Oct. 7, One Year Later

The barbaric attack a year ago this week by the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorist group shocked and horrified the world. The brutal slaughter, rape, and torture of 1250 men, women, children, and elderly Israeli citizens, plus another 300 who were taken captive, by Hamas invaders who poured across the northern Gaza-Israeli border, affirmed that Iran and its terrorist proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, know no bounds in their hatred for Jews and their stated aim of wiping Israel off the face of the map.

The attack and its aftermath accomplished a number of goals of the Iranian-backed terrorists. Not only did October 7 deal a blow to Israelis’ sense of security, but it also destabilized Israel politically and economically. More than 100,000 Israeli citizens have been displaced both along the Gazan border and in northern Israel, where Hezbollah has been shelling northern Israeli communities. Israeli citizen-soldiers have been fighting for a full year, with no end in sight.

The attack of October 7 predictably unleashed a devastating military response by Israel on the Gaza Strip, a narrow piece of land that is about 140 square miles and home to two million people, of whom half are children, in its effort to kill every Hamas fighter. (By comparison, Boston and Suffolk County consist of about 120 square miles with 750,000 people, of whom 20 percent are children).

After a year of ceaseless Israeli bombardment, the Gaza Strip has been laid to waste, with more than 40,000 Gazans killed, tens of thousands more maimed for life, and the entire population facing mass starvation. The Israeli government now seems bent on replicating the same devastation in Lebanon from where Hezbollah has been shooting its rockets onto Israeli communities.

The Israeli government, which itself is controlled by religious extremists, fell into the trap set by Iran and its proxies by waging its brutal assault on Gaza. When images of the Middle East are shown on our TV screens each night, it is the horrors being endured by Gazan children that we see. It is their plight (as well as those of Palestinians who are being attacked by Israeli settlers on the West Bank), not that of the Israeli victims, that is garnering the world’s attention and sympathies.

Finally, the bloody attack of October 7 and the military response by Israel achieved another of Iran’s major goals by creating political fissures both in the Western democracies and in Israel itself, as well as upending plans for a treaty among Israel, the U.S., and Saudi Arabia. Just as 9/11 changed our world, so too has October 7. A year later, with a wider war all but certain, it is clear that peace in the Middle East is more elusive than ever with an outcome that will reverberate across the globe today and for generations to come.