2023-10-08 05:00:00
This Saturday morning was to be a day of joy in Israel, at the end of the Jewish holidays of Sukkot (the Feast of Booths), the culmination of which is the celebration of Simchat Torah. But the episodes of jubilation did not take place. At 6:30 a.m., Israelis were awakened to the sound of sirens ringing across the country. They rushed to shelters, facing the deluge of rockets (2,200 at midday) fired by the Palestinian armed movement Hamas from Gaza. An unprecedented surprise attack, perpetrated from the air, land and sea on a symbolic date: almost fifty years to the day after the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War aimed at destroying the Jewish state, on Saturday October 6, 1973.
While some early risers in Tel Aviv risked posting humorous messages on social networks expressing their disappointment at the more than certain cancellation of a concert by American pop star Bruno Mars that very evening, a feeling of astonishment, sadness and dismay quickly spread across the Web and throughout the country.
Far from constituting a new routine episode in the endless standoff between Israel and Hamas, the start of this “Sukkot war” placed the Israeli population, although accustomed to these outbreaks of violence, in a state of shock and dismay. confusion, as the flood of news from the south of the country surged.
Israeli television images showing a bulldozer crossing the border fence between the Gaza Strip and the Jewish state; those of Hamas men landing by paraglider; those reporting, live, the infiltration of dozens of masked terrorists armed to the teeth in an agricultural area or driving by jeep in the empty streets of the main border town, Sderot; the story of participants at a rave party the previous night having to flee into the wilderness to escape the terrorists who, housed in a van, “started shooting [eux] in all directions with RPG missiles » ; the calls for help from families on the Gaza border kibbutzim, barricaded in their homes and begging on WhatsApp for help (the cellular network having malfunctioned); rumors that 35 Israelis had been kidnapped and taken to Gaza, including a soldier whom Hamas filmed bleeding.
Operation “Iron Sword”
So many scenes of unbearable chaos which invaded the airwaves and the screens before the services of Magen David Adom (the Israeli Red Cross) made an initial assessment official at midday: 22 Israelis murdered, including a woman killed by a rocket in the center of the country and more than 500 injured, including 70 in serious condition. The count has increased since then.
The large-scale recall of Israeli reservists only added to the consternation in the face of this infernal chain of events, with the Jewish State announcing Operation “Iron Sword” in response while Israelis rushed en masse to hospitals to donate blood, held their breath waiting for news from their loved ones – and announcements of the neutralization of terrorists. Military experts took to the TV sets to comment on the astonishing vulnerability of the southern border, the incredible failure of the intelligence services and the regional implications, in the short and medium term, of the “Al-Flood” attack. Aqsa.” And many voices were raised to express, beyond their astonishment, a mixture of anger and frustration.
One thing is certain: united in the ordeal, the Israelis will at the very least demand accountability. The weekly demonstrations which have mobilized (and divided) for seven months, every Saturday evening, part of the population in an attempt to derail the judicial reform supported by the government of Benyamin Netanyahu and his radical right allies were immediately canceled. The “striking” reservist soldiers who participate in these rallies responded to the IDF’s call without an ounce of hesitation. But the trauma of the Yom Kippur War remains severe and the brutality of this Sukkot awakening also risks being lasting.
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