Wikipedia Deep Dive

October 7 attacks

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They had the blueprint. Israeli intelligence had obtained Hamas's detailed attack plans more than a year before October 7, 2023. The document described everything: the rocket barrage that would come first, the drones that would knock out surveillance cameras and automated guns along the border, the paragliders that would carry gunmen into Israel. When the attack finally came, Hamas followed this blueprint with shocking precision.

And yet it still happened.

The Attack That Changed Everything

At around 6:30 in the morning on October 7, 2023, as Jews celebrated Simchat Torah—a joyful holiday marking the completion of the annual Torah reading cycle—the sky over southern Israel filled with rockets. At least 4,300 projectiles streaked toward Israeli cities and towns in what Hamas called "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood."

But the rockets were just the overture.

While Iron Dome interceptors raced upward to meet the incoming barrage, something unprecedented was happening on the ground. Approximately 6,000 people—including 3,800 members of Hamas's elite Nukhba forces along with militants from other groups and even some civilians—breached the Gaza-Israel barrier at 119 different locations. They came in trucks and pickup trucks, on motorcycles and speedboats. Some arrived by powered paraglider, floating silently over the heavily fortified border.

What followed was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

The Human Cost

The numbers are staggering in their specificity. 1,219 people killed. At least 810 civilians, including 38 children and 71 foreign nationals from countries around the world. At least 379 members of the security forces. About 250 people—Israelis and non-Israelis, civilians and soldiers alike—were taken hostage and transported into the Gaza Strip.

One of the deadliest sites was the Nova music festival, an outdoor electronic music gathering near Kibbutz Re'im. 364 young people who had come to dance until dawn never made it home. In a grim irony, Israeli intelligence had discussed a possible threat to the festival just hours before the attack. The organizers were never warned.

Hamas militants attacked 21 communities in the Gaza envelope—the Israeli towns and agricultural settlements closest to the border. Names that meant little to the outside world became synonymous with tragedy: Be'eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Netiv Haasara, Alumim. In these kibbutzim, militants went house to house, killing families in their homes.

Documents recovered from the bodies of killed militants contained instructions to attack civilians deliberately. This was not collateral damage. It was the objective.

What Is Hamas?

To understand October 7, you need to understand Hamas—though understanding does not mean justifying.

Hamas, which stands for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (the Islamic Resistance Movement), formed in 1987 during the first Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. It emerged as the largest Islamist political movement in the Palestinian territories, distinct from the secular Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Fatah.

The organization maintains what it calls an uncompromising stance on the "complete liberation of Palestine." Throughout its history, it has pursued this goal through political violence—suicide bombings, rocket attacks, and now this unprecedented ground invasion. In 2017, Hamas adopted a new charter that removed explicitly antisemitic language and shifted its rhetorical focus from Jews broadly to Zionists specifically. Some scholars interpret this as a genuine moderation; others view it as a tactical rebranding.

Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and numerous other countries have designated Hamas a terrorist organization. This is not a marginal classification—it represents the consensus view of most Western democracies.

Yet Hamas is also the de facto governing authority in Gaza, having won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006 and subsequently taking control of the territory after a brief civil war with Fatah. This dual nature—terrorist organization and government—creates the impossible complexity that defines the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Context That Doesn't Justify

Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas's military wing (the Al-Qassam Brigades), gave a speech as the attack began. He listed grievances: Israel's 16-year blockade of Gaza, incursions into West Bank cities, violence at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, settler violence, property confiscation, home demolitions, and the arbitrary detention of Palestinians "until they wither from cancer and disease."

These grievances are real. Human rights organizations have extensively documented the humanitarian crisis in Gaza under the blockade, the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank (which most of the international community considers illegal under international law), and the violence perpetrated by some Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians.

But here is where we must be precise: acknowledging causes is not the same as excusing atrocities. Many conflicts have legitimate underlying grievances on one or both sides. The deliberate massacre of civilians—at a music festival, in their homes, at their breakfast tables—is not rendered acceptable by the existence of those grievances. This is the principle that distinguishes legitimate resistance from terrorism.

Saudi Arabia had warned Israel of an "explosion" resulting from the continued occupation. Egypt had warned of a catastrophe. The warnings went unheeded.

The Intelligence Failure

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of October 7 is how thoroughly it was predicted—and ignored.

Israeli officials had obtained the detailed attack plans more than a year in advance. The document described targets, operational plans, and even the size and location of Israeli forces—raising uncomfortable questions about how Hamas had obtained such precise intelligence. The blueprint was circulated among Israeli military and intelligence leadership.

They dismissed it as beyond Hamas's capabilities.

In July 2023, just three months before the attack, a young woman serving in an Israeli signals intelligence unit alerted her superiors that Hamas was conducting preparations for an assault. "I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary," she warned. An Israeli colonel ignored her concerns.

The official investigation by Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence agency, found that the agency failed to provide the warning that could have prevented the massacre. On the morning of October 7, the head of Shin Bet convened a situation assessment in the early hours to discuss intelligence coming from Gaza. In the end, they issued only a low-level warning and dispatched a small team specializing in thwarting limited attacks.

They expected fireworks. They got an invasion.

A Haaretz investigation painted an even more damning picture of systematic failure within the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The IDF had reduced funding and manpower dedicated to observing Hamas, focusing primarily on rocket sites while ignoring Hamas training exercises, troop movements, and the activities of its military leadership. When exercises simulating Hamas attacks found the Gaza division's response lacking, the findings were apparently not acted upon.

Cultural conformity was fostered among officers, the investigation found, and dissent was discouraged. Senior officers often silenced subordinates to maintain their positions, creating a toxic atmosphere where lower-ranking officers were afraid to question their superiors' judgments.

The Preparation That Hid in Plain Sight

Hamas did not hide its preparations. It simply relied on Israeli overconfidence.

For two years before the attack, Hamas used hardwired phone lines within Gaza's tunnel network—a vast underground infrastructure nicknamed the "Gaza metro"—to communicate covertly and evade Israeli signals intelligence. While Israel focused on intercepting electronic communications, Hamas went analog.

In the months preceding the attack, Hamas publicly released videos of its militants preparing. A video from December 2022 showed fighters training to take hostages. Another showed them practicing with paragliders. On September 12, 2023—less than a month before the attack—Hamas posted a video of its fighters training to blast through the border fence.

These were not discovered through intelligence operations. They were posted online for anyone to see.

After the attack, the IDF recovered more than 10,000 weapons: rocket-propelled grenades, mines, sniper rifles, drones, thermobaric rockets, and other advanced weaponry. Documents and maps seized from militants indicated that Hamas had planned a coordinated, month-long operation to invade and occupy Israeli towns, cities, and kibbutzim—potentially reaching as far as 20 miles into Israel and, according to some intelligence assessments, hoping to eventually reach the West Bank.

The scale suggested this was not meant to be a raid. It was meant to be a conquest.

The Hannibal Directive

One of the most controversial aspects of the October 7 response involves something called the Hannibal Directive—an Israeli military protocol regarding the capture of soldiers by enemy forces. The directive, which Israel officially says was rescinded in 2016, authorized the use of force to prevent kidnappings even at the risk of harming the captive.

According to reports, at least 14 Israeli civilians were killed by the IDF's use of this protocol during the chaos of October 7. In the fog of an unprecedented attack, with communications systems disabled (militants had deliberately destroyed the computer systems at the Sderot police station early in the attack), some Israeli forces apparently made the grim calculation that preventing hostage-taking was worth the risk of friendly fire casualties.

This remains one of the more painful and contested aspects of the day's events.

The World's Response

The governments of 44 countries denounced the attack and described it as terrorism. Then-U.S. President Joe Biden called it "the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust." The phrase was repeated across Western media, a historical comparison that conveyed both the scale of the tragedy and its particular resonance for the Jewish people.

Some Arab and Muslim-majority countries offered a different framing, pointing to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories as the root cause. This divergence in perspective—whether October 7 was an inexcusable terrorist atrocity or a violent but comprehensible response to decades of occupation—continues to divide international opinion.

Israel's response was swift and devastating. A large-scale military operation in Gaza began almost immediately, launching what would become an ongoing war with enormous civilian casualties. The cycle of violence, far from being broken, accelerated.

The Legal Questions

Some have characterized the October 7 attack as an act of genocide or a genocidal massacre against Israelis. This is a serious legal claim with a specific meaning: genocide requires the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The deliberate targeting of civilians at a Jewish holiday celebration, combined with the scale and brutality of the killings, forms the basis of this argument.

Meanwhile, the ongoing Israeli military operation in Gaza has itself faced accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice, brought by South Africa. The court has ordered provisional measures while the case proceeds. The question of who is committing genocide against whom has become yet another battleground in a conflict where even the vocabulary is contested.

The Names We Use

What we call things matters. Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups codenamed the attacks "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood," invoking the contested holy site in Jerusalem that sits at the spiritual heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In Israel, the day is called "Black Saturday" or the "Simchat Torah Massacre," emphasizing both the darkness of the tragedy and its timing during a religious celebration.

Internationally, the events are most commonly referred to simply as "the October 7 attacks"—a date that, like September 11, has become a shorthand for catastrophe.

The Occupation Question

Understanding October 7 requires grappling with the question of occupation—a term that itself is contested.

Israel has controlled the Palestinian territories, including the Gaza Strip, since the Six-Day War of 1967. In 2005, Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, dismantling all 21 Israeli settlements there and removing its military forces. Israeli officials argue this ended the occupation of Gaza.

The United Nations, most international humanitarian and legal organizations, and the majority of academic commentators disagree. They point to Israel's continued control over Gaza's airspace, territorial waters, population registry, and most border crossings as evidence of an ongoing occupation. In 2024, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion affirming this view.

This disagreement is not merely semantic. If Gaza remains occupied, then Israel has ongoing obligations under international humanitarian law toward its population. If it is not occupied, then Hamas's attacks originated from a territory that Israel does not control and for which it bears no direct responsibility.

Both framings contain elements of truth and elements of omission. Gaza is simultaneously blockaded and autonomous, neither fully occupied nor fully free. Its people live in conditions that human rights organizations have described as an "open-air prison," while being governed by an organization that prioritizes armed resistance over civilian welfare.

What Comes Next

October 7 did not end a conflict. It intensified one. The Gaza war that followed has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, and destroyed much of Gaza's infrastructure. Hostages remain in captivity. Rockets continue to fly. The international community calls for ceasefires that do not hold.

The attack also shattered something in the Israeli psyche—the assumption of security that had been carefully cultivated over decades. The border fence, the surveillance systems, the vaunted intelligence services—all had failed catastrophically. The trauma of October 7 will shape Israeli policy and politics for a generation.

For Palestinians, the war that followed has brought devastation of a scale unprecedented in the conflict's 75-year history. Whatever military objectives Israel achieves, the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza will also shape Palestinian memory and politics for generations to come.

The cycle continues. It is, as the title of the related article suggests, complicated. But complexity is not the same as moral equivalence. We can acknowledge the genuine suffering on all sides while still being clear that deliberately massacring civilians—whether at a music festival or in their homes—is a crime against humanity. Understanding why something happened is not the same as justifying it.

October 7 was both a cause and a symptom: the cause of a devastating war and the symptom of a conflict that the international community has failed to resolve for three-quarters of a century. It will not be the last such day unless something fundamental changes.

What that change might look like, and whether anyone has the courage and vision to pursue it, remains the unanswered question at the heart of this tragedy.