October 7, 2023, was not the beginning of the war in Gaza

Our understanding of a historical event’s meaning is a function of two factors.

The first is what we choose to identify as the starting point leading up to the event. The second is the lens through which we view it. This should be obvious, but unfortunately, it is not, and the failure to acknowledge or understand it has consequences in everything from public policy to personal relationships.

This truth can be ignored due to thoughtlessness, blindness to one’s biases, or just plain ignorance. On some occasions, there can be malign intent, including efforts to deliberately hide what one knows to be an event’s antecedents for political or personal reasons.

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Before examining the issue that prompted this column, I want to share an example. The comedian Dick Gregory once noted that despite what Americans were taught in school, “Christopher Columbus didn’t discover America, because it wasn’t lost”. His point seems simple enough, but upon closer examination, it reveals deeper truths.

“Columbus discovered America” erases the history, civilisation and contributions of the indigenous groups who populated the lands that Europeans came to call the New World. Even the term “New World” was a thinly veiled masking of their imperial self-understanding and intent. “We discovered these lands, and they are ours to take, name, and exploit.”

The American history we were taught was an extension of European history. It began with Columbus. Then moved to the Spanish, British and French colonialists, culminating in the Revolutionary War and the birth of the US. The native peoples were treated as bit players in the unfolding story – at times, a footnote, at others, an inconvenient obstacle.

This story of American history results from choosing Columbus as the starting point and using a lens so Euro-centric that it only sees the indigenous peoples who populated this land as less than human and therefore less deserving of defining their own history or even remaining on their land. They were removed and/or massacred, their humanity was ignored, and their treatment was justified because they were of less worth than the Europeans who displaced them.

This reflection was prompted by the way Israel’s war on Gaza continues to be reported in large sections of western media and discussed in western policy circles. US reporters appear to be required to include a line in their stories that reads: “The hostilities began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking 250 hostages.” It isn’t accidental that this line (or something very close to it) occurs in almost every US print story.

We all must agree that what happened on October 7 was traumatic for Israelis and Jews around the world. It was a shock that their security was breached, and that some horrible and condemnable atrocities were committed by Hamas and others who joined in their attacks. But history didn’t begin or end on October 7.

Recall that just a few weeks before the Hamas-led attacks, then-US president Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, noted that the Middle East was the calmest it had been in years. This statement gave short shrift to the Palestinian reality and made clear the biased lens through which he saw the region.

He was ignoring Israel’s continued economic strangulation of Gaza (which made Palestinians increasingly dependent on Israel or Hamas for their livelihood) and the growing threat of settler violence, settlement expansion and land confiscations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

A few weeks after October 7, I met Mr Sullivan and listened to him describe the pain and fear of Israelis and how October 7 evoked the traumas of their history. I told him that I completely understood and agreed that Hamas stood rightly condemned for what they had done. I cautioned him, however, not to ignore the trauma of the Palestinians – their pain and fears – and their history of dispossession. He became angry and waved off my comments as “whataboutism”.

As the weeks and months wore on, whenever I would write about the growing Palestinian civilian casualty toll, or the bombing of hospitals, or the denial of water, food, medicine and electricity, or the deliberate destruction of more than 70 per cent of Gaza’s buildings, and the repeated forced expulsions of families, the responses I would receive invariably included “Hamas started it”, “what about the hostages”, or worse.

In other words, Israeli lives were all that mattered. And the Israeli narrative became the only acceptable one. In other words, since the story began on October 7, what followed was a justifiable response.

The Israelis’ ability to control the narrative has long characterised the conflict. They would say: “The Balfour Declaration gave Israel a legal right to Palestine”; or “In 1948, tiny Israel was attacked by all surrounding Arab armies”; or “In 1967, Israel was only defending itself”.

All of these Israeli-defined “starting points” are fictions that ignore everything that led up to them and the stories they tell are seen only through the biased lens of those who have imposed them.

This problem of false narratives based on biased histories isn’t just a problem for Israel or the US. It is, unfortunately, all too common, especially in conflict situations. When those who seek to help resolve a conflict are captive to one side’s definitions and perspective, it is a recipe for continued tension and ultimately disaster.

Peacemaking requires that an effort be made to rise above false narratives, self-serving starting points and the biased perceptions of one or another side. That’s not “whataboutism” – it’s leadership. And it’s been sorely lacking in the US.