On October 7, 2023, my morning began with a sense of confusion and disbelief. The videos surfacing on social media were horrifying to watch. Pulling myself together, I began to write while I still struggled to make sense of what evils were unfolding on Israel’s border with Gaza.
I started my initial draft with the headline: “Hamas Sneak Attack, 22 Killed.” And with every passing hour, the death toll of innocent Israelis rose exponentially. The only thing more horrific than the mass killing was the depths of Hamas’s depravity meted out to the dead and the living.
It took days for the Israel-Gaza border to be stabilized as Israeli soldiers went from house to house, flushing out Hamas intruders. These soldiers were the first to witness Hamas’s crimes. Terrorists slaughtered entire families: children before the eyes of their parents, parents before their children. They raped, mutilated, and murdered women. They proudly recorded taking terrified women, children, and the elderly as hostages back to Gaza. They were received as heroes by the residents of Gaza. Wounded and half-naked hostages were spat at and humiliated by crowds of Hamas sympathizers as they were dragged and paraded on Hamas pickups.
At the Nova music festival, around 400 young Israelis were raped and slaughtered. Flourishing communities, such as Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, and other kibbutzim, were turned into smouldering ghost towns, with their residents killed or kidnapped. Hamas terrorists even killed pets. Israel’s Ynetnews counted 60 dogs shot by Hamas on October 7.
When the dust settled, the extent of Hamas’s invasion and massacre became clear. Terrorists had breached the Israeli border fence at 60 places. Over 3,000 terrorists belonging to Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups had invaded Israel. More than 1,200 men, women, and children were murdered on that single day, and 251 were taken hostage. To this day, Hamas holds 48 hostages, of whom only 20 are believed to be alive.
The well-planned attack took place on a Jewish sabbath and one of the holiest days in the Israeli calendar, Simchat Torah.
In a recently released book, ‘While Israel Slept,’ Israeli authors Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot reveal that Hamas had been working to stage such an attack for nearly two decades. Exactly one year earlier, on October 7, 2022, Hamas carried out a drill for a cross-border attack right under the nose of the IDF, the authors say.
With the twin objective of freeing the hostages and defeating Hamas, the IDF launched the operation ‘Swords of Iron.’ On October 27, 2023, the Israeli troops began the ground operation in Gaza. The military not only faced a well-dug-in enemy in Gaza, but faced a multi-pronged attack from the Iranian-led axis of terror. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen-based Houthis, and Iraqi terror militia began firing missiles and drones at Israel.
After two years of combat operations in Gaza, Israel has lost 1,086 soldiers and security personnel, 66 of them women. Around 560 IDF soldiers have been severely wounded, official figures show. The IDF eliminated nearly the entire Hamas leadership in Gaza and severely degraded its terrorist fighting force. The key planners of October 7, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, were killed in targeted Israeli airstrikes. In July 2024, Israel took out the Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in a strike near Tehran, Iran. Last month, an IDF airstrike hit Hamas’s headquarters in Qatar, signaling that Israel’s long arm of justice is capable of reaching Hamas terrorists anywhere.
The Israeli military intelligence, in October 2024, revealed that Hezbollah had also planned an October 7-style attack in northern Israel. With the Israeli military on high alert after the Hamas massacre, Hezbollah had to shelve its “Conquer the Galilee” plan.
There were some significant unintended consequences of the tragic October 7 massacre. Hezbollah, which began cross-border rocket strikes on Israel on October 8, 2023, had a rude awakening on September 17, 2024, when pagers carried by its terrorist rank and file began to explode. Hours later, Hezbollah walkie-talkies blow up.
The brilliantly executed Mossad operation was followed by Israeli airstrikes on Beirut and southern Lebanon. Weeks later, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and most of his terror commanders were dead. In early October 2024, the IDF launched a two-month-long ground operation to flush out Hezbollah terrorists and dismantle terror tunnels and fortifications along the country’s northern border.
Ten weeks later, the Iran-backed Bashar al-Assad regime fell in Syria. The IDF created a buzzer zone in terrorist-ridden southern Syria.
While Israel mourned the victims of October 7, Hamas fired a rocket at southern Israel, highlighting the terrorist threat still facing the Jewish state. “Thousands of people converged on southern Israel on Tuesday to mourn the dead as the nation marked two years since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack,” the Associated Press noted.
No one was reported injured following the Hamas rocket strike. “A rocket fired from Gaza on Tuesday morning struck an Israeli town that Hamas terrorists raided on Oct 7 two years ago to the day,” The Telegraph (UK) reported. “The projectile struck close to Netiv HaAsara, a small farming community on Gaza’s northern border, on Tuesday morning, the Israeli military said.”
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis terrorist group launched several drones at Israel. “Two more drones launched by the Houthis in Yemen were shot down by air defenses over Israel’s southernmost city of Eilat, the military says, after sirens sounded in the city,” The Times of Israel reported. “Half an hour earlier, another Houthi drone was shot down over Eilat, according to the IDF, bringing the total to three.”
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