Remembering October 7th and the aftermath

It is now 12 months since the October 7th massacre, a day of terror and lethal violence suffered  by largely Israeli civilians,  perpetrated by Hamas and other armed groups. There were mass casualties and 251 Israelis kidnapped and held as hostages in Gaza with just over a hundred believed to still be alive. Let’s be clear, the following is no excuse for the October 7th atrocity. No historical suffering can be used to justify the attack on the civilians involved. However it can help us to understand the context, the motivations but also make comparisons with Israel’s violence. 

It is also now 365 continuous days, and counting, of terror and lethal violence suffered by Palestinian civilians and armed combatants. An act of vengeance and collective punishment so destructive and disproportionate, that it has resulted in Israel being taken to the International Court of Justice for ‘Genocide’ and the ICC putting together arrest warrants under the ‘Geneva Convention’ for Israel’s leaders.   

Its important to remember, for balance, context and objectivity, that the regular cycles of violence and counter-violence didn’t start on October 7th 2023. On October the 6th Israel the regime, not its civilians, was not an ‘innocent, peaceful country just trying to live within its boarders’. A ‘victim, surrounded by enemies, never provoking its neighbours’. Far from the picture painted above, repeated by Western governments and their media, Israel is the bully in the region, the aggressive, belligerent neighbour. Even before Israel was established in 1948, Zionist settlers formed ‘terrorist’ groups to bomb British Palestine and massacre Arab villagers, ‘the Stern gang’, the ‘Lehi’, the ‘Haganah’ used terror campaigns to fight for a ‘Jewish homeland in Palestine’. As they evolved into the IDF in the ‘war of independence’ they continued to use terror and slaughter to destroy Palestinian towns and villages and expel 750,000 people from their homes and land to be taken over by the new settler colonialists. 

In 1967, Israel struck first to start the ‘six day war’. The same refugees expelled in 1948, now living in camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt were attacked again and had this land occupied by Israel. They illegally stole the Golan Heights from Syria, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt. 

This ‘occupation’ continues today, a brutal surveillance State that operates an apartheid regime on a deliberately impoverished population. They witness their properties and land ‘confiscated’ and given to ‘settlers’ or buildings simply demolished. Daily humiliations at checkpoints, nightly raids and detention without charge or trial. Children arrested, but many times shot and killed for throwing stones. 

‘Mowing the lawn’ is an expression used by the IDF, Israel’s fighter jet pilots have slaughtered tens of thousands of Gazan civilians in four ‘wars’. The Israeli/Egypt ‘blockade’ of Gaza since 2005 has turned it into what David Cameron called ‘the world’s largest open air prison’. 

Is there any wonder that Israel is hated so much by its Palestinian victims? If you empathise or understand the vengeful emotions of the October 7th victims and the Israeli nation as a whole, as they cheer on the genocide in Gaza-then you have to empathise with the Palestinians desire to hit back at Israel. Understand why many are supporting Hamas as the most effective resistance army against the occupation and apartheid. 

The reality is that both peoples have chosen leaders who advocate extreme violence and express the desire to wipe each other out. Israel denies a Palestinian State and desires a ‘Greater Israel’ in that land, Hamas denies Israel and desires a return to all of historic Palestine. 

Another issue to address when remembering October 7th, is the language used and the descriptions of the violence. On the radio4 Today programme this morning the presenter commented ‘It wasn’t just the attack, but the savagery and wanton nature of the killing and rape’. At the time, it was repeated across all media as well as by President Biden, that ‘babies had been beheaded’. This has now been proven to be a lie. However that lie and words like ‘savagery’, provided the Israeli propagandists the opportunity to justify its proposed genocide on Gaza and to describe Palestinians as ‘human animals’. It allowed Netanyahu to invoke the Hebrew bibles incitement to annihilate the ‘Amalek’ (an enemy nation for the Israelites)”You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.” “Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.”

Language like ‘savagery’ and ‘barbarity’ will be used today in passionate remembrance of the attack. However, that same language, is never used to describe the IDF’s violence. A level of violence incomparable in its ferocity, to that carried out on one day in October 2023. Israel suffered a limited and temporary incursion 3 miles into its territory and lost 1400 lives. The invaders were either killed or driven back over the boarder. Gaza has suffered 42,000 lives lost, including over 16,000 children, with 70% of fatalities being civilians. It is estimated that tens of thousands of bodies still lie under the rubble. The invaders are still there, shooting or bombing civilians as we speak. Furthermore, the IDF has invaded Lebanon as well and is killing civilians on a similar scale to Gaza. 

Why is it that when violence is experienced at close quarters, it is viewed as more ‘barbaric’ than bombing via an air-strike by a fighter jet? How does it differ for a Hamas fighter who interacts personally with their victims and a jet fighter pilot who presses the button knowing they will kill and maim multiple civilians? Children were killed and kidnapped from the Kibbutz’s, they were also decapitated by flying shrapnel and incinerated by 2000 lbs rockets fired by IAF pilots in Gaza. 

The uncomfortable truth for Israel and its supporters, is that the violence of October 7th is now dwarfed by the violence unleashed in retribution for it. In the process of witnessing this genocidal destruction, the world is viewing the Israeli military through the same lens as it see’s Hamas or Assad’s and Putin’s military.