October 7: An Appraisal Three Years Later

“There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen,” Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet revolutionary leader, famously said.

Lenin’s succinct observation can be applied to October 7, 2023, when Hamas hordes attacked southern Israel in the deadliest day in Israeli history. Hamas’ invasion, which resulted in the deaths of roughly 1,220 Israelis and foreigners and the abduction of 251 people, was consequential, leaving a profound impact on Israel, the Middle East and the rest of the world.

Israel reacted fiercely, killing 1,600 of the invaders who crossed the border. Since then, Israel has eliminated 4,000 of the 6,000 terrorists, said Defence Minister Israel Katz on October 5. The remainder will be hunted down, he added.

Israel’s ferocious military campaign, which unleashed a global wave of anti-Israel animus and antisemitism that has yet to subside, led to the deaths of 472 Israeli soldiers and 73,000 Palestinian civilians and combatants, the virtual destruction of the Gaza Strip, and the outbreak of a regional war in the Middle East whose participants included Hezbollah and Iran.

The war ended with a ceasefire last October brokered by the United States, but almost daily clashes have erupted in Gaza since then.

According to the Times of Israel, Israel has struck about 100,000 targets since October 7: 65,000 in the Gaza Strip, 28,000 in Lebanon and Syria, 4,500 in Iran, and 80 in Yemen.

This geopolitical earthquake is thoroughly analyzed in October 7: The Wars Over Words And Deeds, published by Academic Studies Press. Composed of thoughtful and engaging essays edited by Donna Robinson Divine and Asaf Romirowsky, they cover substantial ground. The topics run the gamut from Hamas’ war aims and Israel’s counter-attack to pro-Palestinian sentiment at American universities and the roots of anti-Zionism. Oddly enough, the contributors’ academic affiliations are not listed.

Cole Bunzel, in his essay, reminds readers that Operation Al Aqsa Flood was premised on Hamas’ assumption that Israel is an illegitimate state with no right to exist. As Hamas politburo member Ghazi Hamad said, “Israel is a country that has no place on our land.”

Hamas deceived Israel by lulling it into the complacent belief that Hamas’ leadership was focused on nation-building and economic growth rather than armed resistance. No less a person than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, bought into Hamas’ deception that it was bound by “restraint.”

Nevertheless, Israel suspected that Hamas was in attack mode. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that Abbas Kamel, the director of Egypt’s intelligence agency, called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu days before October 7 to tell him that Hamas was poised to invade Israel. His call followed two earlier warnings by Kamel that “the situation in Gaza was dire and could blow up in everyone’s faces.”

Previously, the president of the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Zayed, warned Netanyahu that Hamas was planning a major operation against Israel.

From the moment it assumed power in 2006, Bunzel points out, Hamas adopted a militarily aggressive position, regularly firing rockets and mortars at Israel. Its attacks triggered four major Israeli operations: Cast Lead (December 2008-January 2009), Pillar of Defence (November 2012), Protective Edge (July-August 2014), and Guardian of the Walls (May 2021).

Hamas’ supreme leader, Yahya Sinwar, who was killed in 2024, played a decisive role in steering Hamas toward a war with Israel. “Sinwar was convinced that the final victory over Israel was drawing near, believing that a massive assault on Israel would spark the larger confrontation he envisioned, one involving all the elements” of Iran’s Axis of Resistance.

Israel’s national security doctrine, which was devised by its first prime minister,  David Ben-Gurion, was predicated on the assumption that its military superiority would deter hostile elements. But, as Ben Fishman writes in another essay, this concept was flawed. From the 1973 Yom Kippur War to Hamas’ onslaught in 2023, Israel was taken by surprise by its enemies.

In invading Gaza, Israel’s objectives were four-fold, writes Andrew Fox notes: to dismantle Hamas’ military and administrative capabilities, to permanently remove the threat it posed to border communities, to free the hostages kidnapped by Hamas, and to restore its deterrence.

The Israeli army’s tactic of capturing an area and withdrawing from it was the object of criticism. “Not only do you have to actually go in and clear out whatever adversary you are up against,” said the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff General CQ Brown. “You have to hold the territory and then you’ve got to stabilize it.”

Israel’s relentless campaign in Gaza backfired in terms of public relations, says David Adesnik. Israel was accused of brutality and genocide. At the same time, accusations of inhumanity “often tied Israel’s hands.”

Israel pushed back in exposing Hamas’ tactic of using civilian structures, from schools and mosques to hospitals and United Nations facilities, to camouflage its military activities.

Hamas’ strategy of violence earned it plaudits in liberal and progressive circles, laments Asaf Romirowsky. “That so many in the media and in universities projected (Hamas) atrocities as the path to liberation … defies … logic.” He adds, “Too many intellectuals since October 7 have been frank in their celebration of Hamas’ violence …”

At university campuses, admiration for Hamas went hand-in-hand with expressions of antisemitism. “The American university has become a safe space for unhinged and uninhibited antisemitism,” writes Franck Salameh in a scathing indictment.

In KC Johnson’s opinion, pro-Palestinian protests gave way to Palestinian encampments, which flourished primarily at either elite colleges and universities, or at public universities in deep blue states.

Anti-Israel activism from faculty emanated mainly from professors in humanities, law, public health and social sciences. Russell Rickford, a Cornell professor, called the October 7 assault “energizing.” Yale academic Zareena Grewal denounced Israel as “a murderous, genocidal settler state” and asserted that Palestinians had “every right to resist through armed struggle.”

Virtually no campus protests denounced Hamas, says Johnson. Indeed, 34 student groups at Harvard on October 7 held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible” for “all the unfolding violence” and refused to condemn Hamas’ mass murder of civilians or its rampant sexual violence.

Student groups at other campuses, including Students for Justice in Palestine, voiced “full solidarity with Palestinian resistance against … Israeli settler-colonialism.”

Antisemites in the Arab world were emboldened by October 7, he suggests, citing two examples. Fatah official Yasser Abu Sido claimed that the Nazis perpetrated the Holocaust because “Jews and World Zionism … were planning the takeover of Germany.” Majida el-Roumi, a Lebanese goodwill ambassador for the United Nations, praised The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a czarist forgery which spoke of a plot by Jews sought to enslave the world.

Izabella Taborovsky reminds a reader that the left’s characterization of Israel as a racist and colonialist state mirrors the rants of Soviet propaganda. She contends that the anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 launched a wave of anti-Israel demonization and hostility.

Among the figures who shaped this Soviet-inspired anti-Israel discourse, or who were products of this ecosystem, were three Americans: Angela Davis, a member of the Black Power movement; her colleague Stokley Carmichael, and Robert Malley, a Biden administration official whose father, Simon, was an Egyptian Jewish communist and anti-Zionist who built close relationships with Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro.

While the United States backed Israel’s war effort after October 7, President Joe Biden pressured Israel to delay or scale back some of its operations out of concern for civilian casualties, says Jonathan Rynhold. He makes an important point in stating that Democratic Party support for Israel shrank as the war dragged on. In fact, this process had begun some years earlier. As Rynhold explains, “Democrats have become increasingly liberal, secular and dovish, whereas Israel has been led by the most conservative, religious and hawkish government in its history.”

In her closing essay, Donna Robinson Divine argues that contemporary anti-Israel rhetoric since October 7 is “a core sign of the times, a cosmic generational issue.” She goes on to say, “Embracing Hamas is now the ready-made portal to enter the order combating global inequity. The fault line dividing the old oppressive order from the new progressive just world is said to run decisively and deeply through Palestine … Palestinians have turned their confrontation with Zionism into a clash of civilizations.”

On this somber note, she posts a warning: “To borrow from Bob Dylan, the times they are a-changing, and sometimes you do not need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind is blowing.”

Since October 7, the head winds have been blowing against Israel. Yet weather forecasts, like political and military events, can change in an instant.