The October 7 Attack: One Year Later

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(The following article contains descriptions and depictions of intense violence and death)

I had the unique opportunity recently to view a private screening of footage from Hamas’ murderous October 7, 2023 incursion into Israel.

Last month, South Carolina attorney general Alan Wilson and Israeli consul general to the southeastern United States, Anat Sultan-Dadon, hosted the screening at the conclusion of their summit to combat antisemitism on college campuses. The film contained footage of the Hamas’ attack the Israeli government hasn’t publicly released.

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Thank you to Dr. Josef Olmert and Gamecocks for Israel for inviting me to speak today as we stand in solidarity with Israel on the 1st Anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attacks and rally together to bring all of the hostages home! pic.twitter.com/sXpNZmOncs

— Alan Wilson (@AGAlanWilson) October 7, 2024

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Many videos of the attack have been widely available on the internet for anyone who wants to see them. You can still get the unvarnished perspective on the attack if you want to.

That being said, If this article is to offer any new insight, it must involve what I personally took away from the privately screened film.

A bevy of high profile individuals attended the screening. Seated directly in front of me were University of South Carolina president Michael Amiridis and South Carolina Ports Authority board chairman Bill Stern.

The consul general introduced an Israeli Air Force major who asked only to be identified as “Major Shai.” Shai delivered a short informational presentation before the film. After providing a basic geographic overview – and the most up-to-date casualty figures from the attack – he implored the audience to consider the attitude with which the attacks were carried out.

“I know that sometimes my job is to kill people for the sake of Israel, but I never enjoy it,” he said. “Think if Hamas is doing the same.”

At this point, the film began – with the words “Hamas Massacre“ overlaid on the screen.

The first footage was from the perspective of dash-cameras located in the civilian automobiles of fleeing Israelis.

Their confusion and terror at being confronted by armed men – many of whom couldn’t be immediately identified as friend or foe – was apparent. Dashcam footage showed multiple civilian vehicles speed towards the Hamas checkpoint, only to have the their vehicles and bodies ripped apart by 7.62 x 39 rounds.

They stood no chance of bypassing Hamas’ unexpected checkpoint.

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The opening minutes of the film were relatively quiet and slow paced, but served to convey to the viewer the helplessness of the civilians in the unexpected assault.

The cars, and dead bodies of their occupants, began to pile up at the choke-points, ensuring that nobody could find safe passage through.

The attackers arrived in a variety of ways, some on foot, some in trucks, and others on motorbikes, but they universally engaged all civilians unfortunate enough to cross their paths.

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Minutes into the film, the audience had already seen the speed with which life can be extinguished by a rifle, but the violence was still largely impersonal, a horrifying attack – but one which resembled a conventional military operation more than a barbaric slaughter.

This changed when the film transitioned to footage from inside of the Israeli communal settlements called kibbutzes.

After eliminating the sparse armed resistance provided by paltry few brave defenders, Hamas operatives took control of the small walled in communities. The film now transitioned to include more footage taken by the gunmen, many of whom were live-streaming their exploits.

This first person perspective heightened the tension, you couldn’t help but feel both the fear of the Hamas operative, wondering if he’d meet resistance around the next corner, and terror of the unarmed civilians he met as you watched them futilely struggle to escape being murdered.

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Men and women died in their nightclothes – in or around their beds. The swiftness and unexpectedness of the assault was made plain by their clear lack of defensive preparation.

Security camera footage depicted a father running through his house carrying one of his young sons under each of his arms. He dashed through the kitchen, across the patio, and into his family’s underground air raid shelter.

The trio, clad in only underwear, made it into the bunker shortly before gunmen overtook the house – but they found little refuge there. Israeli air-raid bunkers are designed to withstand missiles, but not ground attacks.

The father’s limp body was ejected from the bunker shortly after footage showed a gunman toss a grenade down the steps.

The two children, likely shielded from this blast by their father, emerged from the shelter after the explosion under no illusion as to what just happened.

There was no mistaking the pure terror and trauma in their voices as they wailed “dad is dead.”

“Why am I alive?” one child, who couldn’t have been older than ten, asked his sibling.

Unable to see out of one eye, he shakily showed a Hamas member around his kitchen. The terrorist demanded water, but settled for the Coke in the family’s refrigerator.

(Click to view)

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Hamas’ operatives were shown to be ruthless killers of unarmed civilians, but what was more shocking perhaps than Hamas trained fighters’ willingness to indiscriminately kill, was the willingness of civilians to contemporaneously join in the assault.

Alongside the armed insurgents were civilians without weapons wearing street clothes. Footage showed one man who bore no outward signs of official military affiliation jubilantly attempting to behead an already-murdered Israeli with a garden hoe.

The man swung and struck the back of the Israeli’s head – the tool bouncing off his lifeless body. He took another wild swing that glanced off of the corpse’s shoulders. The film depicted a half dozen additional fruitless swings before cutting to a different scene.

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As the attack progressed, it became clear a principal goal of Hamas’ commanders was the capture of living hostages – who were depicted in the film being brought back into Gaza.

What was striking were the throngs of uproariously animated Palestinian civilians thrilled to see the hostages and to further desecrate the corpses brought back by Hamas fighters.

These people surely understood their lives were about to be upended by Israel’s efforts to secure the return of hostages and to address the threat Hamas demonstrated it posed, but nonetheless rejoiced in the “glory” of having exacted vengeance on the Israelis.

While I’ll never forget the horrifying sound of the young boy asking why he was alive – or barbarity of the man attempting to desecrate a corpse with a garden hoe – the reaction of hundreds of jubilant Palestinian civilians was the most informative part of the film, one that was not lost amid the confusion and horror of the shooting.

By the end of the film, the audience had seen just shy of 150 deaths on screen – or roughly a tenth of those killed in the attack. As the film ended, I recounted the words of Major Shai.

“Sometimes my job is to kill people for the sake of Israel, but I never enjoy it. Think if Hamas is doing the same.”

I approached the major at the end of the film, hoping to clarify the spelling of his name as to be able to accurately include his quote, which I felt encapsulated of the message Israeli film producers were hoping to convey.

Hamas killed out of spite and to send a message – with little hopes of militaristic territorial gain outside of sparking a full blown Iranian-Israeli conflict.

As I spoke with Major Shai I expressed my condolences for his people. I told him about my experience covering a pro-Palestinian protest earlier this year at the University of South Carolina, and offered my opinion that the majority of attendees had a limited understanding of what the posters emblazoned with “From the River to the Sea” were truly calling for.

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RELATED | PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTERS AT UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA

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I asked Major Shai the same question I asked the pro-Palestine protest leader … how do you see this war ending?

He told me I was free to quote him (all attendees had signed nondisclosure agreements before entering the screening) and went on to explain that he doesn’t believe Israel’s Western allies are realistic in their hopes that a case-fire without the elimination of militants who continue to threaten Israeli security is possible.

“We have to stop with the European mentality” he said, referring to the continued attempts to broker a peace that would allow Iranian proxy militant groups to continue to attack Israel.

He was of the opinion that Israel would need to assume strict control over Palestinian territory to ensure their own safety in the long term.

“It’s either apartheid or baby-killing, and right now we have baby killing,” he said.

Had I heard that sentence before seeing the outpouring of vitriol from thousands of civilians on the video, I’d have though Shai was a barbarian, but having just seen it first hand, I feel he is realistically (albeit grimly) assessing Israel’s options to secure its national security.

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As I reflected on Shai’s remarks, I returned to the “peace plan” expressed by the pro-Palestinian activist.

As I noted in my coverage, USC mathematics professor Joshua Cooper “spoke of a creating a single democratic state in the footprints of current Israel and Palestine.”

He acknowledged that this is political fantasy with the current governments of the United States and Israel in power, but emphasized that these coalitions are subject to change. Cooper didn’t predict what would come of the enmity between many Palestinians and Jews if this one state solution were implemented.

Cooper’s plan certainly sounds more palatable than Shai’s. After all, he wants a “democracy.”

But I’d wager that he was reluctant to predict how this could be done peaceably because he knows that his argument, tailored for social acceptability on a college campus, wouldn’t survive the hard reality of the Middle East – which is that Israel has no intention of ceding its sovereignty to it’s enemies without a fight.

“From the River to the Sea,” when spoken about with the same level of candor expressed by Shai, doesn’t envision the Israelis willingly giving up their territory, but dreams of a Middle East cleansed of Israel and it’s people. October 7, 2023 was but a taste of what this cleansing would look like, and Israel’s response has demonstrated how far they’re willing to go to prevent that.

The Abraham Accords, a bilateral Israeli-Arab peace agreement brokered by the administration of former president Donald Trump, threatened this dream of Israeli annihilation as it normalized relations between Israel and Sunni powerhouses like the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

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Israel’s chief enemy, Iran – whose rulers are Shia muslims – felt threatened by the idea that Suni Arab nations would become economically and socially intertwined with Israel, and likely saw the October 7, 2023 attack as a way to provoke an Israeli response so violent that public opinion would demand Shia leaders reverse their normalization of relations with Israel.

Israel’s response, which Shai himself acknowledged has entailed severe violence, certainly degraded these relationships as well as public support of Israel in Western nations.

Yet Iranian leaders are left in a weak position. Israel’s response neutered Hamas. Subsequently, through a highly effective bombing campaign, Israel decimated the leadership of Iran’s most powerful proxy, Hezbollah. And just last month, Israeli forces begun a ground campaign aimed at reducing Hezbollah’s ability to operate within range of the Lebanon-Israel border.

Iran, which usually attacks Israel through its proxies, took the bold step of launching a barrage of missiles from Iranian soil in retaliation.

The missiles overwhelmed Israel’s advanced air defense systems in places. While this attempt failed to inflict civilian casualties or destroy critical infrastructure and military assets on an appreciable scale, it reminded the world that saturation attacks can foil even the best air defense systems – and cost Israel and its allies many valuable interceptor missiles.

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RELATED | ISRAEL READIES GROUND OPERATIONS AGAINST HEZBOLLAH IN LEBANON

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Israeli officials have vowed to exact retribution – publicly discussing possibility of attacking Iran’s rulers or facilities essential to their nuclear program – but have net conducted a retaliatory operation.

Although analysis is not yet conclusive, many open source intelligence analysts are speculating that a recent earthquake in Iran could have been a nuclear warning shot.

Iran’s ability to overwhelm the Iron Dome air defense system becomes a lot more serious of a threat if one believes Iran possesses the ability to deliver a nuclear warhead to an Israeli city. The Sunni Arab states, who currently (at least publicly) are content to enjoy the security of America’s nuclear umbrella, have indicated their intention to arm themselves with nuclear weapons should Iran demonstrate a nuclear capability.

It’s possible that Israel – which has never admitted to having nuclear weapons but is believed to possess them – as well as Iran and several Sunni states which already have access to nuclear weapons, but understand that prematurely revealing their existence is of no strategic benefit.

This hypothesized nuclear “test” could be Iran now revealing it’s hand.

U.S. president Joe Biden has reportedly voiced fears that Israel intends to pursue an maximally agressive path in countering the Iranian threat, a path which will necessitate U.S. intervention to to ensure Israel isn’t annihilated.

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Biden’s administration has rhetorically challenged Israel’s bellicose reactions to the October 7 attacks, but has continued selling or giving the nation weaponry as well as billions of dollars of cash on an annual basis.

Trump, who often touts his record of not starting a new war during his administration, also famously ordered the killing of Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani while in office.

Trump has reportedly been briefed with intelligence indicating Iran is sponsoring multiple assassination teams who intend to end his life. He has postured tough against Iran on the campaign trail while insisting he’s not spoiling for a war.

“I want to see everything get worked out,” Trump said recently. “I want peace. I don’t want to see people killed. I want peace, and they know that. And the Jewish people know that. And both sides like it, and know that I can get peace.”

Iran is home to some of the world’s longest-lasting civilizations, and has been the seat of many of the world’s longest-lasting empires long before it’s Islamification.

Iran has survived invasions by the Macedonians, Arabs, Turks and Mongols largely because of the nation’s mountainous geography. This geography makes still makes land based operations a nightmare, and provides significant defensive advantages against air-based attacks. This means Israel could not militarily topple the nation’s leadership without enormous outside support – any may not be able to topple it even if it received this level of support.

And even if it did, who would replace the Ayatollahs?

Whatever one makes of the geopolitical implications of October 7, 2023 – or the history of conflict and conquest that led to the attack – on the anniversary of this bloody day we should mourn the dead, mourn for the children left without siblings or parents, and mourn for those who survived the attack but are left with psychological damage which from which the’ll perpetually suffer.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

(Via: Travis Bell)

Dylan Nolan is the director of special projects at FITSNews. He graduated from the Darla Moore school of business in 2021 with an accounting degree. Got a tip or story idea for Dylan? Email him here. You can also engage him socially @DNolan2000.

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