It's been one year since Hamas attacked Israel.
I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”
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Today's read: 15 minutes.
On Friday.
Tangle founder and Executive Editor Isaac Saul published a members-only opinion piece about the death penalty. In it, he ran through the history of capital punishment, making the case that we should stop using it as a means to deter or punish heinous crimes. You can read the piece here (paywall).
Quick hits.
- The U.S. economy added 254,000 jobs in September, exceeding economists’ expectations, and previous months’ reports were revised up. The month-over-month unemployment rate fell from 4.2% to 4.1%. (The report)
- Dockworkers on the East and Gulf Coasts ended their strike after three days, agreeing to extend their prior contract through Jan. 15, 2025 while continuing to negotiate on port automation for the next six-year contract. (The pause)
- Hurricane Milton strengthened into a Category 4 hurricane and is expected to make landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday or Thursday. (The latest)
- The Supreme Court begins its new term on Monday, with major cases on guns, transgender rights, online pornography, and workplace discrimination on the docket. (The term) Separately, the Supreme Court declined to hear a request from the Biden administration to enforce in Texas a federal guideline requiring hospitals to perform an abortion in emergency situations. (The decision)
- Former President Donald Trump hosted a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, at the site where he was nearly assassinated in July. Elon Musk made his first appearance alongside Trump at one of his rallies. (The rally)
Today's topic.
The first anniversary of Oct. 7. Monday marks one year since Hamas’s attack on Israel, in which the U.S.-designated terrorist group killed approximately 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, 97 of whom remain captive. The anniversary comes amid weeks of escalating violence in the Middle East as Israel continues to fight Hamas in Gaza while beginning a ground operation in Lebanon against Hezbollah and preparing for a potential war with Iran.
We covered the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks here. You can find our coverage from the last year of the ensuing war in Gaza and the response in the U.S. here.
Immediately after the attack, Israel declared war on Hamas and began a siege of Gaza. On October 8, Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel from southern Lebanon. Later that month, Israel launched a ground invasion of Gaza, targeting Hamas outposts and infrastructure. Additionally, a protracted Israeli bombing campaign has destroyed an estimated 60% of the buildings in Gaza while displacing 90% of Gaza's population, according to the UN. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry reports approximately 42,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, a figure that includes Hamas fighters. Based on the Health Ministry’s data, an estimated 56% of the dead are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 Hamas militants.
The anniversary of Hamas’s attack has prompted memorials across the world, as well as pro- and anti-Israel protests in response to the war in Gaza. Many remembrances have focused on the remaining hostages in Gaza, while others have called for peace in the region. Meanwhile, supporters of Palestinians in Gaza from across the globe have protested Israel’s actions in the past year.
In the U.S., President Joe Biden has maintained his support for Israel’s war against Hamas while urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to show greater restraint and concern for civilian life. The broadening of the conflict in recent weeks has also called into question the White House’s influence over Israeli policy and its ability to prevent a wider war in the Middle East.
Since late August, Israel has launched airstrikes against hundreds of Hezbollah positions, carried out a coordinated attack against Hezbollah members using communication devices, killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other members of Hezbollah’s leadership, and begun ground operations in southern Lebanon. Meanwhile, Israel has defended against missile attacks from Iran and Hezbollah, including a rocket strike that injured nine people in Haifa on Monday.
You can read the history of the Israel and Lebanon conflict here.
On Sunday, Netanyahu said Israel is currently “defending itself on seven fronts” — Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, “terrorists” in the West Bank, the Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, and Iran. Netanyahu has also vowed to respond with force to last week’s missile attack by Iran, potentially targeting Iranian nuclear sites. Just before Iran’s attack, a shooter in Israel killed one person and wounded 10 others; Israel said it is investigating the attack as an act of terrorism.
Today, we’ll share reflections on the Oct. 7 anniversary from the left and right, as well as from Israeli and Palestinian writers. Then, my take.
What the left is saying.
- The left says the year since Oct. 7 has upended the balance of power in the Middle East while maintaining the status quo in certain areas.
- Some argue Biden’s policy on the war has been a failure.
In The Washington Post, David Ignatius wrote about “what Oct. 7 didn’t change.”
“When Hamas terrorists burst through the Gaza fence at 7:43 a.m. on Oct. 7, 2023, they turned the Middle East upside down. The vaunted Israeli military was unprepared and vulnerable as Hamas stormed through Israeli settlements and military bases, butchering people at will. The Israeli Superman seemed to have lost his cape,” Ignatius said. “A year later, the shape of the Middle East is indeed different, but not in the way that most observers would have predicted. The military power of Hamas is hobbled, and its remaining fighters hide in an underground lair that increasingly resembles a dungeon.”
“Israel regained its footing over the past year by waging a relentless campaign of retaliation for the horror and shame of Oct. 7. If there was one consistent theme, other than the resilience of Israel’s military and intelligence services, it was the lack of clear Israeli thinking about what would come next,” Ignatius wrote. “Perhaps Israel’s sword of vengeance has broken the power of Iran and its boldest proxies, as Netanyahu and his supporters seem to hope. But this is the Middle East. A more likely outcome is that, at a cost of so many thousands of dead, this war has restored the old paradigm of a strong Israel that can crush its enemies — until the next round.”
In The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof said “Biden sought peace but facilitated war.”
“A year after the Oct. 7 terror attacks, Biden’s Middle East policy appears to be a practical and moral failure. It could be a political failure as well, potentially hurting Vice President Kamala Harris in Michigan — and everywhere if a war with Iran lifts gas prices at the pump,” Kristof wrote. “It wasn’t a failure of vision or of hard work. Biden concocted a grand plan for a multipart deal that would deliver a cease-fire in Gaza, normalization of Saudi-Israeli relations, a path to a Palestinian state and a stronger Saudi-American relationship that would freeze China out of the region. But Biden was unwilling to forcefully use his leverage to get there, so Netanyahu ran rings around the president.”
“Gaza has become the albatross around Biden’s neck, staining his legacy, but it keeps getting worse. Among American hawks, there is dreamy talk about building a new Lebanon and reshaping the Middle East. It’s indeed possible that the devastation of Hezbollah will buy Israel safety for a time. But all that grandiosity reminds me of lofty talk a year ago about how Israel was going to destroy Hamas in a few months. It likewise reminds me of the ebullient predictions 21 years ago that invading Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein would usher in a new age of democracy and tranquillity.”
What the right is saying.
- The right says Israel deserves the same level of support from the U.S. now as it did after Oct. 7.
- Some say antisemitism in America and abroad has returned to the fore since the attacks.
In The Daily Caller, Moran Murphy argued “let Israel win the war.”
“A year ago, on October 7, 2023, the world’s only Jewish state suffered the worst systematic exterminations of Jews since the Holocaust. The surprise attack by Hamas displayed human behavior at its worst,” Murphy wrote. “It took a year, but Israel found its footing in the past three weeks and is showing the United States and Europe how to handle the genocidal Mullahs in Iran and their proxies in Gaza and Lebanon.”
“The hard truth remains: deterrence only works when your enemies believe you will act. Israel understands this. They know, as Israel’s fourth prime minister, Golda Meir, once said, that they have ‘no place else to go.’ They fight not just for land, but for existence,” Murphy said. “Indeed, Israel is at war with a different strain of the same mind virus that inspired September 11, which makes it all the more revolting that the Biden-Harris administration is trying to thread a political needle. Instead of staunchly backing one of our most loyal allies, the Democrats say Israel has a ‘right to self-defense’ and in the same breath, call for a ceasefire.”
In The New York Times, Bret Stephens wrote about “the year American Jews woke up.”
“American Jews were aware, before the pogrom of Oct. 7, 2023, that antisemitism was once again a problem in our collective life. We were aware, if we belonged to a synagogue or worked out at a local Jewish Community Center or sent children to Jewish day schools, that squad cars were often present outside and that the security procedures and budgets of Jewish institutions kept growing,” Stephens said. “We were aware. But unless we had been directly affected by it, the antisemitism didn’t feel personal.
“After Oct. 7, it became personal… It happened in innumerable ways, large and small. The home of an impeccably progressive Jewish director of a prominent art museum was vandalized with red spray paint and a sign accusing her of being a ‘white supremacist Zionist.’ A storied literary magazine endured mass resignations from its staff members for the sin of publishing the work of a left-wing Israeli,” Stephens wrote. “This isn’t going to end anytime soon. It won’t end because anti-Zionism has a self-righteous fervor that will attract followers and inspire militancy. It won’t end because politics in America are moving toward forms of illiberalism… And it won’t end because most Jews will not forsake what it means to be Jewish so that we may be more acceptable to those who despise us.”
What Israeli and Palestinian writers are saying.
- Israeli writers mourn the victims of the attack but note that it created an opportunity for Israel to deal with its enemies head-on.
- Palestinian writers suggest Israel is overextending itself in its quest for revenge.
In The New York Post, Israeli diplomat Ofir Akunis said “on Oct. 7 anniversary, standing with Israel means the free world’s salvation.”
“There are rare moments when history illuminates the conflicts of our age and gives us a chance to choose good over evil. Oct. 7, 2023, was this moment for our lifetimes,” Akunis wrote. “Since then, Israel has been fighting for survival and for justice. There are still tens of thousands of Israelis displaced from their homes in our country’s north. Hamas is still holding 101 innocent Israelis, Americans and citizens of over 20 countries hostage in horrifying conditions. Even as we do everything to achieve peace on our borders and bring our people home, Iran and its proxies have turned the massacre of Oct. 7 into a year-long attempt to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.
“Yet developments over the past few weeks have made it irrevocably clear: The tide is shifting. If Oct. 7 reminded us that we have no choice but to take genocidal antisemitism seriously, Israel’s categorical response has taught us something too. Betting against Israel is a losing wager. Indeed, Israel is on the front lines of the Western world’s self-defense against a tyrannical, illiberal, jihadist assault,” Akunis said. “It will take work, but one year after the darkest day of our lives, we have a singular chance: To honor the memory of the fallen and guide our fractured world toward peace, justice and healing.”
In Middle East Eye, Dutch-Palestinian analyst Mouin Rabbani wrote “after one year of genocide, why Israel's belligerence may be its undoing.”
“Israel's initial response was to unleash a genocidal campaign against the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. Motivated by revenge and bloodlust, it was designed to not only kill and destroy on a massive scale but to make the Gaza Strip unfit for human habitation,” Rabbani said. “Each successive Israeli obliteration of yet another red line — the bombing and destruction of hospitals, schools, and refugee centres, the indiscriminate transformation of communications devices into hand grenades, and the killing and wounding of hundreds to rescue four captives — was justified as a legitimate act of self-defence. In the process, the world has been transformed into a much more dangerous place for us all on the altar of Israeli impunity.”
“As has been clear from the outset, Israel's ultimate aim is regime change in Iran, on the mistaken assumption that an Iranian government disengaged from the conflict with Israel will transform the Palestinians, and Arabs more generally, into powerless sheep,” Rabbani wrote. “Yet Lebanon has repeatedly proved to be the graveyard of Israel and American hubris… The coming weeks will determine whether Israel can once again resume unilaterally resolving the Palestine question on its own terms, and with it to seal the fate of the Palestinian people, or whether 7 October will go down in history as the moment the Zionist project in Palestine began to unravel.”
My take.
Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.
- Most importantly, we should all remember the victims of Hamas’s attack a year ago today.
- We can do that while also criticizing the choices that Netanyahu and Israel have made following that attack.
- Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah all share the blame here, but Israel needs to do something new or it will only perpetuate the same cycles of violence.
We don't spend all of our time on 9/11 talking about the Iraq War, and so on days like today it is worth leading with some memorializing:
1,200 people were killed on this day a year ago, one of the most traumatic events in Israel's history, an attack that has perhaps permanently changed the psyche of the country. Nearly every person that I know in Israel knows someone who was wounded, killed, or witness to an attack on October 7. The victims were innocents; they died for no crime or action of their own. In a tragic twist of irony, many were the kinds of left-wing, kibbutz-living, peace-seeking Jews whom critics of Israel point to as the solution to this conflict. Yet they were murdered in their homes — some in front of their kids — kidnapped and abused by a group who took great joy in their killing. Their deaths should not be celebrated, not valorized, and certainly not divorced from what has happened in the 12 months since.
On this one singular day on the calendar, we should first mourn and remember those people — Israelis, Arabs, Americans, people from all over the world — before discussing what has happened since.
But what has happened since carries a great deal of political significance, and in this political newsletter, it is my job to talk about the conflict. So while I mourn privately, I will do my best to analyze the conflict honestly.
In a lot of ways this anniversary is jarring. The year has passed quickly, as years often do, and I'm surprised that more supporters of Israel don't define the last year as an unmitigated disaster. The goalposts seem to be ever-shifting, the war never-ending.
Consider if I had told you on October 8, 2023 that one year from now Israel would be immersed in an open war three times longer than any other since its 1948 War of Independence, that Iran would have directly attacked Israel for the first and second times ever, that Israel would be beginning a ground invasion in Lebanon, that more than 60,000 civilians in northern Israel would still be displaced, that Israel would be returning to northern Gaza (where it started) for more operations, that Israel would be facing international charges of genocide, that global antisemitism is on the rise, that Israel's economy is teetering on the edge of disaster, that the nation is still virulently divided with regular civil unrest, and that the West Bank is rife with violence and instability, all while less than half of the hostages taken by Hamas have come home safely and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains in power after overseeing the greatest security failure in the country's history. If I told you that a year ago, I think we'd all have defined whatever happened in the time between now and then as a failure.
And yet, many don't. Many continue to laud Israeli successes and see a light at the end of the tunnel. I don’t see that light, and I don’t see how continuing along the warpath will bring us to lasting peace.
However, I understand how events from the last year bolster this narrative: Hamas has been so degraded that Israel believes it can no longer function as an organized military force. The IDF has found and destroyed numerous tunnels and weapons caches throughout Gaza, both confirming Israel's fears and justifying its ground invasion. Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah and Hamas's Mohammed Deif are dead, throwing the organizations they led into chaos and degrading their ability to fire mid- and long-range missiles into Israel. The White House said it sees the possibility for a presidential election in Lebanon, which has been without a president for two years. Two attacks from Iran have caused limited damage. Israel's defenses seem strong, and its military tactics — like the pager attacks — have been wildly successful at targeting operatives and causing mass paranoia and distress among its enemies.
But even through the narrow lens of supporting Israel, I have a hard time celebrating any of those events as victories. Here’s how Israeli columnist Amir Tobin reacted to Israel's military victories: "These achievements, all of them the result of military and intelligence advantages that Israel had built over many years, still can't compensate for the lack of a strategy to achieve two of the war's main goals: replace Hamas' rule in Gaza with a more favorable entity that Israel can live next to, and bring back our hostages alive."
As Netanyahu himself said, Israel is now fighting a war on seven fronts. Israel is less safe today than it was on October 8th, when Netanyahu pledged to restore security to Israel. This reality is produced in part by the nations and leaders who want the end of Israel — Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and so on — but also through failed U.S. and Israeli diplomacy, failed military actions, and failed imagination.
Zoom out to 30,000 feet here with me for a moment — put aside the tit-for-tat details of who started what and the whole arching narrative of religion — and consider what you see: Israel invaded Lebanon in 1978 and 1982; it then occupied Lebanon until 2000, invaded again in 2006, and it is now beginning a new ground invasion in 2024. Israel occupied Gaza from 1976 to 2005, withdrew, then invaded again in 2014, and is now continuing a ground invasion it started in 2023.
There is nothing new here. The best case for Israel is that this time is different, because it is about to face Iran head-on with what appears to be an obvious military advantage. Yet even in that “best-case scenario” — some kind of war of all wars — we are headed for months, if not years, of more war, more death, and the most dangerous clash yet.
Either side can point to any number of provocations or attacks, but the reality is that these actors are perpetuating the same cycles over and over but expecting different results. There is no imagination and no new vision for the future. It's just more "response" in the name of more "security" with no progress toward anything that resembles peace (or peace of mind).
And at what cost? Whatever you believe to be the exact number of dead in Gaza is at this point hardly relevant; the toll has been indisputably horrific. Conservatively, tens of thousands of civilians are dead, including many thousands of women and children. Reasonable estimates are that 60% of Gaza's infrastructure has been destroyed; 65% of its farmland damaged or ruined; schools, hospitals, mosques, homes, and restaurants leveled. It will take decades and billions of dollars to rebuild, and it will require generations to mend the minds of anyone who survived it. Here in the U.S., Americans are left watching the bizarre spectacle of our tax dollars funding the destruction and likely funding the rebuilding.
In Lebanon alone, in less than two weeks, at least 2,000 people have been killed. Israel says it is targeting Hamas and Hezbollah military leaders, and the Lebanese Health Ministry — like Gaza's — does not distinguish between combatants and civilians among its dead. Yet it's worth noting that this figure has already surpassed the entire number of people killed in Israel on October 7. What do we suppose this might do to the psyche of that country? 1.2 million people are already displaced — a number nearly equal to the entire population of my home city of Philadelphia.
On the first anniversary of a war Israel is still fighting, it enters into a new one.
I want to have hope. I want to believe that what Israelis experienced on this day one year ago — and what Palestinians, Israelis and Lebanese have experienced since — would break something in this cycle, bend the dimensions, change the conversation, illuminate a path forward different from the one we've been on. Can't Hamas and Hezbollah see their agency? Can't they see what the theocrats of Iran have done to their future? Can't Israelis see their country being radicalized in real time by its right-wing factions? Can't they see that violent shows of force and prolonged wars have only succeeded in turning a single-front war into a seven-front one? Can't anyone build a movement to find an off-ramp that unifies these factions?
I want to have hope, but I'm struggling. One year ago, I ended my take with a passage that I'll share again today, with some despair:
Solutions, you ask? I can’t say I have any. If you came here for that, I’m sorry. The two-state solution looks dead to me. A three-state solution makes some sense but feels out of the view of all the people who matter and could make it happen. I wish a one-state solution felt realistic — a world of Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights, fully integrated and defused of their hate, is a version of Israel that I would adore. But it seems less and less realistic with every new act of violence.
Am I pro-Israel or pro-Palestine? I have no idea.
I'm pro-not-killing-civilians.
I'm pro-not-trapping-millions-of-people-in-open-air-prisons.
I'm pro-not-shooting-grandmas-in-the-back-of-the-head.
I'm pro-not-flattening-apartment-complexes.
I'm pro-not-raping-women-and-taking-hostages.
I'm pro-not-unjustly-imprisoning-people-without-due-process.
I'm pro-freedom and pro-peace and pro-all the things we never see in this conflict anymore.
Whatever this is, I want none of it.
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Your questions, answered.
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Under the radar.
On Friday, the Biden administration announced it would not renew a temporary immigration parole program that allowed roughly 530,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela into the United States on humanitarian grounds. The program allowed migrants with U.S.-based sponsors to enter the country legally and remain for a two-year term, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the initiative was not intended to last longer. While migrants from all four countries have options to extend their stay — including applying for Temporary Protected Status or making an asylum claim — the DHS said those without authorization to remain in the U.S. would be deported at the end of their parole period. Reuters has the story.
Numbers.
- 1.9 million. The estimated number of Palestinians in Gaza displaced by the war.
- 58,000. The estimated number of Israelis displaced by Hamas’s attacks at their peak.
- $18.5 billion. The estimated cost of the damage in Gaza from the war’s first three months.
- 76%, 75%, and 73%. The percentage of U.S. adults who say Hamas, Israel, and Iran, respectively, are at least somewhat responsible for the continuation of the war in Gaza, according to an October 2024 poll from The Pearson Institute/AP-NORC.
- 25%. The percentage of U.S. adults who sympathize more with Israelis than Palestinians in the conflict.
- 15%. The percentage of U.S. adults who sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis in the conflict.
- 81%. The percentage of Israelis who said they approved of U.S. leadership in 2023, according to Gallup.
- 63%. The percentage of Israelis who say they approve of U.S. leadership in 2024.
- 49%. The percentage of Israelis who said they did not have confidence in their government in 2023.
- 53%. The percentage of Israelis who say they do not have confidence in their government in 2024.
The extras.
- One year ago today we had just covered the lawsuits against Amazon and Google.
- The most clicked link in Thursday’s newsletter was Donald Trump saying he would veto a federal abortion ban.
- Nothing to do with politics: A new world record on a common student project: the egg drop.
- Thursday’s survey: 1,393 readers responded to our survey asking about the longshoremen’s strike with 60% opposed. “They deserve a raise but trying to limit technological advances is not the way to go — better off getting provisions for retraining workers whose positions are being replaced,” one respondent said.
Have a nice day.
In 2020, Professor Zhugen Yang of Cranfield University began developing a test designed to identify the presence of Covid-19 and influenza earlier and cheaper than existing methods. Unlike other common tests, like the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, Yang’s proposed test would not require a lab with trained technicians to complete. Since then, Yang has developed a test made of origami paper sensors that uses biomarkers in wastewater to detect infectious diseases; it is at least as accurate as other tests and much more cost-effective, costing around a dollar per test. Good News Network has the story.
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