As I write this, it’s Monday, 5 October, and Israel is in the midst of mourning the third anniversary of Hamas breaching the country’s southern border and massacring, in the most barbaric way imaginable, 1,200 people and then abducting 251. The invasion itself, of course, took place on 7 October 2023, but Israel commemorates notable days according to the Hebrew calendar, and with the attacks having occurred on the Jewish festival of Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah (which takes place over two days in the diaspora but over one in Israel), the official remembrance day is held straight after the holiday.
For the rest of the world, though, the third anniversary is still a couple of days away, but it doesn’t take a clairvoyant to know how it will play out. As Jewish communities around the world, along with our many allies, mark the occasion with a solemnity befitting what was the darkest day for Jews since the Holocaust, countless others will exploit the day to further attack Israel and anyone who has the audacity to believe in its basic existence.
(Literally) Hijacking October 7
For a start, on the most extreme end of these counter-commemorations, let’s call them, is the very real risk that Jihadis and antisemites, feeling “inspired” by Hamas’s barbarism, might want to “commemorate” the day with their own acts of violence, vandalism and terror. Indeed, Jewish security organisations around the globe have been put on high alert throughout this period, and Jews and Israelis, in general, have been told to remain vigilant.
And if this sounds alarmist to you, don’t forget that just before this year’s Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah celebrations, the co-pilot of Flydubai flight FZ1073 to Israel attempted to hijack the plane with the ultimate intention, as we are now learning, of crashing it into Ben Gurion Airport or a skyscraper in Tel Aviv. Thank God for Captain Smit Machchhar, the flight’s incredibly brave pilot, who, after having been severely stabbed by the attempted hijacker, used his last bit of strength to open the cockpit door and let in several Israeli passengers who subdued the terrorist and, with the help of a backup crew on board, landed the plane safely in Saudi Arabia.
The terror attempt was initially reported in the media as an “altercation” between two pilots and hasn’t received a ton of attention since then, but had it succeeded, it would have killed the 180 souls on board and who knows how many on the ground. Comparisons to 9/11 would not have been unreasonable.
This is the reality in which Jews and Israelis continue to live, and though it’s unclear whether the terrorist specifically planned the attack to coincide with the anniversary of October 7, and for an extra chill, read that flight number again, the very fact that it’s a real possibility says it all.
Morally Perverting October 7
While the threat of actual violence is far from remote, there is no doubt whatsoever that the day itself, like the war that followed, will be inverted and weaponised against Israel and any Jew, or non-Jew, who doesn’t bend the knee to anti-Zionist purity tests.
On the most basic level, there will be some who outright celebrate the day. We know this because there were many who outright celebrated the events as they happened. But the less said about these morally bankrupt troglodytes the better: hopefully we’re not so far gone as to debate whether celebrating the murder, rape, sexual abuse, torture, immolation and mutilation of 1,200 people by Islamist terrorists is anything other than craven depravity of the lowest order, no matter what the “cause”.
And then there are those who will simply deny the events of the day, calling it a false flag operation or Israeli propaganda. They may even claim that these events didn’t happen while, at the exact same time, insisting that those very events were actually the Israeli Defence Force killing their own civilians in order to justify a genocide against the Palestinian people. It’s a claim as grievously stupid as it is evil.
There are seemingly millions of internet trolls on social media who are all too happy to repeat this inane nonsense, but I would imagine that most sane, rational people would see it for what it is: modern-day Holocaust denial.
There is another way that October 7 has been hijacked, however, which is much more effective at winning over even the most well-meaning and intelligent people to its cause.
And it often begins: “Yes, October 7 was terrible, but...”
Stealing October 7
In order for the Gaza War to be deemed a genocide, you see, and for Israel to be guilty of systemic war crimes, it is absolutely vital to erase Hamas from the equation as much as possible. Which is precisely what those reports and studies that have found Israel guilty of the worst crimes imaginable have done time and time again.
So, for example, the sheer number of civilians who tragically died during the war can be used as proof of genocide... just as long as you ignore how Hamas fighters don’t just hide behind Palestinian civilians but use their deaths as a key part of their strategy.
Israel destroying the vast majority of the infrastructure in Gaza can be seen as evidence of a plan to drive the population out of Gaza... just as long as you ignore how Hamas used Gaza’s civilian infrastructure to turn the enclave into the world’s biggest terror base.
And the extensiveness of Israel’s bombing campaign can obviously be used as proof positive of indiscriminate slaughter... just so long as you ignore how Hamas booby-trapped every inch of the enclave and operated from hundreds of miles of tunnels that ran below the surface of schools, mosques, hospitals and civilian houses.
October 7, though, presents something of a challenge to those who wish to reduce the entirety of the past three years into, in effect, Palestinians good, Israel bad.
Mentally erasing Hamas’s role in the war in Gaza is one thing. All you really need to do is think like a normal person who wouldn’t use the lives of your friends, families and fellow countrymen as a tool in a propaganda war, and you can easily deny what Hamas is and even what it explicitly announces itself to be. No one can possibly be that evil, right?
Much more difficult, though, is erasing Hamas’s actual genocidal actions on October 7, which leave little doubt as to both the extent of Hamas’s evil and how they started this godawful war in the first place.
Even this is possible, though, as long as you rebrand the day itself: not as the darkest day in Israel’s history, but as day zero for the genocide of the Palestinian people. That the facts don’t support this becomes increasingly irrelevant when cast in the shadow of alleged “genocide” and endless “Free Palestine” protests.
What’s Really Going On
Here’s the really ugly truth: it is, in fact, entirely possible to view October 7 purely through the prism of Palestinian suffering, but without the cognitive dissonance needed to steal the day itself from Israel.
All it would take is the following formulation: through its actions on October 7, Hamas ensured a military response from Israel that would leave thousands of Palestinians dead, many thousands more injured, and the rest left to an existence that most of us wouldn’t wish on our worst enemies.
It would still be beyond tasteless to nullify the suffering of the victims of October 7, but it would be a perfectly valid statement from which one could justifiably launch numerous complaints about Israel’s conduct during the war.
But this, of course, would require acknowledging complicity on the part of the Palestinians, even just their radical leaders, and assigning motives to Israel that may, in fact, have nothing to do with genocide or ethnic cleansing.
For that to happen, the “pro-Palestinian” movement’s decision to hijack October 7 would have to be less about vilifying Israel than about empowering Palestinians.
And that’s just not going to happen any time soon.
Ilan Preskovsky is a Johannesburg-based freelance writer whose work covers international politics, Jewish culture and religion, as well as film and television. His writing has appeared in publications including News24, Popverse, BizNews, Business Day, Jewish Life Magazine and The Star.
