October 7: From Siege to Genocide

I write this on October 6, 2025, and I can only think: what if the clock were to turn back two years, to October 6, 2023? A day before the world’s axis shifted once again. A day when more than 100,000 Palestinians—now martyrs—were still alive. It is tempting to imagine that day as some kind of lost paradise, a fragile peace we should long to return to. But that would be a false memory. On October 6, 2023, Palestinians were alive, yes, but they were not free.

The Gaza Strip, in particular, has long been misremembered. When people speak of Gaza before October 7, they imagine normalcy, as if its people were living ordinary lives. But even then, Gaza was a place of profound suffering. Its people were trapped in a suffocating blockade, deprived of the right to move, to build, to dream. Electricity flickered on and off by the whim of an occupying power; clean water was scarce; medical care was always on the brink of collapse. And yet, when you ask Gazans themselves, they will tell you that Gaza is the most beautiful place in the world. Not because of its comforts, but because it is home. Gaza was also alive, a city of bustling markets, crowded classrooms, beachside cafes, and streets filled with the rhythm of ordinary life. Children played soccer in alleys, weddings filled banquet halls with music, families gathered late at night, fighting over who cheated in the last round of cards. But still, there was love, there was stubborn joy, and there was pride in belonging to the soil of Palestine, and especially Gaza.

But to speak only of what came before October 7, 2023, is to ignore the abyss that opened after it. In the two years since, the world has witnessed a genocide unfold in real time. Entire neighborhoods flattened, refugee camps bombed, hospitals turned into mass graves, families erased from the civil registry, whole lineages cut short. More than 100,000 martyrs, most of them children and women, and countless more living under wounds both visible and invisible. The cruelty has been unrelenting: starvation used as a weapon, aid convoys blocked, disease spreading in overcrowded shelters. The genocide in Gaza has not been a single moment of horror, but an ongoing catastrophe, one that stretches across these two years like an open wound.

And yet, amid this destruction, Palestinians have shown the world what sumud truly means. In tents pitched beside rubble, in classrooms held under the sky, in voices that refuse to be silenced, life has persisted. Gaza, even under genocide, insists on being Gaza. That is its defiance, its stubbornness, its love of life itself.

This resilience has not gone unnoticed. Across the world, movements of solidarity have surged. From mass marches in capitals and small towns alike, to the recent Sumud Flotilla that set sail toward Gaza’s besieged shores carrying aid and defiance, people have declared that Palestinian freedom is not a solitary struggle. These acts of solidarity reject the false nostalgia for October 6, 2023. They do not long for a return to a prison with taller walls and fewer bodies inside. They demand something greater: justice, dignity, and liberation.

So when we remember October 7, 2023, two years later, we cannot remember it only as a rupture from a supposed peace. We must remember it as a turning point that exposed to the world the cost of decades of siege, occupation, and exile. Palestinians were not free on October 6, 2023. They are still not free on October 6, 2025. And yet, the demand for freedom, for a future beyond genocide and beyond occupation, has never been louder.