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Oct. 7, 2023, marked a grim turning point in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on Israeli border towns. This ignited a fierce military response from Israel. In the wake of the attack, Israel embarked on one of its most devastating offensives against Gaza, a Palestinian territory with a population of more than two million people.

The immediate aftermath of Oct. 7 saw the escalation of violence across both sides, but the toll has been deeply disproportionate, with 41,870 Palestinians killed since the offensive began, most of whom were women and children, a noticeable difference from the deaths of 1,200 civilians and 250 hostages taken on Oct. 7. Reports suggest that Israel’s retaliation is not driven by concern for the lives of its citizens or hostages, but by the optics of power and domination.

Israel’s actions, framed as defensive, align with a broader punitive tradition aimed not at peace, but at reinforcing control and ethnic supremacy. Despite the International Criminal Court (ICC) applications for arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, Yahya Sinwar and other senior Israeli and Hamas figures who have played key roles in the ongoing war, accountability remains elusive for the state of Israel, which continuously drops hundreds of 2,000 pound bombs on Gaza, and now, Lebanon.

The roots of this conflict run deeper than the events of Oct. 7, marked by Hamas’ heinous attack on Israeli civilians that shook the world. However, this conflict didn’t come out of the blue — it was a reaction to Israel’s decades-long systemic oppression, occupation and disenfranchisement of Palestinians that has included regular attacks on homes in the pursuit of land annexation.

Israel’s occupation extends beyond military aggression — it involves the systematic erasure of Palestine. Even the very word “Palestine” is politically charged because it signifies the existence of a nation that Israel has tried to erase for decades. By continuing to annex Palestinian land, restricting Palestinian movement and imposing economic sanctions, Israel enforces a system that resembles apartheid.

And so, I use “Palestine” intentionally, because there is more at stake than just geopolitical rhetoric; it includes the recognition of a people whose existence has been systematically erased from maps, conversations and policies. The events of Oct. 7 are just one chapter in a much longer history of dispossession and occupation.

Amid the violence, Netanyahu’s response has drawn significant attention, not for his initial promises to provide humanitarian aid, but for his strategic indifference. Despite calls from families of Israeli hostages to negotiate for the release of the captives taken by Hamas, Netanyahu has shown little interest unless it aligns with him politically.

Reports suggest the Israeli government’s priority doesn’t lie within the best interests of its citizens currently being held hostage, but rather in the optics of power and retribution. Bezalel Smotrich, a finance minister in the Israeli government, compared a ceasefire to “raising a white flag, and a victory for Hamas,” thus reinforcing the dehumanizing narrative that the entire Palestinian population are terrorists. This political calculus is emblematic of a broader trend: the prioritization of Israeli political dominance over genuine peace efforts.

In International Criminal Court diplomatic conversations, Netanyahu spoke openly about the potential for conflict with Hezbollah, an influential group established in 1982 as retaliation to Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Israel has since conducted its most intense aerial bombardments on Lebanon in two decades, killing over 2,036 people and displacing over one million.

As lethal Israeli violence kills civilians in Gaza, the neutral language used in Western media plays a critical role in the unparalleled power dynamics obscuring and downplaying how the genocide is perceived by the masses. Palestinians and Arabs are often described as “militants” or “terrorists,” while the Israeli government’s military actions are framed as necessary defensive measures. The manipulation of language within the media objectifies violence, as if it happens by itself, and serves to justify the murders of Palestinians.

Although Palestinian children are statistically the most vastly affected by the genocide, their mental health and trauma are often overlooked in the broader media landscape. According to a study conducted by Save the Children, four out of five children in Gaza suffer from depression, and Al Jazeera reports that more than half experience suicidal thoughts. Yet these statistics rarely make headlines in the West. Rather, the media focuses on Hamas, which distracts from the everyday suffering of civilians, especially children, in Gaza.

Soon after Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in 1967, Israeli authorities took full control over water resources and infrastructure in these areas. For more than 50 years, Israel has restricted Palestinian access to water, even rainwater, providing far below their basic needs and denying a fair share of shared essential resources. The Gaza blockade has cut off essential resources like food, fuel and medicine, turning the region into the largest open-air prison in the world. The recent escalation of Israeli strikes have only worsened humanitarian conditions, pushing Palestinians further into despair.

While the conflict in Israel and Palestine dominates global headlines, the international community is finally starting to wake up to the systemic issues at its core. French president Emmanuel Macron condemned the killings of women and children in Palestine. Leaders from Spain, Norway and Slovenia have recognized Palestinian statehood, joining South Africa’s International Court of Justice’s case against Israel.

As awareness finally increases, the urgency for meaningful action becomes increasingly clear. The world cannot afford to turn a blind eye to the suffering and injustice that have persisted for decades, especially as the cries for help from Palestinian and Lebanese children echo louder each day through the statistics of the lives they didn’t get to live.

As we reflect on the events of Oct. 7, it’s clear that this conflict is not just about Hamas and Israel. It is about a broader system of control, colonization and erasure. A year later, the violence continues, and the international community remains complicit in its silence.

The only thing that separates us and our families from Palestinian families is circumstance. We must dissect the reasoning of our indifference to the deaths of brown and Indigenous lives in a critical lens to understand our privilege and use it in a proactive manner.

Valeria Martinez Gutierrez is a junior majoring in Geography, Sociology and Environment, Sustainability and Policy. Her column appears bi-weekly. She can be reached at vmarti10@syr.edu.

Published on October 7, 2024 at 11:33 pm