Oct. 7, 2023, marked the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

The Hamas-led atrocities — mass murder, torture, rape and kidnapping — shattered families and communities across the world.

The aftermath has been defined by grief, trauma and an ongoing effort to mourn the dead while supporting those still living with unimaginable loss.

In the months and years since, Jewish communities have turned inward and toward one another, seeking comfort, remembrance and healing.

While nothing can undo the horror of that day, collective mourning has offered a measure of solace — a way to honor lives lost and affirm the humanity that terrorism sought to destroy.

At UC Santa Barbara, Jewish campus organizations — including Hillel, Chabad, SSI (Students Supporting Israel), Mishelanu and others — worked for weeks to organize anniversary commemorations of Oct. 7.

Speeches were written to honor specific stories of those who had died, songs were rehearsed and poems were recited.

However, this beautiful display was continuously interrupted.

During the most recent anniversary, Students in Justice for Palestine and Hamas-sympathizing individuals deliberately held a “martyrs vigil” at the same time and nearly the same location.

This was not a coincidence. It was disruption by design. Jewish students were forced to hear chants and megaphone shouts while mourning their murdered loved ones.

These groups continue to perpetuate a pattern of disrespect and antisemitism that has persisted since the massacre.

The signs told the rest of the story. Slogans such as “From the river to the sea” and “Globalize the Intifada” — calls for the eradication of the Jewish people, presented as the defense of Palestinian human rights — were held aloft and framed as human-rights advocacy.

Holocaust inversion and imagery comparing Israelis to Nazis further erased Jewish suffering and recast terrorists as victims.

In some instances, there was no antisemitic intent, but celebrating those who carried out a massacre — especially on its anniversary — is not a political critique. It is antisemitism.

Impact matters more than intent, and Jewish students felt that impact deeply.

Jewish students do not deserve to hear the names of their family murders while reciting speeches about those we’ve lost. They do not deserve to see signs calling for their community’s death.

They deserve the same safety and respect afforded to every other group on campus.

SJP can choose to hold its events elsewhere, at another time, without weaponizing Jewish grief. All the Jewish community asks is the ability to remember its lost ones in peace.

That should not be controversial. It should be a given.