DID IT START ON OCTOBER 7?
Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre of Israelis, in which 1,200 people, 80% of them civilians, were slaughtered over the span of about 12 hours, the anti-Israel crowd has continued to minimize and dismiss our pain by telling us that “it didn’t start on October 7.” They are, of course, implying that the October 7 massacre was the inevitable consequence of 76 years of Palestinian oppression at the hands of the Jewish state. They’ve likened October 7 to the oppressed resisting oppression; in my view, the most disturbing comparison is to that of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
According to the anti-Israel narrative, this all started in 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted from their homes. In other words, after oppressing Palestinians for 76 years, well, what did we expect?
I’m going to debunk this argument with a simple historical timeline. I’m also going to break down the argument’s “morality.”
But first…”it didn’t start on October 7.” What’s “it,” exactly? The Israeli-Palestinian conflict? No, of course the Israeli-Palestinian conflict didn’t start on October 7. It also didn’t start in 1948. History and oppression don’t start counting on the arbitrary “start date” that happens to be convenient to your narrative.
Or is “it” this war? Because if so, yes, this war did start on October 7. It started at 6:29 a.m. on October 7 when Hamas violated an Egypt, Qatar, and United Nations-brokered ceasefire that had come into effect on May 21, 2021.
The war up north, with Hezbollah, likewise started the following day on October 8, when Hezbollah violated a United Nations-brokered ceasefire from 2006.
AN IMMORAL -- AND LEGALLY BASELESS -- ARGUMENT
It doesn’t matter when it started — or who started it — because even war has rules. Even if this war didn’t start on October 7, Hamas’s actions on October 7 violated international humanitarian law multiple times over. Deliberately targeting civilians — as Hamas did by burning them alive in their homes and vehicles or executing them at point-blank range — is a war crime.
Kidnapping civilians is not only a war crime, but a crime against humanity. Hamas, if you’ll recall, kidnapped civilians of all ages, including elderly Holocaust survivors and an infant only 9-months-old.
Even Hamas’s kidnapping of Israeli soldiers gravely violates international law. Executing prisoners of war — as Hamas has continued to do, including by beheading — is a war crime. Torturing prisoners of war is a war crime.
The use of sexual violence as a weapon of war is not only a war crime, but also a crime against humanity. The evidence that Hamas weaponized rape as a weapon of war — and with the hostages every day since — is extensive.
Pillaging and looting is a war crime. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and thousands of Palestinian civilians looted and pillaged the invaded kibbutzim on October 7.
Let me put it this way. The Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto had every right to revolt against the Nazis. And against the Nazis they revolted. In 29 days of fighting, the Jewish partisans killed just 17 Nazi soldiers and no civilians. They raped, kidnapped, and tortured no one. Had they done so, especially to non-combatants, I wouldn’t regard the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as a point of Jewish pride and resilience, but as a deep shame.
There is nothing in international humanitarian law — or in human conscience — that dictates, for example, that the three infants purposefully slaughtered in the early hours of October 7 are responsible for any injustices that the Palestinian people may have suffered in the past. This argument is baseless, immoral, and holds zero water under the scrutiny of international law.
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