The horrors of October 7, 2023, are etched in blood and grief. Hamas militants stormed from the Gaza Strip, murdering approximately 1,200 Israelis and foreigners, most of them civilians, and abducting hundreds in a spree of atrocity.
To call this “unprovoked,” however, is to view a forest fire and deny the existence of drought, tinder, and a litany of ignored warnings. It was not unprovoked.
It was, in many ways, as predictable and preventable as the violent eruption of a pressure cooker sealed shut by policy and indifference.
For nearly two decades, Gaza has existed under a comprehensive Israeli blockade, a stateless enclave where two million people face what major human rights groups call an “open-air prison.”
Economy shattered, movement forbidden, hope strangled.
This was not a vacuum; it was a crucible.
In the West Bank, the steady machinery of occupation advanced, with settlements expanding on land the world considers illegally seized, rendering a viable Palestinian state a fading mirage.
Peace talks became a ceremonial ghost dance.
Intelligence agencies from Cairo to Washington saw the sparks.
Egypt warned of an “explosion.” Israeli officials possessed a Hamas battle plan over a year prior, a document detailing the very invasion that would unfold.
A junior intelligence officer flagged urgent preparations, writing, “I utterly refute that the scenario is imaginary.” She was dismissed.
The political strategy, under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had long been to manage the conflict, not solve it — a strategy that included allowing Qatari cash to flow into Gaza, purportedly for calm, but which critics argue fortified the very Hamas regime now deemed existential.
Then came the match. The militants poured through breached barriers. Their crimes were unspeakable.
But to frame this as a bolt from a blue sky is a dangerous fiction. It was a firestorm from a powder keg patiently assembled.
The aftermath reveals a grim irony.
The Israeli response, a military campaign of staggering intensity, has killed tens of thousands in Gaza, displaced most, and brought the territory to the brink of famine.
In the West Bank, settler violence, often with state protection, runs rampant — a separate campaign of terror and displacement documented by the victims and those who treat their broken bodies.
The cycle, vicious and absolute, grinds on.
The UN-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for both Hamas and Israeli leaders. Hamas chiefs Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri (Deif), and Ismail Haniyeh, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, are all wanted men.
Where stands the United States in this reckoning?
As the arsenal of the Israeli campaign and the guardian of a so-called rules-based order, Americans from both parties speak with a forked tongue.
Netanyahu is eagerly embraced by American politicians from both parties, albeit with contradictory messaging emanating in some quarters.
When Jewish Insider’s Ben Jacobs asked US Senator Cory Booker about Netanyahu on August 10, 2019, he dodged the question, said he went to the Senate to defend Israel, and claimed he believes the Trump administration has endangered Israel.
More recently, Booker published press releases complaining about settler violence and blaming Netanyahu for the death of American citizens within a few days of voting against resolutions offered by US Senator Bernie Sanders to cut off military aid.
The United States vetoes UN cease-fire resolutions while expressing concern over civilian tolls. It sends billions in unconditional arms while issuing tepid statements about settler violence. This contradiction is not just a moral failing; it is strategic folly, corroding American authority from Brussels to Brasília to Beijing.
Leadership is not defined by the unwavering support of allies, but by the unwavering defense of principles.
If human rights are sacred, they cannot be negotiable. If international law is foundational, it must apply to friends and adversaries alike.
America’s current path — where aid flows without condition, where criticism is muted, where the pursuit of a political solution is an afterthought to military consultation — is a recipe for perpetual war and diminished stature. There is some irony that the most prominent critic of American support for an Israeli genocide is a Jewish US Senator, Sanders, who has made several attempts to stop sending weapons to Netanyahu.
The adjustment required is not complex, merely courageous.
It means leveraging security assistance to demand concrete steps: the cessation of settlement expansion, the lifting of siege conditions that constitute collective punishment, and a genuine partnership for a political horizon.
It means applying the Leahy Law and other existing statutes consistently, vetting units implicated in abuses, and sanctioning individuals who incite or commit violence, whether they wear Hamas fatigues or settler braids.
It means leading a diplomatic coalition not for temporary truces, but for a just and lasting peace, using its unique leverage to bring all parties, however reluctantly, to the table.
The alternative is more of the same: more graves, more radicals, more erosion of the very ideals America purports to champion.
The tragedy of October 7 was a watershed, born of a long, corrosive history. Treating it as an isolated cataclysm, rather than a symptom of a festering wound, ensures the next one waits just over the horizon.
The world is watching to see if any architect of the postwar order has the will to repair its own crumbling foundations.
