As we reflect on the year that has passed since October 7, it is crucial to recognise a common misstep in the commentary surrounding this date. Many have hastily framed Hamas’ incursion into Southern Israel as the spark igniting a broader wave of violence in the region. Yet, this perspective overlooks the deep historical currents that have long been in motion…writes Will Shoki
The commentary marking a year since October 7 has typically committed the basic error of treating Hamas’ assault into Southern Israel as the initial movement in a major escalation of violence in the region. Notwithstanding the long historical process preceding it, it is worth recalling what the immediate time before Al Aqsa Flood and Iron Swords looked like.
In September, Save The Children declared 2023 “The deadliest year on record for children in the West Bank.” In June, gangs of armed settlers, encouraged by officials like Smotrich and shielded by the Israeli military, carried out five days of pogrom attacks on over a dozen Palestinian villages.
In the year leading up to May 2023, 234 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the occupied West Bank and 89 in Gaza, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
When Palestinians partook in “The Great March of Return”—a year-and-a-half-long campaign of non-violent mass action—Israel killed 214 and injured over 36,000.
Gideon Levy’s point from a year ago, that Israel Can’t Imprison Two Million Gazans Without Paying a Cruel Price, remains true as ever. The foundational violence of the settler-colonial project, characterised by dispossession and displacement, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and now, genocide, invariably entrenches violence as political language.
Once you deprive people of any other means of contesting their own oppression and frustrate all their efforts toward self-determination—no matter whether you think armed resistance is justified or not—the kind of violence we saw on October 7 is inevitable.
For peace to flourish, the material conditions must be created. That requires justice.
A year later, words are hard to come by. Almost every week, we have reflected on this catastrophe of world-historical significance, breathlessly supported by every single major international power, for a very simple reason: how could we not?
How could we turn our gaze away from a situation the mainstream press tells us is “complicated,” when it is transparently not?
Most of us in the Third World see one powerful side—a nuclear, garrison state—and one that is not. We see a side that enjoys political sovereignty and another that does not. We see one side that decides and another that is dependent on the decisions of the other.
Against the profound despair of the moment, the only comforting truth is this: all empires eventually fall. The American Empire, whose political class and military establishment lust for war in the Middle East, fantasise about wiping out Iran, and bankroll Israel’s flattening of Gaza and Lebanon, will fall too. It is a sign of its weakness that it increasingly relies on flat-out deception and bald-faced lies in order to ensure that the world falls in line with this agenda.
One way of interpreting Nelson Mandela’s famous words, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,” is to say that a free Palestine implies the end of the American empire. And that is why they are so afraid.
Will Shoki is the editor of africasacountry.com where this article was first published.