Reflecting on Palestinian suffering nearly two years after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel
Presbyterian peace advocate stresses the need to end atrocities and famine in Gaza for the sake of both peoples
Next week on Oct. 7, it will be two years since Hamas combatants breached Israel’s security fence surrounding Gaza and launched a deadly attack against Israel’s kibbutzim on the border, slaughtering over 1,200 Israelis and taking 250 hostages back into Gaza. An Israeli music festival called NOVA was happening on the same weekend, and whether or not it was known by Hamas prior to the attack, many of its attendees fell victim to Hamas’ atrocities.
Immediately, the world condemned this barbaric attack against civilians and soldiers alike.
Two years on and the world, including many Israelis, still don’t know the full truth surrounding the events of that fateful day.
Israeli women soldiers, working as “spotters” on the border with Gaza, had long warned that Hamas was planning an attack. Their superiors and their families wrote them off and scoffed at the idea that Gazans could carry out any kind of meaningful assault against the strongly weaponized and militarized Jewish state. The spotters were not wrong. Some were killed, and others taken hostage, only to be released later in a prisoner swap.
In July 2024, the Israeli daily newspaper Ha’aretz (“The Land”) would reveal that Israel had invoked what is known as the “Hannibal Directive” or the “Hannibal Protocol” on Oct. 7, a controversial procedure used by Israeli Defense Forces to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers by enemy forces. According to one version, kidnappings must be “stopped by all means,” even at the price of striking and harming their own forces and/or civilians.
Within days following Oct. 7, Israel, supplied with a massive quantity of weapons from the Biden administration, launched deadly attacks on Gaza. The attacks have continued to this day, resulting in untold civilian casualties. In the months since, Israel has dropped bombs on the tiny enclave equivalent to over six Hiroshimas. Every school, university and hospital has been targeted and all but totally destroyed.
The entire world has watched, largely in silence, as tens of thousands of Gazans have been systematically slaughtered. The Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, the Lutheran pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hope in Ramallah, Palestine, stated that today, “Gaza is the moral compass of the world” and that “silence for the ongoing genocide is complicity.”
In July of this year, the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza took a direct hit from an Israeli airstrike. Three people were killed, including the sister of Dr. Maher Ayyad, the medical director at Gaza’s Ahli Arab Hospital. This hospital, the only Christian-run hospital in Gaza and administered by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, has long been supported by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Its ministry of healing among the people of Gaza has been a source of hope to many people over the years.
Today, Gaza has been turned into a wasteland. How anyone has survived nearly two years under an almost constant bombardment is anyone’s guess.
On July 28, Israel’s Physicians for Human Rights and B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, called Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip a genocide. The same week, the Rev. Jihyun Oh, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Executive Director of the Interim Unified Agency, said in a statement released to the church that international legal scholars, Christian denominations, human rights organizations and genocide experts have warned that “the unfolding destruction in Gaza meets the criteria of genocide under international law.” You can read Oh’s complete statement here.
Currently, the United Nations claims that over half a million Gazans are suffering from famine. Israel claims the report is “baseless.”
Likewise, Islamic Jihad has released shocking videos of at least two Israeli hostages looking emaciated and gaunt. Hunger and starvation are being used as a weapon by both sides against the other. In August, it was reported that Israel’s own military data indicates that 83% of those killed in Gaza were Palestinian civilians. The current death toll in Gaza now stands at more than 62,000. Today, Gaza is home to the largest known population of child amputees in the world.
In the West Bank, violent Israeli settlers have set fire to fields, olive groves, cars and even houses in Palestinian villages and towns. In several instances, they have even killed Palestinians trying to defend their lands and their homes. At least four of those killed since the war in Gaza began were Palestinian American citizens who were visiting family in the West Bank. The Israeli army has seldom intervened, creating a situation where the Israeli settlers act with impunity, and get away with — in some cases, literally — murder.
For Palestinians, what Israel is doing in the West Bank and in Gaza constitutes a continuation of the Nakba, or Catastrophe, that befell them in 1948 and resulted in the expulsion of Palestinians from their cities, villages and towns and the systematic takeover of historic Palestine. Estimates are that over 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes, and over 400 Palestinian villages were wiped off of the map and bulldozed into obscurity.
Yet these same Palestinians and their many descendants have never forgotten what befell them. Subsequent generations vow to return to their villages and towns, and they have never relinquished their right to return, which was guaranteed to them in United Nations Resolution 194.
In the Gospel of Matthew, we read, “But when [Jesus] saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36)
Compassion involves more than just sentiments of the heart. It entails direct actions which can change the situation for those affected by circumstances beyond their control. Just as Jesus commanded his disciples, “you give them something to eat,” so, too, we are also responsible for doing our part in order to change the reality that is currently unfolding for those in Gaza who cannot help themselves. Only a concerted and united worldwide effort will end Israel’s brutal, inhumane war on the people of Gaza.
My fear is that significant, irreparable damage has already been done — not only in and to Gaza, but to the soul of the Jewish state and its people. The Jewish state was founded on the premise that it would be a light unto the nations. The nation — and the world — that swore “never again” has allowed it to happen once again. Only this time, the victims are perceived as being of less importance. The world has largely stood by and watched, silent in the face of looming starvation and the imminent annihilation of the Palestinian people. Surely, this episode in humankind’s history will be remembered by future generations as one of the darkest, and they will once again pose the same question to those of us who stood by and did nothing: “Why?”
Doug Dicks serves as a Global Ecumenical Liaison with the Interim Unified Agency of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
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