One year since that awful day: Exactly one year ago, Hamas rushed into Israel and massacred more than 1,200 people, abducting 250. About 100 hostages in Gaza are not accounted for—either imprisoned or dead, held by terrorists who won't return either the living captives or their bodies to their families.
Following the attack, Israel invaded Gaza; so far, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting, per (Hamas-controlled) health authority data. Israel claims it has killed 17,000 Hamas militants; how many deaths are civilians and how many are fighters is obviously important but is hard to reliably determine. Israel's campaign has obliterated vast swaths of the Gaza Strip, and the Israeli military says its goal is to fully wipe out Hamas and those responsible for the pogrom. Now Israeli is also attempting to eradicate Hezbollah, an Iran-backed group in Lebanon with whom they've been exchanging fire for much of the last year. In April, Israel and Iran directly exchanged strikes. Last week, Iran fired 181 ballistic missiles at Israel; it is still awaiting Israel's response.
"We're excelling at eliminating our enemies but failing to save our loved ones," Carmit Palty Katzir, whose brother Elad was one of the killed hostages, told The New York Times at a memorial held at Kibbutz Nir Oz. This sentiment is not unique.
It's not just that Israeli public opinion has at times soured on the war effort, with citizens split on whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should just bring the hostages home versus trying to fully wipe out Hamas. It's also that Israel's north—the border it shares with Lebanon—has been evacuated to varying degrees for the better part of a year, essentially making a significant portion of the territory unlivable. Now it's an active front. And in the wake of Israel's recent ground invasion of Lebanon, all signs suggest that things there will heat up further.
More than 60,000 Israelis in that region have been displaced. "An area equivalent to 2.5 percent of this small country has been transformed into a civilian-free zone, and for an entire year Israel's border has effectively been set by Hezbollah," writes Matti Friedman. "The decision to clear out an entire part of the country will be remembered as one of the most significant Israel made in this war, marking both the collapse of a Zionist principle and the realization of the fantasy of Israel's enemies."
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QUICK HITS
- Anthony Fauci "will be remembered as a cautionary tale of what can happen when too much power is invested in a single person for far too long," writes Jay Bhattacharya in Reason.
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- "The great Florida migration is coming undone," reports The Wall Street Journal.
- Inside Arizona's plan for bolstering election security.
- "The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded Monday to Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA, tiny pieces of genetic material that alter how genes work at the cellular level and could lead to new ways of treating cancer," reports the Associated Press.
- Disturbing:
Taiwan is copying Germany's extremely dumb mistake:
It's shutting down all of the country's nuclear power plants.
The island already depends on imported fossil fuel for around 90% of its energy. pic.twitter.com/o7kYoKCyyB
— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) October 7, 2024
The post A Year Since the Massacre appeared first on Reason.com.
