On October 7, 2023, Hamas militants launched an offensive into the Gaza Envelope (southern Israel) with the aim of irreversibly shattering the unsustainable status quo. Although the crisis that has now lasted for a full year actually erupted that day, it had been decades in the making, with the Palestinian resistance saying its offensive was in response to “the ongoing attacks by the occupation forces and Israeli settlers against the Palestinian people, their property and their holy sites, especially the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem.”

On that day, Hamas fighters and other Palestinian resistance factions killed a number of Israelis. Israel says their number reached 1,200 people. According to the occupation army’s data, this number includes 311 soldiers. Tel Aviv estimates that there are currently 101 prisoners in Gaza out of at least 239 Israelis who were captured on October 7. It exchanged dozens of them during a temporary truce in the last week of November. Hamas announced the killing of dozens more in random Israeli raids.

The initial reaction of the Israeli occupation authorities was to launch a campaign of genocide against the Palestinian citizens of the Gaza Strip. Driven by revenge and a desire for bloodshed, the campaign was designed not only to kill and destroy on a massive scale, but also to render the Gaza Strip uninhabitable. For a whole year, Israel continued to commit genocidal crimes in the Gaza Strip, emboldened to do so by the unlimited political and military support of the United States and European countries, and the weakness of the Arab and Islamic countries.

Genocide was the price Israel's Western patrons were willing to pay to make an example of Gaza and thus re-establish its shattered deterrent power.

To ensure that Israel can invade the Gaza Strip with impunity and escape any accountability for its actions, Israel’s Western patrons and allies, led by the United States, have willingly torn up all the rules of international law, norms and values that underpin it.

Every Israeli attempt to erase another red line—bombing and destroying hospitals, schools, and refugee centers, turning communications equipment into hand grenades, killing and wounding hundreds in order to rescue four prisoners (for example, on June 8)—was justified as a legitimate act of self-defense.

Logically, because of this fierce war, the world has become a more dangerous place for everyone, on the altar of Israeli impunity.

Over the past year, Israel has failed not only to achieve anything of military significance in Gaza, but has also failed to formulate a clear strategy. Slogans like “total victory” and the Churchill complex are no substitute for political vision.

That situation now appears to be changing. Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, along with nearly the entire party’s military leadership, has given it confidence in its ability to dismantle the alliance known as the Axis of Resistance.

The main initiative Israel has taken in this regard is the ongoing invasion of Lebanon, in which all the red lines violated in Gaza are being crossed once again, and once again without any voice from capitals accustomed to preaching to rivals, enemies and other lesser beings about the sanctity of the rule of law, human rights and similar principles.

As was clear from the beginning, Israel's ultimate goal is regime change in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran, on the mistaken assumption that an Iranian government detached from the conflict with Israel would turn the Palestinians, and Arabs in general, into impotent entities.

Israel seems convinced that the road to Tehran passes through the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed this on September 30 when he vowed that Iranians would soon achieve “freedom” from their leaders.

Israel's agenda requires it to engineer a direct military confrontation between Washington and Tehran.

This war, during which Israel faced accusations of committing "war crimes", left 41,802 Palestinian dead, including 17,000 children, and 97,000 wounded, according to the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, as of Friday, October 4.

Western countries, especially the United States of America (which is practically leading the war), Britain, Germany, France and Italy, have announced hundreds of times that they will support "Israel in defending itself and its people" after October 7, 2023, and this is what actually happened and is happening. The United States sent more than 70 thousand tons of weapons and ammunition to Israel (more than $23 billion in weapons), and prevented the passage of any resolution in the Security Council by using the veto four times since October 18, 2023. Instead, America did not stop for a single day from sending deadly weapons that enabled Israel to kill 42 thousand in Gaza (and thousands in Lebanon now). Official American sources who spoke to Reuters said that Washington sent to Israel between October 7 and June 28, no less than 14 thousand MK-84 bombs used in bomber launchers, and 6,500 bombs weighing 227 kilograms each.

These sources stated that Washington also sent Hellfire air-to-surface guided missiles, 1,000 bunker-busting bombs, 2,600 small air-dropped bombs and other munitions.

According to research conducted by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, from October 7, 2023 to July 2024, 173 military and civilian cargo planes took off from the United States and American military bases around the world towards Israel, carrying weapons and ammunition.

Recently, the Israeli Ministry of Defense stated in a statement on September 26 that the Director General of the Ministry of Defense, Eyal Zamir, signed an agreement in Washington under which Tel Aviv would receive an American military aid package worth $8.7 billion.

Israel, enabled by the US, did not leave any weapon or ammunition in the joint Western military arsenal without using it against unarmed civilians in the Gaza Strip during the year-long genocidal war, including the "MK82", "MK83", and "MK84" bombs, all of which are American-made and of different sizes and weights. The "MK84" bomb was one of the largest bombs dropped by the occupation aircraft, as its total weight is about a ton (1000 kilograms), and it contains 425 kilograms of highly explosive materials, which have tremendous destructive power.

In America, the year of war that followed the October 7 attacks has shaped the views of a generation of young people, who now see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and America's role in it in very different ways than their elders.

“This new generation will eventually move from campus to the halls of government,” said Carmel Arbit, a senior fellow for Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “The events that followed October 7 are going to have a real impact on their worldview.” The younger generation now sees the Palestinian people as the weaker party and should no longer be silent about Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. Polls over the past year have consistently shown that Gen Z and millennials are more sympathetic to the Palestinians and want the United States to stop supporting Israeli war efforts than older Americans.

Major cities and hundreds of American college campuses across the country saw massive pro-Palestinian protests and encampments last spring, which resumed this fall.

For a year, devastating images from Gaza have circulated around the world on social media and news sites. More than 41,600 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.

To be sure, most politicians in Washington still unequivocally support Israel. Some who criticized Israel in the primary races were voted out, but Israel’s war on Gaza has resonated across the United States and has become a domestic issue that politicians cannot ignore. As young people pressure their politicians, and eventually rise to power themselves, American politics may begin to shift in profound ways.