October 7

What exactly happened on October 7?

Note to readers: I published three articles between October 6 and 8 last year, analysing the causes that led to Al-Aqsa Flood, what exactly happened on that fateful day, and the new world we inhabit in its aftermath. I have updated those articles with new information. This is the second in that series. The first part is here. Thank you.

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Completely subjugated by their occupiers, forsaken by their brethren in the Arab lands, and forgotten by the rest of the world, the Palestinian cause seemed to be dying a slow death with barely a whimper. Palestinians were left with two options: either die a slow, suffocating death in silence or resist with arms. Indomitable people, they chose the latter.

Back in 2021, after another round of Israeli barbarism that left hundreds of Palestinians dead and injured, the martyred Hamas leader and architect of Al-Aqsa Flood, Yahya Sinwar, told a Vice correspondent:

Israel — which possesses a complete arsenal of weaponry, state-of-the-art equipment, and aircraft — intentionally bombs and kills our children and women. And they do that on purpose.

…

We are forced to defend our people with what we have, and this is what we have.

What are we supposed to do? Should we raise the white flag? That’s not going to happen. Does the world expect us to be well-behaved victims while we are being killed? For us to be slaughtered without making a noise? That is impossible.

We decided to defend our people with whatever weapons we have.

The decision had been made by the ruling authority in Gaza. They were not going anywhere; for as long as Palestinian necks were crushed under the boot of the illegitimate, criminal occupier there would be resistance — by any means necessary.

Operation Al-Aqsa Flood

The opening round of this offensive was fired on early Saturday morning of October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian resistance in Gaza — comprising several factions, with Al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas and Al-Quds Brigades of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the lead — launched a comprehensive military raid on Israel, starting at 6:30 am.

The complex operation included overwhelming the much-vaunted Israeli missile defence system with a swarm of rockets and drones, which engaged it to provide a safe passage for fighters flying into Israeli territory on makeshift paragliders, in beat-up pickup trucks and on motorbikes, and by storming Israeli beaches from the Mediterranean Sea on speedboats. As the drones and rockets engaged the Israeli defence system, the fighters, numbering around 1,500 in total, swarmed into various Israeli military installations along the Gaza fence and took them under their control.

Photos and videos from the day showed Israeli military personnel, still in their shorts and flip-flops, being taken away into Gaza by Palestinian resistance fighters. The state of the Israeli soldiers that morning, hours after the start of the attack, reflected their complete lack of readiness in dealing with such a coordinated and well-executed military strategy by the besieged people they had subjugated for decades and left to die in abject squalor in the Gaza ghetto of 2.3 million people with nowhere else to go.

An Israeli solider still in his undies being taken away into Gaza by the Palestinian fighters on October 7.

Nearly every military outpost in the so-called Gaza envelope was overrun and virtually every military unit routed by the Palestinian fighters. It was hours before the occupation forces were able to formulate an organised response.

By the time the Israeli military gathered itself, the Palestinian fighters, seemingly surprised by the extent of their own success, pushed ever deeper into Israel. Once they had achieved their military objective of completely disabling the installations along the Gaza border and taking as many prisoners of war as they could, they seemed unsure of their actions the further they advanced into Israeli territory. Anticipating an instant response and fierce resistance from the Israelis, Palestinian fighters would have never expected to venture as far into Israel as they eventually did. Some engaged the Israeli military in battle for days before attaining martyrdom — the prospect of which was always much higher than returning home safely, as they would have known.

While the elite fighters of the resistance stuck to their task of taking military personnel as prisoners in order to exchange them for thousands of their own hostages rotting away in Israeli dungeons, many ordinary Palestinians who entered Israeli territory through breaches in the fence created by the fighters joined in uninvited and took civilian hostages of their own into Gaza.

By the end of the first day of Al-Aqsa Flood, more than 5,000 rockets had been fired inside Israel (nearly all of them in the first 20 minutes alone), over a hundred breaches had been made in the hi‑tech wall that fenced Gaza off, and around 250 Israelis had been taken prisoner into Gaza.

Videos released that day by the resistance show fighters taking Israeli military bases one after another, overpowering any challenge from the Zionist foot soldiers, subduing them, killing those who resisted and taking many as prisoners.

The disciplined Palestinian resistance handed the vaunted Israeli military — one of the most advanced armies in the world, largely thanks to the doles handed out to them by their white benefactors in Europe and North America — a comprehensive and humiliating defeat.

The beating was so thorough that Israelis to this day do not talk about their military defeat of October 7, resorting instead to fantastical stories about beheaded babies (which did not happen), babies baked in ovens (which did not happen), babies hung on clotheslines (which did not happen), and raped women (which did not happen).

To this day, the Israelis have not been able to name even ONE rape victim from October 7 and a grand total of ONE baby (a 10-month-old named Mila Cohen) was reported killed on October 7 after getting caught in a crossfire — it is still not clear who killed her. Indeed, it is a tragedy that Cohen’s life was brutally cut short, but her death was not because she was intentionally targeted by Palestinians, as Israel would have the world believe. It is equally possible that Israelis killed her.

Despite never providing a shred of evidence for their outrageous claims vilifying Palestinians — claims used to justify what has become an ongoing, live-streamed Holocaust — the Israeli regime and its propagandists, from White House press briefings to Twitter threads, continue to peddle those lies two years later.

A call to the Arabs

Soon after the start of the military operation, Mohammed Deif, the commander‑in‑chief of Al‑Qassam Brigades, announced the Al‑Aqsa Flood operation in a historic speech in which he outlined the reasons for the action. Deif, who was martyred in July 2024, also urged all resistance factions to aid Palestinians in their righteous struggle against a murderous occupier who has no intention of stopping at Palestine:

They attacked the worshippers present and desecrated Al‑Aqsa, and we had previously warned them. The enemy desecrated Al‑Aqsa and dared to harm the Prophet’s path.

Hundreds have been martyred and injured this year due to the occupation’s crimes. Our calls for a humanitarian exchange were met with refusal, and daily violations continue in the West Bank.

We have decided to put an end to all of the occupation’s crimes. The time is over for them to act without accountability. We announce the Al‑Aqsa Flood operation, and in the first strike — within 20 minutes — more than 5,000 rockets were launched.

From today, security coordination ends. Today the people reclaim their revolution, correct their path and return to the March of Return.

O our people in Al-Quds, expel the occupiers and demolish the walls. O our people in the interior, Al-Naqab [Negev], Al-Jalil [Galilee], and the Triangle [Jenin, Nablus, and Tulkarem], turn the land into flames beneath the feet of the occupiers.

O our brothers in the Islamic resistance in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, today is the day when your resistance merges with the resistance of your brothers in Palestine. It is time for the Arab resistance to unite.

We call for mobilisation towards Palestine. O our brothers in Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Egypt, and the rest of the Arab countries, take action and heed the call.

The era of bets has ended. The occupation must be expelled.

O our people in all Arab and Islamic countries, start marching — not tomorrow — and breach the borders and barriers.

This is the day of the grand plan to end the occupation.

Today, whoever has a gun, let him bring it out; it is time. Everyone should come out with their trucks, cars or tools. Today, history opens its most pure and honourable pages.

Abu Obeida, the spokesman of Al-Qassam Brigades (the military arm of Hamas), accurately described the situation that day:

Here is the paper tiger that has been oppressing our people for years. Here he is collapsing before us, paying the price for the desecration of our Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Palestinian fighters take an Israeli military base on October 7.

Israeli death toll

Fond of hyperbole, Israelis initially claimed 1,400 of their own had been killed that day. Later, they revised those numbers downwards to 1,139 Israelis killed — nearly 400 of them military personnel.

While the rest were civilians, it is a well‑established fact that the line between civilians and military personnel in Israel is extremely thin, with every Israeli mandated to serve in the army.

Moreover, a vast majority of adult Israelis are heavily armed by the state. Many civilians attempted to ward off Palestinian fighters on October 7 with their own weapons and likely perished while attempting something for which they were ill‑prepared, making it even more difficult to ascertain the true number of non‑combatants killed that day.

But a more important question is how many Israelis were killed by their own military.

Hannibal Directive

To ensure no Israelis were taken into Gaza, the Jewish supremacist state, which promotes itself as the saviour of Jews everywhere, proceeded to wantonly slaughter Jews that day.

In the Zionist calculation, a dead Jew in Israel is deemed preferable to one taken alive into Gaza. Thus, they activated the Hannibal Directive, which advocates for the mass slaughter Israeli military personnel if there’s a possibility of their capture by the enemy. There is credible evidence to suggest that this directive was extended to all Israelis, not just military personnel, on October 7.

In accordance with the Hannibal Directive, the Israeli military fired Hellfire missiles from helicopter gunships that scorched rows of cars, leaving occupants burned beyond recognition. Israeli tanks shelled houses full of Jewish inhabitants indiscriminately, potentially killing hundreds.

There has been no proper accounting of the number of Israelis killed by their own soldiers because Israel has not conducted any enquiry (and is unlikely to conduct one in the near future), but it is entirely possible that Israeli soldiers killed most of their comrades who died that day and blamed it on the Palestinians.

Charred bodies which are very clearly the handiwork of the Israelis on October 7.

Cars destroyed beyond recognition by the Israeli military in the Negev desert on October 7.

The scenes of widespread destruction seen on October 7 were simply not possible with the light machine guns and shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades carried by the Palestinian fighters that day. They had no tanks to shell Israeli homes or helicopters to drop deadly munitions on top of the heads of festivalgoers.

Some Israelis who survived the indiscriminate firing by their own military recounted how they witnessed their compatriots killing many of their relatives and friends.

One of the survivors, Yasmin Porat, recounted in an interview how she witnessed Israeli security personnel killing fellow Israelis:

Yasmin Porat: And then they hear me and stop firing. I see on the lawn, in the garden of the people from the kibbutz. There are five or six hostages lying on the ground outside, just like sheep to the slaughter, between the shooting of our [fighters] and the terrorists.

Aryeh Golan: The terrorists shot them?

Yasmin Porat: No, they were killed by the crossfire. Understand there was very, very heavy crossfire.

Aryeh Golan: So our forces may have shot them?

Yasmin Porat: Undoubtedly.

Aryeh Golan: When they tried to eliminate the abductors, Hamas?

Yasmin Porat: They eliminated everyone, including the hostages. Because there was very, very heavy crossfire. I was freed at approximately 5:30. The fighting apparently ended at 8:30. After insane crossfire, two tank shells were shot into the house. It’s a small kibbutz house, nothing big. You saw it on the news.

Another survivor, Hadas Dagan, gave interviews to Israeli media, recalling her harrowing experience of being fired at by fellow Israelis and witnessing the killing of her husband as a result. However, she still remained protective of her country’s murderous army that kills its own people with impunity.

Here is an excerpt from an Electronic Intifada article:

“It’s obvious that this incident presents a very heavy moral dilemma. I don’t want someone to take the story with the very difficult moral dilemma presented here and point an accusatory finger at the army,” Dagan says when identifying the immediate cause of her husband’s death. “To me it’s very clear that I, and Adi, were wounded from the shrapnel of the tank shell because it happened at that very moment.”

She describes the horrifying experience of watching her husband bleed out onto her from a hole in his neck several centimeters long, until he stopped moving.

“I am mad, I am very mad. I am mad that we were abandoned, that we were betrayed, that we were alone, alone, alone, for so many hours,” she says. “Adi, to end his life like that, in that way, crunched up.”

The Hannibal Directive that day was so indiscriminate and ruthless that the bodies of many who were killed were beyond recognition. So much so that Israeli authorities initially counted the number of dead on October 7 at 1,400 before realising that over 200 of those they had counted were Palestinian fighters charred beyond identification and had been counted as Israelis.

The death toll was brought down to 1,139 within days.

This is what happens when Israeli “soldiers” fight men their size.

Unwanted prisoners

While the resistance fighters accomplished their objective, many unintended Israelis were also taken to Gaza. As a result of the numerous breaches created in the security fence between Israel and Gaza, many ordinary Gazans streamed into Israel. Videos from the day show Palestinian non‑combatants venturing into Israeli territory and bursting into celebration at the sight of lands their ancestors were ethnically cleansed from and driven out of in the 1948 Nakba, or the Catastrophe — nearly 80 percent of Gaza’s residents are refugees from 1948.

Some of these ordinary Palestinians went on private missions to abduct Israelis. They ended up taking civilians who would have been a liability for the resistance. The resistance had offered to release all such civilians without condition, but the Israelis never relented in their bombardments to allow for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to get into Gaza and safely evacuate them. Unlike Palestinians, Israel has never shown real interest in its own prisoners.

The resistance fighters dropped many unwanted prisoners back into Israel. Here is one example of their humane action at great personal risk (as the Israelis were bombing indiscriminately and non‑stop):

This video (one of many) flies in the face of Israeli propaganda about bloodthirsty Palestinians who want nothing but to spill Jewish blood all day long for no reason. Had that been the case, these Israeli civilians would not have been safely dropped back into Israel, without anything in exchange and solely on humanitarian grounds.

Here is another Israeli civilian, recounting her encounter with Palestinian fighters. As she worried about the safety of her two children, one fighter told her:

Don’t worry. I am a Muslim; we will not hurt you.

She went on to recall another interesting detail:

One of them [the Palestinian fighters] sees bananas on the counter, and he asks, ‘May I eat one?’ and I say, ‘Yes, you can.’

She made it out alive with her children to smile and tell stories of the morality of the Palestinian resistance. While Israelis were killing fellow Israelis, Palestinians made it a point not to kill civilians, unless they were a threat, and to focus solely on their military objectives.

There is also this video of Palestinian fighters playing with Israeli children and consoling them in the middle of their military operation:

(If the cynic in you thought the resistance fighters killed the babies after filming this video, remember that exactly one child was recorded killed that day — possibly by Israeli forces.)

Another Israeli woman, 85‑year‑old Yocheved Lifshitz, likely taken into Gaza by non‑combatants, was released by the resistance as a humanitarian gesture within two weeks. “They treated us gently; they provided for all our needs,” she said of her experience with the resistance personnel.

Israelis were furious that she spoke favourably of the resistance.

“I have been hearing criticism from people involved in Hasbara in recent days: the fact that they allowed Yocheved Lifshitz to make a statement live was a mistake. It is not certain that there was someone who held a preliminary discussion on the subject and asked himself all the questions,” tweeted one Israeli journalist.

The copious documentation and statements from many Israelis about the behaviour of Palestinian fighters paint a diametrically opposite picture to the one the Israeli government and its global propagandists have painted.

Palestinian endgame

The Palestinian resistance undertook the operation to capture as many Israeli military personnel as they could and then exchange them for the thousands of Palestinians rotting away in Israeli dungeons with no prospects of a fair trial or eventual release. Such an exchange between the two parties is not unprecedented.

Among the many exchanges between the two sides, two stand out. In 1985, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) exchanged three Israeli prisoners for 1,150 Palestinian detainees; among them were Sheikh Ahmad Yasin, who would go on to co‑found Hamas two years later, and Ziyad al‑Nakhalah, now head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

In 2011, the Palestinian resistance in Gaza exchanged just one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, for 1,027 Palestinian detainees. Yahya Sinwar was the most famous of the released prisoners. Sinwar went on to become the most-wanted and most-hated man in Israel for his commendable leadership of Hamas in the Gaza Strip subsequent to his release, and ultimately dealt them the humiliating defeat of October 7.

Among Sinwar’s most cherished aims was to secure the release of all Palestinian hostages from Israeli dungeons. October 7 was his biggest step in that regard. With 250 captives in Gaza, and on the basis of the history of such dealings with Israel, the resistance felt confident that it had enough leverage to secure the release of every single Palestinian from Israeli torture camps. They wanted an “all-for-all” exchange: the release of all Palestinian hostages in exchange for every single Israeli in Palestinian captivity.

The offer was put on the table the very day after October 7.

Indeed, when the Israelis refused the deal repeatedly and proceeded to hunt down their own prisoners inside Gaza to eliminate the Palestinian leverage, Al‑Qassam spokesman Abu Obeida reiterated that the dwindling number of Israelis would not change the resistance equation. “The price that resistance will demand for five captives is the same as for all the captives,” he said in March 2024.

When Yahya Sinwar met some of the prisoners inside a tunnel, he introduced himself and told them they would be going home soon in an exchange deal. “Hello, I am Yahya Sinwar,” one Israeli prisoner recalled Sinwar as saying. “You are the most protected here. Nothing will happen to you.”

After a brief ceasefire in November 2023 during which Hamas let go off more than 100 captives — the deal stipulated the release of only 50 prisoners, but the resistance more than doubled that number on humanitarian grounds, a concept alien to Zionists — in exchange for 150 of their own, Israel showed no appetite for another deal for over a year.

Noa Argamani, one of a handful of prisoners retrieved from the Gaza Strip by the occupation forces — after a barbaric bombing raid that killed nearly 300 Palestinians and injured about 700 in the Nuseirat refugee camp in June 2024 — set the record straight about who wanted to protect her and who wanted to kill. “[Hamas members] did not hit me while I was in captivity, nor did they cut my hair; I was injured by the collapse of a wall caused by an [Israeli] Air Force pilot,” she said in August that year. “As a victim of October 7, I refuse to be victimised once again by the media.”

Even Netanyahu admitted that Israeli captives were in danger due to Israel’s indiscriminate bombings.

In January 2025, the Trump administration brokered a three-phase ceasefire deal that would see weekly prisoner exchanges and ease of the blockade on Gaza. However, the Israelis unilaterally collapsed the agreement — after violating it hundreds of times — within weeks and resumed non-stop bombing of the enclave, potentially killing more of their own. Indeed, Israel has killed most of its prisoners in Gaza, deliberately. The intensified bombings were accompanied by a full-spectrum blockade of the Gaza Strip, which led to famine and caused hundreds of deaths, mostly children.

In a bid to expedite prisoner exchanges and reach a ceasefire, the resistance even released the Israeli-American genocide enthusiast Edan Alexander, but the Palestinians learned once more that, unlike them, morality is not a compass for Israel or the United States. Their promises are worth less than used toilet paper.

Israeli Apache helicopters shooting at everything and anything that moves at the Nova festival.

Questions about October 7

There are many legitimate questions about October 7 that have never been answered. In December 2023, Haaretz reported that “some officers in the Gaza Division told of irregular conduct and pressure surrounding the approval of the party, which was held at the Re’im camping ground.”

The party referred to here is the Nova music festival where more than 364 Israelis were killed — most, if not all, due to indiscriminate bombardment by the occupation forces. The same report states that the Gaza Division’s operations officer opposed the location of the festival, “arguing that it was a needless security risk.”

Moreover:

During the days preceding the massacre, the system had received warnings that Hamas would try to attack on Israeli soil. The information was based on several sources who noticed alarming preparations by Hamas personnel, as well as intelligence that raised the concern growing among various security figures.

Why was there “irregular conduct and pressure” to organise a festival, despite the acknowledged “security risk” and intelligence warnings, so close to the Gaza fence? Did the authorities put the festivalgoers up as sacrificial lambs and then spin lurid yarns to justify the ongoing Gaza Holocaust?

On January 23, 2025, Ynet reported that the Israeli security establishment was aware that something was being planned by the resistance in Gaza on the night before October 7, but did nothing to thwart it:

On the night before the October 7 Hamas massacre, an IDF intelligence unit collected signs of preparation for rocket fire on Israel. The unit also observed unusual activity of the Hamas aerial force that could indicate a transition of the terror group, to emergency mode, Ynet and its sister publication Yeditoth Ahronot learned.

Those indications, especially the possible rocket fire and others gathered, were discussed in IDF consultations in the following hours but did not bring about a decision to raise the alarm over a possible Hamas assault or to any significant steps being taken.

…

Contrary to earlier reporting, the IDF not only estimated that Hamas was preparing for a military exercise or to defend against a possible Israeli attack but had seriously considered the possibility that the terror group was about to launch an assault on Israel.

A December 2023 paper published by two American law professors makes a credible assertion that some Israelis may have had advance knowledge of the impending attacks and made substantial profits on the Tel Aviv stock exchange based on it.

“Our findings suggest that traders informed about the coming attacks profited from these tragic events,” CNN quoted the authors as writing in their paper.

From the CNN report:

Mitts, one of the paper’s authors, told CNN in a phone interview that due to the limited nature of public trading data, he believes it’s “highly likely” there is more trading that went on behind the scenes. “We are only seeing the tip of the iceberg,” Mitts said. “There is a lot more out there that we can’t pick up on but that regulators should be looking at.”

Haaretz has also reported that a Netanyahu staffer altered his call records to make it seem as though his initial orders to the military on the morning of October 7 were issued earlier than they actually were.

Moreover, external agencies had also alerted Israel. Egyptian intelligence agencies delivered repeated warnings of an impending attack. “We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big,” an anonymous Egyptian official told the AP on October 9. “But they underestimated such warnings.”

There is mounting evidence that the Israelis knew something was brewing before October 7 and did not take adequate precautions — so that they could invite the Palestinian attack and then use it as a pretext to fulfil their longstanding ambition of ethnically cleansing Gaza in order to build Jews-only settlements after the natives had either been killed or forced to leave.

It is unlikely that Israel will conduct inquiries into these matters any time soon, if ever.

A successful Flood

There have been few military successes as spectacular as the one achieved by the Palestinian resistance on October 7. Indeed, the operation, purely military in nature, has been described by former weapons inspector and intelligence officer Scott Ritter as “the most successful military raid in modern history.”

But its aftermath has been painful. Two years since that fateful day, Israel has laid waste to all of Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been slaughtered in the most grotesque ways possible in full view of the world, while nearly all detainees in the Israeli rape and torture dungeons are still nowhere near freedom.

Palestinians have made enormous sacrifices in the aftermath of October 7. Their suffering has few parallels in history, as they have been reduced to a life of constant misery and degradation by the Jewish supremacists for over a century. Flood or no Flood, this genocide was in the works. Though slower earlier, the Palestinian genocide has merely been accelerated over the past two years. This live display of butchery and medieval savagery by the Israelis, however, has firmly put the Palestinian cause at the forefront of global conscience. The costs have been enormous, but no struggle for liberation has ever been won without sacrifice. To their misfortune, the Palestinians are fighting an enemy that would put the devil to shame. It makes no distinction between a one-month-old child in a crib and a 90-year-old wheelchair-bound elder. Life holds no sanctity for it. It devours everything in its wake: men, women, children, animals, trees, rocks.

Now, everyone has seen it. Palestinians no longer need to testify to a deaf and blind world. Everyone is wide awake and cannot return to slumber.

Palestine was firmly put on the map on October 7. The success of the resistance has ensured that from now on no one will ever deal with Israel without taking Palestinians into consideration. They will never again be bypassed or treated as nobodies. Nothing will ever be the same again. There will be no return to October 6 — not for Palestinians, not for Israelis, and not for the rest of the world. The landscape that has unfolded since October 7 has changed everything, forever.

Read the first of this series here and the third part here.

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