This is Palestine, in Your Inbox, trying to make sense of the most severe escalation in violence in Israel and Palestine since 1948.

Why Did Hamas Attack Israel on October 7th, 2023?

October 7th, 2023 marked the beginning of the 6th war Israel waged against Gaza’s 2.3 million people.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, Hamas militants infiltrated Israel. Their aim was to capture & kill as many Israelis as possible. At the time of writing, Hamas has killed ~1,200 Israelis, and the Israeli military has killed ~1,600 Palestinians since October 7th. The gruesome violence has come as a shock to many, with analysts describing the events as “Israel’s 9/11.”

But there’s nothing new about either the scale of the civilian death toll or the cruel indiscriminate use of force. Since 2008, Israel has killed 3,000 innocent civilians in five wars it’s waged on Gaza, and in each war, it has indiscriminately targeted civilians.

What’s new is that, for the first time, the mass of dead civilians are not just Palestinians. They are also Israelis. That is what is so shocking and so outrageous to so many analysts. When the mass of dead civilians are Palestinians, the world “regrets” the loss of life. When the mass of dead civilians are Israelis, the world emphasizes unspeakable horrors and stands behind Israel as it has already killed more Palestinian civilians than any previous war on Gaza and has declared its intent to commit genocide against the remaining 2.3M civilians:

The current escalation in violence can be traced to 2007, when Israel imposed an air, land & sea blockade on Gaza after Hamas came to power in the Strip, having won free and fair legislative elections in Occupied Palestinian Territories. Thereafter, the UN declared Israel’s blockade on Gaza a war crime because it imposes collective punishment of innocent civilians.

In 2008-9, the Israeli military waged its 1st war on Gaza. It was a tit-for-tat spat that devolved into a 22-day assault on Gaza in which Israel killed 926 unarmed civilians, while Hamas killed 3 Israeli civilians. The Goldstone Report found that in 10 of 11 incidents investigated in which the Israeli military launched direct attacks on civilians with lethal outcomes, no justifiable military objective was identified. The report determined that Israel’s goal was to punish, humiliate and terrorize the civilian population of Gaza.

15 years ago, Gaza experienced its first 9/11.

In 2012, Israel and Hamas fought their 2nd tit-for-tat war in which Israel killed 103 Palestinian civilians, while Hamas killed 4 Israeli civilians. The war started when Israel assassinated Ahmed Jabari, a senior Hamas leader & military commander, who had received the draft of a permanent truce agreement w/ Israel just hours before Israel assassinated him. Over the preceding months, Jabari had been conducting indirect talks with Israel via Hamas' deputy foreign minister, Ghazi Hamad, all with the approval of Israel’s then Defense Minister Ehud Barak. But Israel sought to squash the peace deal, preferring war to peace to strengthen its “deterrence capacity.”

In 2014, the Israeli military waged its longest & deadliest assault on Gaza to date, killing > 1,500 Gazan civilians, including 550 children, & injuring 10,000. Meanwhile, Hamas killed 6 Israeli civilians & injured 261 civilians. The UN investigated 15 strikes in which 216 people were killed, including 115 children. In 6 of the 15 cases, no explanation was found for bombing civilian, residential buildings. In one case, a 22-member family was given just a few minutes to evacuate their home after a “roof knock” in the early hours of the morning. 19 members of the family were slaughtered in their sleep.

9 years ago, Gaza experienced its second 9/11.

In 2018, Israel waged its 4th war on Gaza. On March 30, 2018, 30,000 Gazan civilians marched towards the barrier that encircles Gaza, demanding the right of return and protesting Israel’s siege. For the next few months, activists marched every Friday to protest, with dozens slaughtered by Israel. Then, on May 14th, 2018, Israel assassinated 60 Palestinian protesters in a single day. The marches continued every week until December 2019, during which time Israel killed 223 Palestinians & Israeli snipers left 6,106 Palestinians with life-changing wounds. Israel experienced 0 casualties.

In 2021, Israel waged its 5th war on Gaza. The war broke out after Israel pushed forward plans to ethnically cleanse 58 Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, and after Israel prevented Muslims from praying at the al-Aqsa Mosque on the holiest night of Ramadan; and after Israeli police stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque, shooting rounds of stun grenades and tear gas at worshippers. Hamas launched rockets into Israel, after which point Israel began its aerial barrage on Gaza, killing 128 Gazan civilians, and another 28 in the West Bank, while Hamas & other Palestinian militant groups killed 14 Israeli civilians. The UK-based independent war monitoring group Airwars concluded that, in 70% of the deadly airstrikes on civilians, no militants or military targets were found & Israel indiscriminately targeted dense civilian areas.

Overwhelming evidence suggests Israel has indiscriminately targeted civilians in every war it has waged on Gaza; that it uses disproportionate force and that it imposes collective punishment on Gaza’s 2.3 million people. Hamas has also indiscriminately targeted civilians in Israel, if at a scale 1-2 orders of magnitude less deadly. But while Hamas is regarded as a terrorist organization by most Western governments, Israeli leaders are regarded by most Western governments as distinguished statesmen and stateswomen who “have the right to defend themselves.”

Israelis have an expression about Gaza, “mowing the lawn.” To many Israelis, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are like overgrown weeds that need to be chopped down every few years. Israel had treated the Palestinians in Gaza as subhumans, as “human animals,” to quote the recent remarks of Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant. And when you treat 2.3 million people as subhuman for 16 years, who would have guessed a tiny number of them would carry out subhuman acts?