One year ago, Israel endured the deadliest terrorist attack in its modern history. For twelve months, the nation has been fighting relentlessly to secure its homeland, striving to live free from fear and terror. Through four defining figures, we revisit the events that have shaped a year marked by conflict and resilience.
7 October 2023 changed Israel forever. On the morning of the Jewish holy day of Simchat Torah, while hundreds of Israeli families were sleeping soundly in their homes, Hamas launched a large-scale surprise assault on Israel’s southern communities. But it was not just Israel that awoke to a completely different world that autumn morning. Evil showed its true face once again, and as the details of the brutal attack unfolded, the extent of cruelty surpassed anything we had ever known.
1,200 lives were lost in the vicious assault Hamas conducted that morning. The number is hard to write down, and even harder to take when you think that each one represents a life so unjustly disrupted. Husbands and wives, grandparents and parents, children and whole families were murdered. In kibbutz Beeri alone, 131 lives were lost, 32 were taken hostage—that’s 10 per cent of the entire community gone in the hours of terror. It was the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, and among the deadliest terrorist attacks worldwide in the past 50 years.
255 hostages were taken by Hamas. Elderly people, women, children were dragged into Gaza. Only 117 have returned home after a hostage deal in November and a series of daring rescue operations by the Israel Defense Forces. But since then, negotiations have continually failed, and the fate of 101 hostages is still in doubt.
22 of 24 Hamas battalions have been dismantled so far under operation ‘Swords of Iron’. After 7 October, Israel first engaged in a bombing campaign targeting Hamas objects in the Gaza Strip, with a ground invasion that followed shortly afterwards. But the IDF became locked in a prolonged war against the terrorist organization in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet with a labyrinth of underground tunnels that serve as hideouts, weapon storage, and command centers for Hamas terrorists. Hamas also often uses civilian infrastructure—kindergartens, schools, hospitals —to launch attacks against Israelis.
Seven fronts Israel has been at war on since then: against Hamas in Gaza; Hezbollah in Lebanon; the Houthis in Yemen; various militias in Iraq and Syria; against Palestinian militants in the West Bank; and against Iran itself, which not only supports all these organizations, but also directly attacked Israel in an unprecedented missile strike in April and then again on 1 October.
As the fighting intensified, global public opinion has also turned sharply against Israel. The international press has been dominated by accusations of Israel indiscriminately using military force and rising civilian lives. Fake news and Hamas propaganda also often go unchecked on the pages of the most prominent Western media. Meanwhile anti-Semitism has reached unprecedented levels in the US and at Western European college campuses.
The events of 7 October will forever be etched in Israel’s history as a day of immense tragedy and resilience. That day was a moment when the nation confronted the depths of brutality, but also discovered a strength it never knew it needed. Amid the profound loss and an escalating fight for the right to exist free from terror and fear, one message reverberates louder than ever: Israel will endure, and its people will not be broken.
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