barely a kilometre from the Gaza border at the Sderot lookout, the proximity of danger was impossible to ignore. I’ve been here before, but this time it hit differently.

The date marked Israel’s first official memorial day for October 7 ... the day Hamas terrorists unleashed unimaginable horror.

Tommy was invited to Israel by Amichai Chikli, the Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, who personally greeted us at the site. “Today is the Memorial Day of October the 7th,” Chikli told us, adding that we’d meet the commanders who fought here that morning.

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From the hilltop, we could see Gaza’s Beit Hanoun, once a Hamas stronghold, in plain sight. An IDF officer pointed to the distance: “You see the big flag? That’s Kibbutz Netiv HaAsara. Just five minutes’ walk and you’re already in Gaza.” The soldier described how 5,000 terrorists crossed that invisible divide, attacking innocent civilians in their homes, at bus stops and on the beaches.

Tommy listened intently, visibly shaken. Inside the ruins of the local police station, where 29 Hamas fighters stormed through with RPGs and bombs, an IDF veteran showed us where mothers and children were killed in their cars.

But what shocked Tommy most wasn’t just the horror of that day ... it was the response from the West. “The reaction from Western governments and universities was the real wake-up call,” he told me. “The next day they were celebrating in our capitals. That’s the shock.”

Minister Chikli agreed, warning that Britain’s leaders are ‘afraid to fight the monster.’ He compared their weakness to the appeasement of the 1930s.