A year of sorrow: the war on Palestine
Israel's war on Palestine has reached its grim one-year anniversary today, marking what is likely to be the beginning of another year of sorrow for the Palestinian people
What were the Hamas leaders' thoughts on October 7 2023, as thousands of Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel in one of the largest surprise attacks seen in history?
Undoubtedly they were aware that the response would be quick and brutal, history had shown them how little value their captors had over the lives of Palestinians.
Perhaps they thought it would be worthwhile to bring back the Palestinian situation into the global consciousness, perhaps they thought the situation would resolve in a hostage deal.
The world was not ready when the shock of the attack faded and the horror of Israel's response began.
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An anniversary of death
Israel's war on Palestine has reached its grim first anniversary today, marking what is likely to be the beginning of another year of sorrow for the Palestinian people.
The latest data collated by Al Jazeera has revealed that at least 41,788 people including 16,500 children have been killed, with more than 10,000 missing. Additionally, reports say that around 97,000 people have been injured.
But civilians have not been the only victims of relentless bombardment, The Committee to Protect Journalists, a non-profit promoting global press freedom, states that at least 128 journalists and other media workers have been killed in the war.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that as of 19 August, more than 280 aid workers, a majority being from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, have been killed in Gaza alone.
The UN released another report even more recently in September revealing that more than 885 health workers, including nurses, paramedics and doctors, have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank. Several of them have died in Israeli prisons.
Death, Politics and Israel's 'right to defend itself'
The ongoing war and its devastating impact on both the Palestinian and now Lebanese people have highlighted deep religious, social and political divisions around the world.
Perhaps the most shocking of these revelations was simply how servile the United States has been, standing against the world in defence of a country that has had accusations of war crimes, with ample evidence, levelled against it multiple times.
The United States has done nothing more than provide lip service towards ceasefire agreements while spending billions in defence aid so that Israel could buy more bombs to level Gaza with.
US statements on the events in Gaza fall into two categories. First is Israel's "right to defend itself", which is repeated whenever Israel invaded Gaza, and now Lebanon, or assassinated military officials.
Second is the unflinching backing of the US for Israel, whenever any other organisation or country brings up valid points of Israel's excessive use of force or war crimes.
It took a direct Israeli air strike on a car transporting seven World Central Kitchen aid workers, in a vehicle that had been cleared, and identified with the Israeli army, before Joe Biden even considered pausing a single shipment of heavy bombs out of many other weapon shipments that went ahead.
Biden claimed at the time that he did so to increase pressure to not send Israeli army tanks into Rafah in the midst of one of the attempts of a ceasefire deal.
However, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proceeded to invade and bomb Rafah, resulting in the deaths of even more civilians and tenuous claims of Hamas fighters killed.
The US weapon shipments were cleared to go ahead to Israel a few weeks later.
People for peace
Not all has been grim though. Despite the immense tragedy occurring every day in Palestine, the world has taken notice, even if their leaders choose to ignore what is before their eyes.
It's also important to acknowledge that despite Israel's best efforts, they do not represent all the Jewish people, and there are many Jews of a plethora of backgrounds who support Palestine and its right to self-governance.
Protests have been and are still being held across the world against Israel's actions in Gaza, often with Jewish people joining, bearing placards and chanting slogans that Israel does not act in their name.
This often resulted in counter-protests from Israel's backers. It has been noted in many publications that when these protesters meet and violence ensues, there appears to be a bias in blaming those who support Palestine, even when the counter-protesters were the ones to provoke a clash.
This can't be seen any clearer than when students of Columbia University chose to walk out of lectures to attend a protest organised by two groups in which they called on Washington to push for a ceasefire in Israel's assault on Gaza. This event, which began in early November, became a flashpoint in the US.
The sit-in protest was a peaceful one involving setting up camp on the front lawn of the university. However, it was almost immediately condemned by the university President Minouche Shafiks.
Police were called in within a day and they forcefully removed the students, arresting over a hundred of them on the first day. When the arrests did not work, the students were threatened with suspensions.
Despite all of this, the movement spread to other universities across the US and Europe, before eventually fading away as some universities capitulated to demands or students gave up and returned to their lives.
The rise of hate
In the year since this war began, the world has seen a sharp rise in both antisemitism and islamophobia. Perhaps the saddest and most horrifying example of this occurred shortly after the war began in October 2023.
An Illinois man, Joseph Czuba, fatally stabbed a 6-year-old Palestinian American child and wounded his mother.
Wadea Al-Fayoume was stabbed 26 times with a military-style knife with a 7-inch (18-cm) serrated blade, the Will County Sheriff's Office said in a statement. Czuba was the family's landlord and committed the murder purely based on the knowledge that they were Muslim.
This year has been full of horrific headlines, of starvation, war crimes, desperate stories of loss, from babies dying of sickness and starvation, incubators and medical equipment failing due to the lack of power, airstrikes occurring on densely packed refugee camps, and hospitals being infiltrated to assassinate patients or raided under false pretences.
The world has stood by and watched, wringing its hands helplessly and talking about how terrible it all is, but they are hampered from acting by the shadow of the US looming in the background, constantly repeating that Israel is allowed to defend itself ad nauseam while feeding the ever hungry military more bombs, missiles and artillery shells.
No end in sight
So what were the leaders of Hamas thinking, when they sent their soldiers to attack Israel, one year ago today? Knowing that thousands would die in response, knowing that the sweet taste of victory would reveal itself an illusion soon enough.
Perhaps in the wake of Israel's normalisation of ties with other Arab and Muslim states even as they heaped injustice and death on Palestine, they decided that death would be better than to be forgotten. Palestine has little power itself, as it is barely recognised as a country by a West that wholeheartedly supports its occupier.
What they did have though, was a shared faith. Islam is the second most shared faith in the world, with over 1.9 billion adherents across the globe and when Israel's response came, it brought the inherent unfairness of the Palestinians' situation in stark relief.
Perhaps they were banking on Netanyahu's predictably harsh response, as his and his military's actions have sunk years of diplomacy to normalise relations with many Arab and Muslim states.
The suffering of Palestinians has been brought forward to the global consciousness, and a critical eye has been turned to Israel's conduct.
Netanyahu has shown little desire to halt his rampage across the Middle East, playing the victim even as he invades other countries and reaps utterly unbalanced death tolls on civilians.
But the damage done to Israel's international reputation and its increasing isolation on the world stage is cold comfort to the dead lying buried under rubble – or the living who simply wait for death to come from the skies with grim finality.
