Apocalypse

What happened on (and after) Oct. 7, 2023.

There is no need to remember what happened on Oct. 7, 2023, except as a turning point. If you are an "eye for an eye" sort of person, you should realize that number of Israelis killed came nowhere near balancing the books of the past 80 years, and that within a day or two, Israel had already taken its revenge, and then some. Had Israel just thrown its tantrum and killed indiscriminately for a week or month, we would have quickly forgotten it, figuring it just another example of the disproportionate collective punishment they have meted out regularly for decades on end.

But Netanyahu didn't stop, nor did Biden make any serious effort to rein Israel in — as previous American presidents had done so regularly Israeli politicians never had to learn to discipline themselves. The result had all the signs of genocide, although what Israel was doing was consistent with what they've been doing for decades, so only the speed and intensity has changed. Arguably the speed and intensity have slowed down since the phony ceasefire of last November, but the policies remain consistent with the oft-stated intentions of many Israeli politicians: of transferring all Palestinians out of the country, dead or alive. Sometimes genocide is less a statistic than simply a frame of mind.

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I wrote Arafat and Abbas on Violence back on June 25, which was largely based on quotes from Hussein Agha and Rob Malley's book, Tomorrow Is Yesterday (2025, Farrar Straus and Giroux). At the time, I mentioned that I wanted to write a second piece, based on another quote, where they write about "the events of October 7, 2023." Three years after those "events" is as good a time as any. What follows is a long quote, starting on p. 155, with some notes.

The events of October 7, 2023, had three distinctive features. They could have been prevented. They were not out of the ordinary. And they did not go as planned.

The following quotes explain the first point, and subsequent pages expand on the other points. They're solid, and sobering, as far as they go. But they focus on what is familiar and expected, and not what was distinct about these particular events.

Had it not been for Israel's massive lapse in security preparedness, the massacre almost certainly would have been averted. Israel's failure reflected complacency born of hubris, the disdain with which occupiers view the occupied. It was the product of nearly two decades of successfully containing Hamas through economic pressure, physical isolation, and, in response to Palestinian violence, minimal concessions coupled with punishing blows. Israel had been more concerned with what it considered more serious opponents: Hezbollah and Iran, both of which it meticulously tracked and carefully infiltrated, as the two would discover when Israel turned its fire on them.

Israel's lapses were also political. Israelis and Palestinians with direct access to Netanyahu and Yahya Sinwar, elected leader of Hamas in Gaza in 2017, met in private meetings as early as that year and did so until shortly before October 7. Earnest or feigning earnestness, the two sides traded concrete suggestions to ensure longer-term stability, allow Gazans to breathe more easily, and help Israelis to feel more secure. In the months before October 7, Hamas's latest proposal was for a truce: quiet in return for steps that would enable a functioning Palestinian government in Gaza, freedom of movement through Egypt, a port to ship goods out, a license to import a greater number of essential ones. In the end, Hamas's seriousness was never put to the test, as Israel pondered, wavered, balked. If Sinwar's indirect involvement in the talks was clear, the question of who was behind the Israeli participants was in doubt. The answer endlessly shifted from the prime minister's office to the IDF and to the Shin Bet, which led Hamas to conclude that the Israelis were just stringing them along. However close Israeli governments came to signing off, they recoiled at the thought that any such deal would empower a party still intent on the Jewish state's liquidation. At times Israelis sought to accommodate Hamas. At others they sought to subdue it. They could never make up their minds.

Israel ultimately shunned the possibility of a broader understanding with Hamas because it concluded a redirection from the path it had taken was unnecessary and possibly dangerous; the existing reality appeared less hazardous than the alternative. Accustomed to the way things were, Israelis assumed Hamas was as well. They saw no reason why Hamas might change its behavior, and were caught flat-footed when it did. That Israeli policymakers missed the evolution in Hamas's thinking is puzzling. Few societies have been more thoroughly penetrated and surveiled than Gaza. Israel had eyes and ears fixated on the Strip and on the handful of leaders whose decisions shaped its fate. It pored through reams of intelligence reports. Even as evidence of Hamas's preparations accumulated, however, Israelis were taken by surprise, unable to reconcile the reality of a movement that wished to govern with that of a movement that was willing to throw it all away. Many things can be blamed for their astonishing blunder. Lack of information is not one of them. It was as if they craved knowledge that, once in their possession, they refused to believe.

Israel had all the data and did not know what to make of it. The conclusion many of them drew from the October 7 assault — that it revealed Hamas's true, unchanging, fanatical, messianic identity — has it backwards and exposes this confusion. When Hamas held fire for the sake of governance, its religious roots were in evidence. When, persuaded that successful governance was out of reach, it took the fight to Israel, its Palestinian identity took over. The transition from trying to govern to blowing everything up seems brutal, as if the two were consistent with Hamas's dual religious and political orientations and with the fundamental project they served. Israel could not affect Hamas's ultimate, sacred goals: to oversee its own society and eliminate the Jewish state. It could, through its actions, influence how Hamas behaved in the interim, which side of its everyday activities it chose to emphasize, and how quickly it moved from one to the other.

The lack of recriminations for the security lapses of October 7 stands in marked contrast to the joint Egyptian-Syrian attack in 1973, which cost the job of Moshe Dayan, until then the hero of the 1967 war. The big difference this time is that the 1973 war led to a brokered ceasefire in less than a month. This time, Netanyahu has managed to extend the war beyond three years, postponing any day of reckoning. While this has emerged as an issue in the upcoming election, its effect is muted compared to what it would have been in the moment.

Picking up on p. 162:

October 7 stands out not because it was novel but because of what it accomplished, which was almost certainly beyond Hamas's expectations, plans, or ambitions. Its outcome was unparalleled in part because Hamas proved far more organized and meticulous than any of its forebears, but chiefly because Israel had fallen asleep. It was unprecedented due not to its nature but to its scale, which vastly surpassed that of any other similar operation. . . .

From 1948 onward, Israel has been no stranger to acts of destruction, displacement, and dispossession, attempts to erase traces of Palestinian presence where that presence had come to be viewed or designated as a threat to Israel's existence. Sites of Israeli massacres, forever etched in Palestinian consciousness: Deir Yassin, [Abu Shusha, Tantura, Lydda, Al Dawayima (all in 1948), Qibya (1953), Kafr Qasim (1956), . . . ].

Hamas's onslaught and Israel's war of destruction were not one-offs or historical exceptions. They were historical re-enactments. They made quick work of years of a peace process that had become a sore farce. They reached deep into each side's collective memories and then let loose their most abiding emotions. Hamas did not invent anything; it reclaimed a Palestinian past. Israel's reaction was not unusual either, rather a concentrated, magnified version of a long Zionist tradition of how to deal with the land's Arab inhabitants. . . . Residents of southern Israel paid for all the pain and humiliation Palestinians had suffered at Israeli hands. The people of Gaza paid not only for Hamas's actions but for Nazi crimes as well. History does not move forward. It slips sideways. And, in the darkest of ways, repeats itself.

Still, this understates the scale of the October 7 outbreak. Sure, there have been isolated instances of Palestinians entering Israel and killing or capturing hostages, especially before 1967, but never on this scale. Moreover, Israel's reaction was scaled up even more. Since the closing of Gaza in 2005, Israel has reacted hysterically (and disproportionately) to every toy rocket attack. When Netanyahu did the same this time, he was following business-as-usual standards. What was different this time wasn't the savage, disproportionate response, but that it never stopped. I think you have to blame Biden for that. It never occurred to him to temper Netanyahu's worst instincts — as most American presidents, from Eisenhower to Obama, had regularly done to pull Israel back from the brink.

Moving on to p. 169:

The Hamas leaders who planned October 7 nurtured more ambitious expectations. Unable to govern and increasingly at the mercy of domestic detractors, they wanted to show Israel the cost of the status quo and the price of besieging Gaza; remind the world of the Palestinian cause at a time of drifting attention; hinder Arab-Israeli normalization; score political points against Fatah, the PA, and Abbas; and grab the mantle of leadership of the Palestinian movement. They may well have had even grander hopes, such as to unleash a broader confrontation, igniting the West Bank and sparking a regional war with others joining the fray, ensuring Hamas would not bear the brunt of Israel's retaliation alone. But such broader aspirations were hardly unique to October 7 and do not warrant the reassessment of Sinwar from somewhat pragmatic to wholly messianic, or viewing his actions as having moved from the political to the eschatological. Neither Hamas nor Sinwar launched the operation because they believed it would immediately liberate Palestine or destroy Israel, any more than earlier generations of Palestinian militants had engage din acts of violence harboring that expectation. . . .

October 7 defied many of those precedents by succeeding beyond its planners' anticipation. They could not have imagined so thin an Israeli resistance, so easy a foray into enemy territory, so many Israeli victims and hostages. The upshot was unparalleled worldwide attention to the question of Palestine and unparalleled anti-Israeli mobilization. Soon enough, it triggered tension in the US-Israeli relationship, demonstrations on university campuses, and calls for legal accountability from the International Criminal Court. . . .

The precise date was no coincidence either — the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur War, a joint-Egyptian/Syrian military attack that stunned and shocked a slumbering Israel. But much of what happened on October 7 was unforeseen and unscripted. . . . The tide would shift, and then shift again. Hamas's central hope, and only certainty, was that Israel cared for its hostages and would not leave them behind. Sinwar counted on a spectacular prisoner exchange that would make up for whatever calamity befell Gaza and make his gamble worthwhile, but the gamble fell short. Netanyahu resisted domestic and international pressure and stood firm, leaving many Israeli hostages to their tragic fate. Little by little, Israel recovered, exhibited superior strength and formidable military might, exacted revenge on all who stood in its way and a vast number who did not — a demonstration of overwhelming and devastating power. If Israel paid a price, many others would pay too, far more painfully. Gaza suffered most, bombed to a heap of dust, death, and destruction. When Israel turned its sights on Lebanon and Iran, it settled other scores. October 7 exposed Israel's weakness; with its response, Israel set out on a path to reassert its strength.

And also to demonstrate its scorn and contempt for the world, its belief that power is the only thing that matters, regardless of how repulsively it is wielded, with so little concern for the lives of others. They may well continue to get away with it, at least as long as cynics like Netanyahu can pull the strings of fools like Trump, but how long can that last until the insults and injuries start to add up? The problem is not just that Israel will come to be seen as a pariah state. It is also that Israel will eventually divide into two camps: those with no sense of their own monstrosity, and those ashamed to have been led into such dehumanizing war.

I've been writing a piece which expresses considerable doubt about the ability of international law to cope with outlaw states like Israel (and, even more so, the US), but I have to admit that it is heartening that the ICJ judge who chaired the UN commission that concluded Israel was guilty of genocide in Gaza, Navi Pillay, has won the Nobel Peace Prize. It should also open some eyes that Trump's immediate response has been to impose sanctions on ICC.