The Hamas attacks three years ago today left 1,200 people dead and shook Israelis’ sense of security within their borders. But its government’s actions since then have made Israel more isolated and possibly less secure.
A bitter anniversary
When Binyamin Netanyahu spoke at a ceremony in Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl military cemetery this week to mark the third anniversary of the October 7th, 2023 attacks, he was interrupted by the father of one of those who died.
“It’s a disgrace that you didn’t protect those murdered on October 7th,” shouted Yaakov Godo, whose son Tom died in the attacks. “The blood of my son and of another 1,200 people murdered in a single day is on his hands and on his head.”
The official event at Mount Herzl on Monday was the first of a succession of commemorations this week of the attacks led by Hamas that saw the greatest number of Jews killed in a single day since the Holocaust: 251 people, among them women, children and old people, were abducted that day and taken into Gaza, where many were subjected to abuse and 83 died.
Victims’ families have long called for an official commission of inquiry into how the attacks were possible, the failure of intelligence and what warnings the government received. Netanyahu has refused to open such an inquiry, prompting a number of former hostages to stand as candidates in this month’s general election.
Israel laments that the world has forgotten the atrocities committed at the Nova music festival, in kibbutzim and other communities near the Gaza border. A United Nations Independent international commission of inquiry found reasonable evidence to conclude that Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups involved in the attacks committed war crimes, including attacks against civilians, murder, torture and cruel treatment, and hostage-taking.
But the victims of October 7th may not have been forgotten so much as they have been submerged beneath the images from Gaza afterwards, when Israel killed more than 70,000 people, including 20,000 children. The Israeli campaign displaced almost all of Gaza’s 2.1 million people from their homes, laid waste to much of the territory including its hospitals, leaving the Strip with the highest proportion of child amputees in the world.
In the days after October 7th, Israel came under missile attack from Hizbullah in Lebanon, from militias based in Iraq and Syria and backed by Iran, and from the Houthi rebels in Yemen. But Israel soon went on the offensive, not just in Gaza but in Lebanon, Syria and Iran, assassinating many of the leading figures in Hamas and Hizbullah.
By 2025, Israel had killed Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh and prominent military leader Yahya Sinwar along with other senior figures including Saleh al-Arouri and Mohammed Deif. Hassan Nasrallah, who had led Hizbullah for more than 30 years, was assassinated in September 2024 after Israel had already killed eight senior military figures in the organisation.
Israeli forces also struck Houthi targets in Yemen and succeeded in degrading the three main elements in the so-called axis of resistance. Three years on, Hamas and Hizbullah are much diminished but they survive, while the Houthis are making advances in their war against Yemen’s official government.
The October 7th attacks undermined Israelis’ sense of security within their own borders and the wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran were meant to strengthen the country’s security. But after the slaughter of the Palestinians and two wars against Iran, Israel remains vulnerable to attack, as last week attempted hijacking of a Flydubai aircraft demonstrated.
Perhaps the most important long-term threat to Israel’s security is its increasing isolation and the almost universal revulsion against its actions in Gaza, even among its traditional allies. Public opinion in the United States has moved sharply against Israel and condemnation of its war in Gaza has become a litmus test for Democratic candidates throughout the US.
Donald Trump remains supportive of Israel but his vice-president, JD Vance, is more sceptical, as is much of the conservative base, which tends towards foreign policy isolationism. Three years after much of the world shared Israel’s shock and sorrow at the October 7th attacks, Netanyahu’s actions have drained the well of global sympathy, even though the victims deserve it as much as ever.
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