Fury on a loop and a failure of global leadership - a year on from 'Israel's 9/11'
A deep, long conflict took a horrific new turn a year ago and set in train something much bigger - the end of which appears far out of sight.
Tuesday 8 October 2024 00:55, UK
A year ago, I was at the White House trying to make sense of events as they unfolded thousands of miles away.
How did it happen? Why did it happen? What will happen next? These were the core questions being fired at many reporters.
There is always a huge weight of expectation to explain moments as they happen, in real time.
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One of the first phone calls I made was to an Israeli friend, in Jerusalem.
"This is our 9/11…" he said. "Not since the Holocaust have we faced something like this...." There was fear and bewilderment in his voice.
I then spoke to a friend in Gaza. "We are praying for this to end…" he said.
He was talking about the Israeli retaliatory aerial bombardment, which had already begun but which would last through the year, and continues. There was the same fear and bewilderment in his voice.
The third call I made in that 24 hours a year ago was to a close friend and colleague, someone who has been living the Middle East story for his whole life.
We discussed how things might unfold. His predictions were grim. I sensed that fear and bewilderment in his voice too.
Then, in another exchange, a reflection and a forecast from a key figure at the heart of a Middle Eastern government: "Disaster honestly. We're in for a long one," the source said.
The words of the Israeli prime minister, it turns out, forecast things pretty accurately too.
In the hours after the Hamas attacks, Benjamin Netanyahu said: "We will forcefully avenge this dark day… As Bialik [a Jewish poet] wrote: 'Revenge for the blood of a little child has yet been devised by Satan'."
It echoed, in starker terms, what my Israeli friend had said to me that day a year ago.
"We will see something massive. The shock is so massive, the government needs to do something massive. The things we have seen brings back the Jewish history. This is the frame through which we see this," he said.
He was right.
The particular framing of this particular subject - the history, the division, the geography, the religions, the characters - is why this past year has unravelled so fast and been so hard to stitch together again.
A deep, long conflict took a horrific new turn a year ago.
Fury unleashed fury on a loop and in the process exposed an alarming lack of global leadership.
America has been deeply damaged, humiliated, by all this. Old allies see an unreliable partner. Old foes see a naive pushover.
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Just eight days before the Hamas attacks, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said: "The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades."
How tragically wrong he was - the consequence of blindness and so much wishful thinking.
October 7th 2023 has set in train something much bigger.
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Netanyahu's reshaping of the region is the consequence of spectacular and bloody tactical successes. It's leading him at pace to Iran, he's forcing America with him and the long-term strategic plan is entirely unknown.
As for the people and the pain, a year on?
Those at the heart of all this are feeling their own pain so deeply, that they are unable to begin to comprehend the pain on the other side.