TWO years have passed since the Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th, 2023, and the facts today have become far clearer: What happened and continues to happen in Gaza is not merely a ‘brutal reaction’, but an explicit exposure of the deeply rooted intellectual and political structure of the Zionist settler-colonial project.
It is a project that does not recognise the existence of the Palestinian people at all, and strives to erase and exterminate them through a series of ongoing massacres that extend from the 1948 Nakba, and the massacres of Deir Yassin, Kafr Qasim, and Sabra and Shatila, to the Great March of Return in 2018, and finally to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
After 24 months, with the number of martyrs and wounded exceeding 235,000, tens of thousands of them children, the Israeli occupation continues to spill Palestinian blood and annihilate Gaza completely, leaving no hospital, school, mosque, or church untouched, under false pretences that have gradually been exposed to the world.
It has become evident that the narrative claiming the ‘resistance’ is the reason or the target is nothing but a cover to justify genocide and an even broader project of erasure and displacement.
A historic moment of exposure
Israel is not targeting Palestinians alone; with its allies, both overt and covert, chief among them the United States, it strikes wherever it wishes without restraint, pursuing an expansionist project that redraws the region’s borders by force and destabilises its security. It has become a threat not only to Palestinians but to international sovereignty as a whole, as Netanyahu openly declares his pursuit of a ‘Greater Israel’.
In contrast, October 7th brought Palestine back to the centre of global politics, shattering the myth of Israeli superiority, exposing the fragility of its security and propaganda systems, long built on deception, manipulation, and lies, and revealing the hypocrisy of Western double standards whose masks have fallen before Israel.
It reaffirmed resistance as an indispensable actor, restored unity to Arab and Islamic consciousness, shattered the illusion of normalisation, and made Palestine once again the central cause of the Ummah’s collective conscience.
Scenes of courage and heroism by the resistance, and the legendary steadfastness of the Palestinian people under fire and siege, inspired free people around the world, rekindling courage and faith even as Israel’s Nazism and brutality became exposed before global public opinion.
On the level of narrative, this day rebuilt the Palestinian story more clearly, reaffirming that the essence of the Zionist project is based on displacement and extermination not on ‘the right to exist’ or ‘security’, as false claims suggest.
It shifted the Palestinian cause from a defensive position to one of initiative, imposing its rhythm on global political and media discourse.
It also opened new horizons for international legitimacy, as calls intensified to prosecute Israel and its leaders for war crimes and genocide, and to recognise the State of Palestine, laying a political foundation for future action.
Why October 7? Did the resistance expect Israel’s response?
October 7 came after 17 years of a suffocating siege that turned Gaza into a vast prison, where Palestinians were being strangled economically, politically, and humanly while the world remained complicit in silence.
The Al-Aqsa Flood was an explosion in the face of oppression, arrogance, and blockade; a cry of existence to the world that the Palestinian people still have the will to act despite all attempts to suffocate and humiliate them. It was not a random or reckless act, but a natural event within a long history of colonial oppression dating back to the Nakba.
Naturally, the resistance expected a widescale war and a fierce reaction, but what unfolded later exceeded every limit of logic, politics, and warfare. It was not simply a ‘reaction’, but a full-scale genocidal project, beyond human comprehension. No one could have imagined that this war would become a moment of total exposure of the genocidal mindset upon which the Zionist project rests.
No one foresaw Gaza turning into a testing ground for the worst crimes of extermination since World War II. Psychologically, no sane human mind could imagine that an entity claiming to be a ‘state’ would descend so deeply into a machine of limitless killing and annihilation.
Strategic deception: Who deceived whom?
October 7th turned the ‘Israeli security doctrine’ upside down. Israel was deceived in its absolute belief in its ability to monitor and control everything when the resistance proved that ‘iron walls’, ‘cement barriers’, and the ‘myth of technology’ are worthless before the will of a people determined to be free. Walls, fences, and surveillance systems cannot create true security against the will of a nation resolved to resist.
But Israel also deceived the world by claiming that what it was doing was merely a ‘reaction’, while in fact, it was executing an old plan in a new form to empty Palestine, especially Gaza, of its population and turn it into a land without people, a blatant repetition of the core logic of the Zionist project since its inception.
The Flood can also be seen as a pre-emptive strike by the resistance, a clear message that the Palestinian people will not be quietly erased or exterminated in silence. The operation revealed that it was the occupation that had long intended genocide from the start, making October 7th an ‘exposing moment’, not a ‘founding one’, of that genocidal mindset.
The resistance deceived Israel in its most sensitive arena, exposing its security paralysis. Israel deceived the world with its manipulative narrative to justify a pre-planned extermination project. But the end result is that the mask fell, and strategic deception gave way to the full exposure of the Zionist project before the entire world.
October 7th exposed the genocidal mindset of Zionism
Denial of Palestinian humanity:
Official statements from Israeli leaders went far beyond wartime rhetoric to explicit denials of the humanity of an entire people, legitimising their killing and denying their basic human rights. Statements like: ‘We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly’ (Yoav Gallant, former war minister), reflect a consistent mentality across official and unofficial discourse within the Israeli entity.
Open calls for extermination and burning:
Repeated calls were made to erase or burn Gaza and turn its residents into legitimate targets. Phrases like: ‘The only solution is to burn all of Gaza with its people at once,’ and: ‘Our goal is to wipe Gaza off the face of the earth’ (Nissim Vaturi, Israeli MP), along with Bezalel Smotrich’s declaration that: ‘There is no such thing as the Palestinian people,’ and: ‘We will leave Gaza in ruins; the army will not leave one stone upon another.’
Zionist sadism deriving pleasure from Palestinian suffering:
Statements such as: ‘We must find ways more painful than death … killing is not enough’ (Amichai Eliyahu, Minister of Heritage), show the sadistic, racist language emanating from figures within or close to the government, justifying collective punishment and blatant violations of international law.
Deliberate targeting of children:
Incitement and extermination rhetoric even extended to children: ‘Every child in Gaza is an enemy … we must occupy Gaza so that no child remains,’ attributed to Israeli MP Moshe Feiglin.
Admission of using starvation as a weapon of war:
Itamar Ben Gvir said: ‘We will not allow a single gramme of aid to enter … Gaza must be levelled to the ground; there are no innocents.’ Likewise, Bezalel Smotrich stated that ‘letting Gaza’s residents die of hunger can be justified and moral’.