Gaza: October 7 in historical perspective

By Gilbert Achcar

More than six and a half months after the “Flood of Al-Aqsa” operation carried out by Hamas on October 7, 2023, beyond the barrier surrounding the Gaza Strip, and that of the Israeli army called “Sword of iron” on the Palestinian enclave, the provisional results are frightening. While a narrative regarding the October 7 attack as an anti-Semitic operation continues to be hammered home, placing this event in a historical perspective allows us to repoliticize it and understand its dynamics.

According to available figures, on October 7, 1,143 people, mostly Israelis, were killed – 767 civilians, including 36 children and 71 foreigners, as well as 376 military and security force members. Nearly 250 people were kidnapped. The same day, according to Israeli sources, more than 1,600 fighters among the attackers were killed on the spot and nearly 200 people arrested.

Since October 7, according to Gazan sources, more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, including around 40% children, or more than 13,500, to which must be added up to 20,000 people who are believed to be buried under the rubble, as well as nearly 77,000 injured, many of them very seriously. The vast majority of Gaza's 2.4 million residents have been displaced and the entire population of the enclave is suffering from increasing famine, inflicted by Israel's severe limitation on the volume of aid. entering the enclave.

Most of Gaza's homes have been destroyed in what is certainly the most destructive bombing campaign of this century, and probably the most destructive in history in terms of intensity (combining scope and speed), except for nuclear weapons. In fact, while the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 15 kilotons of TNT, the Israeli armed forces have already dropped nearly five times that tonnage on the 365 square kilometers of Gaza. All these figures are provisional, of course, and continue to increase, day by day, as of this writing.

What was the aftermath of October 7?

Israel's immediate reaction to the October 7 attack was not only to call it "the largest massacre of Israelis committed in a single day", which is indisputable, but also "the largest massacre of Jews since the Shoah” – a much more questionable description, because it is loaded with implicit political meaning. This last description has, however, become a mantra in Western countries, taken up for example by French President Emmanuel Macron who, on February 7, 2024, described October 7 as “the greatest anti-Semitic massacre of our century” during a ceremony in tribute to the forty-two people of French nationality killed that day.

To anyone who bears in mind the terrible toll described above, the implicit analogy between the October 7 attack and the Nazi massacre of the Jews must seem entirely inappropriate, because it completely ignores the real balance of power. as well as the identity of the oppressors and oppressed in each case. As the specialists in anti-Semitism and the Shoah who signed the “Open Letter on the Misuse of Holocaust Memory” rightly say (below an improved translation of the original):

It is understandable that many members of the Jewish community bring up the Holocaust and earlier pogroms when trying to understand what happened on October 7 – the massacres and the images that were released following those events. tapped into the deep-seated collective memory of genocidal anti-Semitism, driven by an all-too-recent Jewish history.

However, appealing to the memory of the Holocaust obscures our understanding of the anti-Semitism that Jews face today and dangerously misrepresents the causes of violence in Israel-Palestine. The Nazi genocide involved a state – and its willing civil society – targeting a tiny minority, which then escalated into a continent-wide genocide. This is why comparisons of the unfolding crisis in Israel-Palestine to Nazism and the Holocaust – especially when they come from political leaders and others capable of influencing public opinion – are intellectual failures. and moral.

This is not to mention that whatever similarities one may identify between Hamas and the Nazis, there are certainly more similarities between the latter and the far-right Zionist government of Israel. The coalition is dominated by Likud, a party with a fascist pedigree, and includes ministers that Israeli Holocaust historian Daniel Blatman, a professor at the Institute for Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, did not shy away from. to be described as “neo-Nazis” in the Israeli daily Haaretz.

October 7 in context

For having noted on October 24 the rather obvious and banal fact that October 7 "did not occur in a vacuum", the Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, was accused by Israel of "justifying terrorism" , while Israel's ambassador to the UN demanded his resignation. Referring to the post-1967 occupation, Guterres explained that “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of stifling occupation. They saw their lands gradually devoured by colonies and prey to violence; their suffocated economy; their fellow human beings displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their sad plight have faded.”

Guterres also affirmed that “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify Hamas’ appalling attacks. And these appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. " And yet, even Benny Gantz, Benjamin Netanyahu's political opponent and supposedly "moderate" member of Israel's post-October 7 war cabinet, declared that the UN secretary general "approves of terrorism," adding that “apologists for terrorism cannot speak for the world,” thus tacitly approving the request made by the representative of Israel.

These reactions from Israeli officials are only new examples of the denial of reality common to all occupying powers of modern times, since the dominant ethics and international law of modern times condemn the occupation of the territory of another people . In fact, not only is it true that October 7 "did not happen in a vacuum," but it was entirely predictable that an outbreak of violence was going to occur at some point, particularly in the Strip. from Gaza.

In December 2009, two years after the blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza following the withdrawal of its troops in 2005 and the coming to power of Hamas in 2007, and a few months after the first major Israeli bombing campaign enclave (2008-9), Larry Derfner asked the right questions to his Israeli compatriots in the Jerusalem Post:

The question we must ask ourselves is: if someone treated us like we treat the people of Gaza, what would we do? […] It’s not that we can’t imagine life in Gaza. It’s because we are determined not to try to imagine it. If we did, maybe we wouldn't stop there. We could then try to imagine what it would be like if our country found itself in the situation in which we left Gaza. And sooner or later we might try to imagine what we would do if we lived here like they live there.

Or not even what we would do, just what we would think – about the people and the country that did this to us and won't even allow us to begin to get back on our feet once the war is over. Who imposed a blockade on our borders and only allowed in supplies at a minimal level for our subsistence, so as to avoid mass famine and epidemics.

In truth, portraying Hamas as primarily motivated by anti-Semitism and akin to the Nazis is merely the continuation, in the ongoing new, intensive episode of the Arab-Israeli war of narratives, of an old, tried-and-tested narrative ploy, inaugurated by the exploitation after 1945 of the figure of Amin al-Husseini in order to present the Zionist conquest of Palestinian land in 1948 as the final battle of the Second World War. The last episode of colonial conquest in modern times could thus be presented as the last battle against Nazism.

This stratagem works well in regions of the world that bear culpability for the Nazi genocide of European Jews: among populations whose ancestors were perpetrators of the crime, direct accomplices or impassive spectators, including countries that slammed their doors in the faces of the Jewish refugees. This stratagem, however, does not work for the majority of humanity which, located in the countries of the Global South, had little interest in the Second World War and has always perceived the Palestinians, not as continuators of the Nazi imperialism, but as continuations of the long bloody series of colonial victims.

Historical flashback: Angola 1961

Shortly after October 7, my friend Michel Cahen, a French specialist in the history of Portuguese-speaking Africa, drew my attention to a historical episode that occurred in Angola in 1961, which bears a striking resemblance to current events in the Middle East. . Intrigued, I researched the issue and discovered that the parallel went well beyond the October 7 moment. Here are the facts.

By 1961, in the context of a major advance in decolonization on the African continent, resentment against intractable Portuguese colonialism had grown considerably in Angola, especially after the neighboring Republic of Congo (which later became the Republic Democratic Republic of Congo) had gained independence from Belgian colonial rule the previous year, prompting Portuguese colonial authorities to intensify their repression against Angolan independence activists. The anti-colonial armed struggle was progressing in the last colonial territories of Africa, and Angola was no exception. One of its anti-colonial movements was the Union of the People of Angola (UPA), whose leader, Holden Roberto, had ties both to the Algerian National Liberation Front – whose name it would later adopt as Front of National Liberation of Angola (FLNA) – than with the CIA.

On March 15, 1961, UPA fighters crossed the border from Congo into northern Angola, joined by large numbers of local indigenous people. A motley mass of four to five thousand men, some armed with rifles and most with machetes, went on a killing spree, killing with indescribable horror several hundred, perhaps a thousand (there are no precise figures ), white settlers – men, women, babies and children – as well as many more Angolans of other ethnicities and mixed race people. As Maria da Conceição Neto wrote sixty years later, “the images of massacred whites, mestizos and blacks would become the centerpiece of Portuguese propaganda aimed at discrediting the attackers by calling them “terrorists” and “ barbarians” without a political objective. To date, these are the most widespread images of “March 15,” immediately creating a barrier to understanding what happened…”

The Portuguese government of far-right dictator António de Oliveira Salazar – who personally took charge of the defense ministry for this purpose – launched a campaign of massive reprisals, with extensive use of the air force. In a few months, tens of thousands of people (more than 50,000 at the end of the year, according to Nkwelle Ekaney) were killed among the black population, several villages having been burned and razed over a vast territory. A major weapon used by the Portuguese Air Force to carry out this genocidal massacre was napalm supplied by the American administration of John F. Kennedy.

Two other elements of the historical record are relevant here. First, the UPA/FLNA would continue as a CIA-backed rival to the USSR-backed Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). But far-right Portugal was a founding member of NATO. Therefore, as Roberto himself later explained to a Swedish researcher:

“We were unable to receive aid from Western countries, because of NATO and relations with Portugal. We had no support. What little support we could count on came from African and Arab countries, such as Tunisia. And Israel, which was very important to us. The Israeli government helped us at that time.

Tor Sellström: With weapons?

Holden Roberto: With guns. This was with the help of Golda Meir. »

Second, Frantz Fanon, who had encouraged Roberto to launch the armed struggle, commented on the Angolan events in the chapter entitled "The Greatness and Weaknesses of Spontaneity" of his famous 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth in the following terms:

“We remember that, on March 15, 1961, the Angolan peasants launched themselves in groups of two or three thousand against the Portuguese positions. Men, women and children, armed or unarmed, with their courage, their enthusiasm, rushed in compact masses and in successive waves into regions where the colonist, the soldier and the Portuguese flag dominated. Villages and airfields were surrounded and suffered multiple assaults, but also thousands of Angolans were cut down by colonialist machine gunfire. It didn't take long for the leaders of the Angolan insurgency to realize that they had to find something else if they truly wanted to liberate their country. Also, for several months, Angolan leader Holden Roberto has reorganized the Angolan National Army taking into account the different wars of liberation and using guerrilla techniques. »

Which of the following two historical sequences most closely resembles the October 7 anti-Israeli attacks by Hamas and the subsequent offensive led by the far-right Israeli government: an anti-Jewish massacre committed by the Nazis followed by the destruction of European Jews perpetrated by the same Nazis; or the anti-Portuguese massacre committed by the UPA and the ensuing offensive, led by the far-right Portuguese government with the complicity of the United States?

Were the Angolans led by the UPA on March 15 primarily motivated by anti-white racism or by hatred of Portuguese colonial oppression? Likewise, were the Palestinians led by Hamas on October 7 primarily motivated by anti-Semitism or by hatred of Israeli colonial oppression? The answers to these questions should be obvious to anyone not blinded by anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab or anti-Muslim racism and “narcissistic compassion” with perceived white Israelis.

Gilbert Achcar, Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. He is the author of numerous works including The Arabs and the Shoah. The Arab-Israeli War of Stories (2009); The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising (2013); Morbid symptoms: the relapse of the Arab uprising (2016); The New Cold War. United States, Russia and China, from Kosovo to Ukraine (2023).