What happened on October 7th?

The following is an exerpt from Confronting Christian Zionism: Episode 2 hosted by Presbyterian Church (USA) on April 11th, 2024. In the excerpt, Jonathan Kutabb, international human rights attorney and executive director of Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), answers a question about how to think about October 7th and Hamas:

Let’s start with October 7th, and this may not be popular because it runs against the narrative that everyone has accepted. The biggest problem with October 7th is that it’s taken out of context. You forget what happened before… which is a crippling siege with continuing periodic attacks against Gaza for 16 years. Which is an apartheid regime with military occupation in the West Bank. Which is a system of increased right wing facism in Israel and oppression of the Palestinian people which has been going on for Tens of Years.

But even if we forget the context, which we shouldn’t, what happened on October 7th was an amazing jailbreak where people in Gaza broke the tight wall around them in fourty different locations simultaneously. They attacked two military bases and occupied them. They killed and captured the soldiers in them. By Israeli count 340 armed soldiers were killed and over 40/50 were captured and taken hostage to trade for Palestinian prisoners. And that was a military operation.

On top of that, and contrary to international law, they also attacked civilian settlements and a music festival. Killing and taking hostages who are civilians, some of them children some of them women. All of which is contrary to international law and should be condemned. [1]

So we must first start by seeing, what’s the context, what actually happened, and what has happened since that time. So if we agree that attacking civilians is wrong, no matter what the provocation then the attacks on the civilians in Gaza is horribly wrong as well. Since October 7th more Palestinians were captured and taken hostage as prisoners in Israel. No charges, no trial, no visit by lawyers none of the basic elements of treating people decently.

The Palestinian population has been plummeted by massive bombardment… The majority of [those killed] are women and children who are noncombatants by definition… All of the Universities have been destroyed. Most of the hospitals have been destroyed and the few that are remaining are crippled [due to Israel blocking medicine]. Especially anesthetics. The horror of it is incredible.

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[1] Facilitators note: Reporting from independent journalists, Al-Jazeera and Haaretz have also documented how on October 7th, Israel deployed the “Hannibal Directive.” A policy that allowed the Israeli military to kill their own civilians to prevent hostage taking. At this time it is unclear how many Israelis were killed by their own army due to Israel blocking independent fact finding missions.