One year after the atrocities committed by Hamas, 7 October 2023 remains a date that will live in infamy. It is a moment to remember and commemorate all those innocents who lost their lives and suffered terrible injuries, who were taken hostage and orphaned, and who suffered other bereavements then and in the wars that have followed and continue still.
There are more than 40,000 dead in Gaza, and thousands more elsewhere as there seems no end to the slaughter. Gaza has been reduced to rubble, and everywhere there is disease and starvation. These are the facts of this war.
On this particular day, it is fair to focus on the worst crime committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Israel remains a nation still grieving the attack on a music festival attended by young people from all over the world – a particularly grotesque choice of victims. The homesteads in Kfar Aza, Nir Oz and the other previously peaceful settlements remain mostly empty – the blood spattered on their walls standing as silent testimony to the horrors that were inflicted. There should be no denial of these events.
On that day, some 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals were killed by Hamas terrorists, and 251 more were abducted and taken into Gaza – more than 90 of whom remain in captivity. One of these may be Keith Siegel. As we report today, this 65-year-old man and his wife Aviva, 63, were kidnapped by the Hamas operatives and taken to Gaza. She was released after 51 days; his fate is unknown.
As Aviva recounts: “One of the worst moments was when they took us 40 metres underground, where there was no oxygen. They left us with no water and no food. We couldn’t breathe. We just lay there, wondering who would die first.” There are many more such harrowing stories, and these traumatised voices, like so many others in the region, deserve to be heard.
Perhaps as Hamas intended – they are a callous and cynical movement – one of the many tragedies of the conflicts that have followed their inhuman activities is the way that Jewish and Muslim communities far away have found themselves subjected to harassment, intimidation and violence.
There is sadly no doubt that some Jewish people in the UK feel unsafe because of the demonstrations against the war in Gaza and, now, in Lebanon. There is also no mistaking the murderous intent of the racist Islamophobic mobs who tried to burn refugees alive in hotels across the UK at the end of July and in early August.
As the prime minister puts it with admirable balance: “We will not look the other way as Jewish children are afraid to wear their school uniforms, Jewish shops are defaced, or Jews targeted on the streets. And we will not ignore it when mosques are attacked, and British Muslims are assaulted or told to ‘go home’. Any attack on a minority is an attack on our proud values of tolerance and respect. We will not stand for it.”
It is a sobering thought that the killings on 7 October and subsequently in Palestine and Israel should have produced such distant reverberations as riots in Southport and Rotherham, the loss of safe Labour seats in the Commons, higher oil prices globally, and a backlash in political opinion among the Arab American communities of Michigan, which could determine the 2024 US presidential election.
More predictable, if uncertain as to their ultimate effect, have been the consequences for Israel’s own security. The hard fact is that even as Israel has been fighting – and mostly with considerable success in military terms, across multiple fronts – the state of Israel is no more secure than it was before the 7 October outrages.
Gaza has been flattened, and some of the Hamas leaders assassinated, but it is still a functioning organisation – and, even if it were not, something very like it would replace it.
The hostages have not been returned, much to the anger of the Israeli public, who hold the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, responsible for this and for the intelligence failures that led to 7 October. The destruction of the territory is unprecedented in the region and has merely created more martyrs and more recruits for the terrorists.
Much the same may be said for the assault on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and Beirut – though here Mr Netanyahu retains more public support. He is also using Israel’s technological and military edge to make war on the occupied West Bank, on Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq, and on Iran itself.
The result is open speculation about an Israeli raid on Iranian nuclear facilities and even an all-out war between the two states. This, and the disproportionate violence used in Gaza, has alienated Israel’s friends and allies in the region and beyond. This is deeply inimical to the Israeli national interest, and this instability is a satisfactory outcome for Hamas, which sees advantages in chaos and a wider war. Mr Netanyahu is risking the peace with Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, as well as alienating Saudi Arabia.
It cannot be in anyone’s interests but Iran and its proxies that Mr Netanyahu insists on humiliating President Biden, and in doing so losing US public opinion for Israel’s cause. The White House holds Mr Netanyahu in exasperated contempt. The goodwill expressed across the world at the 7 October atrocities has been dissipated.
In diplomatic terms, the anniversary is being marked by an outspoken personal and public attack by Mr Netanyahu on President Macron of France, whose call for a partial arms embargo on Israel has been joined by Qatar, the leading peace broker in the region. Even the US has blocked some supplies, as has the UK.
This is the precise opposite of what Israel needs to secure a peaceful future, and Mr Netanyahu must know this, whatever the short-term domestic political dividends. He did, after all, pursue with Presidents Trump and Biden the Abraham accords, which delivered, and promised to deliver, recognition and normalised diplomatic relations with many more Arab nations.
Now there is more prospect of ambassadors being ordered home, and indeed of the first international Arab-Israeli war since 1973. A ceasefire now would help avert that, as well as restore some calm and trust across the capitals of the region.
With that could begin the process of establishing a free and secure independent state of Palestine alongside an Israel that can live a more normal, peaceful and prosperous existence with neighbouring powers. Backed also by the UN and the West, mutually agreed and guaranteed borders for the two entities would serve to isolate the terrorists, contain Iran, and radically reduce the chances of “another 7 October” happening.
At the moment, and despite (or, rather, because of) everything that has happened since 7 October, few could claim that such a tragedy could not happen again.