7 October, One Year On
Image: Ofri Zaslavski
A year ago, the brutal and unprovoked attack by Hamas terrorists on peaceful communities in the south of Israel changed Israel forever. Israel had for years warded off rockets attacks from Gaza, but to have thousands of gunmen penetrate the security barriers and enter the private spaces of civilians, to murder, maim, rape and kidnap was a new phenomenon.
We watched in horror and disbelief as videos appeared on our newsfeeds of terrorists entering homes and gunning down people. We were stunned by the glee and exhilaration of the terrorists, as they phoned home their successes. By the end of the killing spree, 1200 were dead, including 260 concert goers and thousands injured. In the ensuing days and weeks we would learn of the depth of the barbarity - the rape, beheadings, burning of families, mutilation of bodies, a sheer orgy of depravity.
One of the images seared into my brain was that of a young woman, slung on the back of a pick-up truck, limbs distorted, seemingly lifeless. We saw the footage of her being paraded through the streets of Gaza like a trophy, crowds clamoring to catch sight of her.
Shani Louk, a 22-year-old Israeli-German turned out to be a family member of a dear friend here in New Zealand, and suddenly her plight and the plight of 251 other individuals taken hostage that day - including babies, the disabled, a Holocaust survivor - became personal.
For Jews and Israelis, the trauma of personal loss and tragedy continues as 101 hostages are still held in homes and tunnels in Gaza, 33 of which have been confirmed dead.
The collective sense of loss is something to which Māori relate. What happens to one, can affect us all. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are tribal. The Jews, no less so. The Jewish tribe consists of some 15 million world-wide, including fewer than 10,000 in New Zealand.
Shani’s brother described her as “only pure angel”, with “no dark side”. Her family wishes to remember her as the happy, peace-loving, artistic, beautiful young woman she was. They were informed of her death on 30 October 2023, when a skull fragment was identified. Her body was eventually recovered by the IDF and brought back to Israel for burial.
One of the many shocking factors of the past year is the reality inversion imbibed by so many when considering the conflict. Within days of the greatest massacre of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust, Israelis were being blamed for their own deaths. Even the sexual violence perpetrated against women and men was justified as “resistance”.
Almost immediately, a global campaign swamped social media. Identical antisemitic slogans and images appeared on placards on the streets of New Zealand, Europe, USA and elsewhere. One poster showing a Star of David in a rubbish bin had been in use by Hamas for ten years. New Zealand Jewish teenagers felt they had to hide their Star of David necklaces and avoid conversations about the conflict. Indeed, the unprecedented upsurge in antisemitism in New Zealand has had a disproportionate impact on Jewish school children. “Visible” Jews have been targeted in workplaces and homes and even accosted in the hummus aisle of the supermarket.
“75 years of occupation” was parroted by western commentators as either the justification for the depravity of 7 October or at the least the “understandable” reason. It didn’t matter that the facts were resolutely uncooperative. Israel withdrew all civilians and soldiers from Gaza in 2005. There was nothing preventing Gazans, at that stage, from creating a “Singapore of the Middle East” - other than their ideology. Hamas’ charter unambiguously calls for the complete annihilation of Israel. Indeed this is what the majority of Jews understand “from the River to the Sea” to mean. To see politicians in distant New Zealand chanting this genocidal slogan with impunity has been surreal. As has the specter of our government aligning with the UN’s anti-Israel lobby, rather than with traditional allies, and calling for the withdrawal of Jews from their ancient and indigenous homeland within a year. Ironically, the very politician who opposed NZ’s role in a similar resolution in 2016, on the basis that it hadn’t been taken to cabinet, violated the same procedure to push this latest UN Resolution.
Many of those accusing Israel seem unaware that the “settler colonialist” framework under which Israel is falsely maligned, has serious implications for nations such as our own, with European New Zealanders being seen as foreigners and colonialists. In contrast, Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel, with more than 3,500 years of continuous connection. Despite multiple exiles, many Jews never left.
The Zionist movement in the nineteenth century was largely a response to the ongoing persecution of diasporic Jews in Europe. The end of World War One saw the collapse of the 400 year rule of the Ottoman Empire and the reconfiguration of the Middle East. New states formed and over the coming decades, peoples of the region asserted their right to self-determination, including the Jewish people. Israel was reestablished in 1948, partly in response to the murder of six million Jews in Europe, in nations in which they had resided for centuries. The international community of post World War Two, could not deny the justice of the Jewish cause. Indeed New Zealand Prime Minister Peter Fraser, speaking at a public meeting in Wellington in July 1943, declared New Zealand’s intention to stand ‘four-square for justice for the ancient home’.
In addressing the United Nations delegates at the San Francisco Conference in April 1945, Fraser asserted that, ‘Whatever can be done to help the persecuted Jewish people shall and must be done to the utmost ability of all right-thinking men.’
Settler colonialist ideology questions the very right of settler states to govern at all. Many local activists have adopted the Palestinian narrative, transposing a Middle Eastern conflict onto local concerns, under the guise of an indigenous struggle. The broader implications and the potential for radicalisation are recognised by few.
A year on from October 7, the world seems to have forgotten that Hamas started this war with its barbaric attack on the very communities most committed to peace. In a world in which narrative repeatedly trumps reality this is par for the course.
Hamas continues to use its own people as human shields while refusing to release the hostages. While Israel has faced false charges of genocide, starvation and targetting civilians, the hostages hidden in tunnels and homes have received no visits from humanitarian organisations and the international community has largely turned a blind eye.
There have been a few welcome victories, including the rescue of Noa Argamani, in time to say goodbye to her dying mother, and the Bedouin Israeli, Farhan al-Qadi. The families of hostages have worked tirelessly to raise awareness of their plight. We came to know Hersh Goldberg-Polin through the brave and persistent advocacy of his mother, Rachel, whose desperate cry to her son across the field towards Gaza ripped another piece from our hearts. To find that her son was executed by close range gunshots to the head at around the same time, was devastating. Five other hostages were also executed, discovered two days later in a tunnel where they could not stand, and in which even breathing would have been difficult. Their remains showed they were in various stages of starvation. Israelis grieved yet again for their sons and daughters.
Grief is an all too familiar theme in Israel’s story. So is resilience. Israelis will grieve, but they will rise again. Since 8 October, Northern Israel has endured thousands of rockets from the terrorist organisation Hezbollah, with over 65,000 Israelis having been evacuated. In the past few days Israel has eliminated many of the key leaders of the Hezbollah, in precise, targeted strikes. Across the Middle East, Iranians, Lebanese and Syrians are celebrating the demise of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and the end of his thirty year reign of terror.
The Jewish year is punctuated with festivals that commemorate victory over those who tried to destroy the Jews and failed, from the Egyptians, to the Persian Haman and the Greeks. The people of Israel have prevailed against their genocidal enemies for more than 3,500 years and they no doubt will do so again. Am Y’Israel Chai. The people of Israel live.
Dr Sheree Trotter