This October 7 marks one year of bloodshed and horror in the land that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. One year since Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel, killing 1,200—and one year since Israel began its genocidal war on Gaza, killing more than 40,000 and destroying virtually everything that made life possible in the Strip. Throughout this time, The Nation has dedicated itself to bringing readers the words of people in Palestine and Israel, to sharing their testimonies of atrocity as well as their testaments of strength, all in the hope that they would not only inform but also ignite, inspire, and move to action.

Now, as we reflect on this painful year, we return to some of the people we have met along the way—among them, an impossibly brave 14-year-old girl who has held on to her capacity for love and hope; a writer and father who survived six months in Gaza before fleeing to Egypt; and an Israeli journalist who has been covering the shifts and splits in his country. We urge you to read their words—to listen to the pleas and yearning within them, the fear and despair and, yes, the love.

—Jack Mirkinson and Lizzy Ratner

 

My Message to My Friends Around the World

I write to you from my wounded yet beautiful home, Gaza. After months and months of destruction and extermination in a war where many battles have intertwined—the war of weapons, the war of starvation, the war of disease, and the war of siege and displacement—there have been moments when I thought we were enduring this pain alone.

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Where, I wondered, were the preachers for freedom, democracy, and human rights, especially the rights of children? Sometimes, disappointment crept into my soul. But after seeing people from all corners of the world demonstrating for the children of Gaza; after reading the messages from so many, young and old, for the people of Gaza; after hearing their chants calling for an end to the war and freedom for Palestine, I felt that their words were painting a new picture for me, one with bright colors, despite the darkness of the devastating war being waged against us. Their actions have become our only bastion of hope, sheltering, protecting, and strengthening us at a time when death hovers above our heads.

To every good-hearted seeker of freedom, justice, and equality, I say this: You reassure us that the fight for Palestinian children in particular, and the rights of my Palestinian people in general, is alive. It is thriving and flourishing in your heart.

Over the past year, I came to realize that this war is not just a war against Gaza. It is a war against the very essence of humanity, one that every person with a conscience is enduring and fighting in every corner of the earth. When we hurt, you hurt. When we grieve, you grieve. So thank you for standing by us—for feeling the death, torture, and dreadful living conditions alongside us. We need your support for our cause so that peace can prevail, and so that children like me can live without the pain of loss, hunger, and disease. We want to live in a free homeland with peace and security. We want to look up at the sky without fear of death from planes loaded with missiles—to hear the sounds of birds, not bombs. We want to hold our pens and books and go back to school. Your words and voices will always be a support for a child who has lost a dream and is searching for a new reality.

From me and from all the children of Gaza and Palestine, we send you our love and gratitude, and I say on behalf of an entire generation: Your hands wipe away the pain of every child in my land, your voices are a melody of peace, and your heartbeats reach ours despite the siege we live under and the vast oceans between us. For all this, and for being the benevolent beautiful people you are, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Perhaps one day I will be able to invite you to my small city, which will for sure rise from its ruins, where the red anemones will bloom again in soil watered by our blood, to thank you for keeping us in your hearts and thoughts. Until then, the waves of our sea will always remind us that beyond its horizons, there are those who see us, hear us, feel with us, and stand in solidarity with us.

I love you all.

Lujayn
 

Another Nakba, Another Exile

I remember writing about the 47th anniversary of the Nakba, and the 75th, and the 76th. I wrote about the pain and pride of my people—many of whom had been expelled from their homes and sent into what would become my homeland, Gaza.

Decades after that first expulsion, many things have changed, but one thing has remained the same: Israel’s determination to erase us from our own land. For 2 million people still trapped in Gaza, that has meant a year of genocide—of death, starvation, displacement, and the constant search for safe haven; for tens of thousands of others, like me and my family, it has meant a Nakba of our own—a desperate flight from Gaza and into exile.

For those of us who have been permitted a way out, surviving Gaza hasn’t made the war less painful. Our scars linger, not just in the memories of destruction, but in the daily struggle of trying to rebuild our lives, to find a sense of normalcy in the midst of chaos.

It is hard to describe what it feels like when your life as you knew it evaporates overnight—when you have to leave your home even though your home can never leave you. I can never forget my home—not just when it’s being blown up, but in the stories my grandparents told, in the memories passed down through generations, in the olive trees that stand as silent witnesses to our dispossession. The day my father was forced to leave Gaza under evacuation orders, he carried nothing but the keys in his pocket and the hope that, one day, he would return—just as his own father did over 70 years ago.

Though I am still in my 20s, I never imagined I would endure the same tragedy. Generations have come and gone, places have changed, but the reality of forced displacement remains. As we watch the news today, one question haunts us: Will we live to see the day when we can finally experience the right to return and celebrate the liberation of our homeland?

My earliest memories are of my grandmother’s stories, told in a voice heavy with the weight of generations. She spoke of a free Palestine, where the air was sweet with the scent of jasmine and the nights resonated with the music of the oud. Her stories weren’t just about a land; they were about a way of life, a deep sense of belonging that transcended the physical.

One year of relentless assaults has once again turned that land into blackened rubble.

It’s been one year, and we are still asking the world for the same thing over and over: to see us not just as victims, but as people with dreams and aspirations, with the right to live in peace and dignity. We are not asking for charity; we are demanding our rights, both in and outside of Palestine. The right to live in peace, to return to our homes, to walk our streets without fear.

Despite everything, we hold on to hope. Hope is a dangerous thing, fragile and easily shattered. But it is also resilient, growing in the most unlikely of places. Hope is in the eyes of the child who dreams of becoming a doctor, in the hands of the artist who paints a future free of fear, and in the voice of the mother who sings her baby to sleep under the hovering of warplanes. Hope is the lifeblood of Gaza, coursing through the veins of a people who refuse to be broken.

Writing, in these times, is also hope. It feels like an act of birth. To write is to remember, to hold on to the threads of our identity even in exile, and to declare that we are still here.

Those of us in exile are scattered across the globe but are connected by memory and longing. We carry our homeland in our hearts, a piece of Gaza in every step we take, every word we speak. Rebuilding our lives from nothing is an act of defiance, a refusal to let go of the dream of return. Our homes in exile are never truly home. Home is the smell of the sea, the taste of olives, the sound of prayers at dawn in Gaza’s suburbs of Shuja’iyya and Tal al-Hawa.

I left Gaza, but it has never left me. And so we will continue to write, to speak, to shout, until our voices are heard. We will continue to dream, to hope, to fight, until Gaza is free. We are not just fighting for ourselves, but for the future of our children, for the memory of our ancestors, for the soul of Palestine.

Gaza taught me hope. And I won’t let it down, even if I am in exile. In and outside of Gaza, we refuse to be silenced, to be erased. Three hundred and sixty-five days and counting, our sacrifice is far from over. But one thing is certain: As long as there is life in Gaza, there is hope. We will not give up. We will not surrender. And we will return.

Mohammed Mhawish
 

Israel’s Internal Contradictions

If you want to understand where Israel is at almost a year into its longest war, you might start by looking at two very different figures: Giora Eiland and Einav Zangauker. Eiland, a retired major general, is the former head of the Israeli National Security Council and has long been considered one of the most prominent “intellectuals” among the not very intellectual Israeli security apparatus. A frequent TV commentator, he does not come from a religious-messianic background, is a vocal critic of Benjamin Netanyahu and his politics, and generally presents as a moderate, sober thinker. Yet from the beginning of the war, Eiland led the way by calling to destroy Gaza. “The State of Israel has no choice but to make Gaza a place that is temporarily, or permanently, impossible to live in,” he wrote in one opinion piece. In another, he stated: “The people should be told that they have two choices; to stay and to starve, or to leave.” The remark earned him a mention in the International Court of Justice’s January ruling that found it “plausible” that Israel has committed acts that violate the Genocide Convention.

Since making those early pronouncements, Eiland has continued to take a brutal line toward Gaza—endorsing starvation, welcoming the prospect of disease outbreaks and epidemics, and pressing for aggressive military action. Most recently, he helped spearhead the “Generals’ Plan”—a proposal, backed by other well-known retired officers, for an operation that would begin with Israel declaring the whole of Gaza City and its surroundings a “closed military area,” giving its estimated 250,000 remaining residents a week to evacuate, and then treating those who stay as “Hamas terrorists” who will have to surrender or face death. The reason for the proposal: Almost a year after Israel launched its bloodiest attack ever on Gaza and on the Palestinian people as a whole, killing at least 40,000, driving almost 2 million from their homes, and leveling most of the Gaza Strip, Eiland and his military friends believe that Israel has not done enough—that it has been “too soft” on the Palestinians. And the Israeli political class and media agree.

And yet, as popular as Eiland’s views may be, he does not speak for all Israelis. Einav Zangauker represents the current mood of the country at least as well as Eiland does. Zangauker’s son, Matan, was kidnapped on October 7 and is being held in Gaza. Zangauker is a resident of Ofakim, a small town in southern Israel, that was overrun during Hamas’s murderous attack. She describes herself as a Likudnik, as do the overwhelming majority of Ofakim residents.

Yet Zangauker is today the undisputed leader of a huge wave of protests calling for a deal with Hamas that would include the release of the Israeli hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel as well as a ceasefire in Gaza. In her direct and unapologetic way, she not only attacks Netanyahu in the harshest of words, calling him a “murderer” responsible for the killing of Israeli hostages—both those who have already died in captivity and those who may yet die because Netanyahu is blocking any deal—but she also dismantles his rhetoric: from his claims that Israel can achieve “total victory” to his latest invention, that the survival of Israel depends on its forces remaining in the Philadelphi Corridor between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

In her grief, anger, and despair, Zangauker embodies the feelings of many Israelis, hundreds of thousands of whom poured into the streets at the end of the summer demanding a “deal now.” They are all tired of waiting for the hostages to be freed, tired of seeing them return home in body bags, and tired of the state of anxiety in which so many of them have lived for almost a year. “Make a deal, finish the war, fix the country,” tweeted Yair Lapid, the head of the opposition, who until recently had adopted many of Netanyahu’s slogans.

With Eiland on one side and Zangauker on the other, Israel finds itself at a crossroads—one that could determine the fate not only of the Israeli hostages and the people in Gaza but also of the broader Middle East. Take one path, and there is endless war; take the other, and there is the possibility of “normality.” And yet, as deep as the divisions are between the two sides, there is one crucial matter on which they are fundamentally aligned: Neither side includes Palestinians as part of their equation. The Israeli public is not distressed by the violence its military is inflicting on Gaza; nor are they concerned about future relations with the Palestinians.

This void should raise serious doubts about whether Israel can find its way to a true and lasting resolution to the horrors of the past year, no matter which path it takes. A ceasefire is a must, but it is only the beginning.

Meron Rapoport