Like many Americans, I woke up early on this date last year to an alert on my phone, notifying me of the still-blurry details of an attack underway in Israel. As the hours and days wore on, the horrific contours of Hamas's assault on southern Israel came into focus: In the end, some 1,200 people were dead, about 250 people had been taken hostage, and Israelis' fragile sense of security was gone. There has not been anything easy about the year that followed. The deadly attack on Israel and the country's subsequent war on Hamas have changed the Middle East and the world. More than 41,000 people have been killed in Gaza as Israel has prosecuted its war, according to the local health ministry. After a year of bombardment and displacement, large swaths of the civilian population are sick or starving, and an untold number of homes have been demolished. Many Israelis still have not been able to return to their homes, or they live amid near-daily missile attacks. The ongoing conflict has divided communities in America and could play a role in the outcome of its election this fall. Solutions toward peace have also been hard to come by — as repeated failed attempts to negotiate a cease-fire have shown. And they are receding as the conflict widens, with Israel now seeking to dismantle Hezbollah in Lebanon, pursuing Hamas leadership in the West Bank and weighing its response to Iran's massive ballistic missile attack last week. Our coverage in Opinion this week will aim to reflect the solemnity of this day and how events of Oct. 7 and the past year have wrought such fundamental change in so many lives. Tom Friedman today reflects on the past year of war and explains how all wars come down to two questions: "Who wins the battle on the ground? And who wins the battle of the story" that people and history will tell? He also writes that the Netanyahu-led government has left Israelis unsure if they are at war "to save the state of Israel or the political career of their prime minister." In "The Year American Jews Woke Up," the Opinion columnist Bret Stephens describes the "palpable sense of things going backward" for the American Jewish community and asks where it must go from here. The former Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz warns in a guest essay that the world will not be safe if Iran and its proxies continue to attack Israel and its allies in the region. The Opinion columnist Nick Kristof writes about America's troubled entanglement in the conflict and how President Biden, "instead of midwifing the landmark Middle East peace that he hoped for," ended up becoming "the arms supplier for the leveling of Gaza." Mosab Abu Toha, a Palestinian poet and writer who fled Gaza during the war, reflects on why it is hard to imagine going back to teaching there after so many schools have become places where families sought shelter and came under attack. Yaffa Adar, an 86-year-old who was taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7, writes about her long days in captivity and how neither she nor Israel will be able to recover until the remaining hostages come home. Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel analyst, writes about how "Israel is sinking deeper into an existential crisis" over the government's failure to save the remaining hostages and what that says about the nation. Throughout this week, we will add to this coverage, including new podcasts on the subject from the columnist Ezra Klein. After a tumultuous year, we hope Opinion's journalism will inform how the world can move forward from here. Read the coverage:
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Monday, October 7, 2024
Opinion Today: On Oct. 7, looking back over a tumultuous year
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