| Summary/Abstract |
October 7, 2023 was a special day in Israel, Simchat Torah, which concludes the
Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Early morning saw a barrage of thousands of projectiles
being sent from Gaza all over Israeli territory, including Jerusalem. With this barrage of
rockets, around 3,000 militants breached the Gaza–Israel barrier and attacked Israeli
military bases and civilian population centres. Many of the Hamas terrorists crossed
the border by land, air and sea with bulldozers breaching fences ingressing to a depth
of up to 24km. In the catastrophic Hamas assault, its terrorists slaughtered ruthlessly
over 1200 including women and children, and kidnapped nearly 250. “Israel is at war,”
declared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Indeed, the dastardly physicality of the
attack and its shock-effect caused deep and lasting scars on Israel’s national psyche and
on the global geopolitics
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