Morning Update: The long shadow of Oct. 7

Good morning. Today we speak with The Globe’s Mark MacKinnon about his coverage of the anniversary of the Israel-Hamas war and the new reality in the Middle East. We also cast ahead as the puck drops on hockey season. But first:
It has been one year since Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing more than 1,200 civilians and taking 250 hostages – and prompted retaliatory strikes on Gaza that have killed tens of thousands. We caught up with Mark MacKinnon, The Globe’s senior international correspondent, who is currently in Israel reporting on the anniversary and the wider war in the Mideast.
What is the mood in Israel now?
It’s deeply mixed. If you speak to anyone who was in southern Israel during the original attack, they’re fixated on the fate of the remaining hostages. A year later – after all this war and destruction – there remain 101 names on the list of Israelis and foreigners still missing in Gaza. As many as a third to a half of those people are believed to have died in captivity, but there’s still an enormous focus among survivors on bringing those hostages home after what we can only imagine was a horrifying year in captivity.
Among Israelis from the north of the country, there’s a very different mood. After a year of feeling ignored as they were forced to flee their homes by Hezbollah rocket fire, they’re applauding the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon because they feel it moves them a big step closer to being able to return home.
Layered on top of everything is a new anxiety following last week’s Iranian missile attack on Israel. The whole region now feels like it’s sliding into a wider war.
A couple of days ago, you visited Kibbutz Be’eri – a tight-knit community that saw many of its members killed or taken hostage. What was it like?
That was a surreal and sobering experience. I first visited four days after the Hamas attacks. At that point, they were still looking for survivors in the rubble. There were bodies of Hamas fighters, zipped into white bags with the word “terrorist” written on them, still lying in the streets.
Going back, I was struck by how much the kibbutz still looks like the war zone I saw a year ago. Some 200 of the original 1,200 residents have moved back, but life for them is far from normal. Some neighbourhoods have been bulldozed, while others still stand – rows and rows of scorched houses, with things like children’s toys lying in the rubble, and clothes hanging on laundry racks just as they were a year ago.
One thing I’ll always remember was visiting the burned-out house of Vivian Silver, the Winnipeg-born peace activist who was murdered in her home. Very little survived the fire that eventually incinerated her in her safe room – where she was hiding after she had been shot by Hamas fighters – but I found a half-burned bible that was open to a page that I could only partially read.
The page that it was opened to contained the lines “the children of Israel … the inhabitants took all in battle” – lines that almost seemed to refer to what happened in Be’eri, and then one that felt like it foreshadowed what’s happening now: “Even unto the valley of Lebanon.” Eerie.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Gaza since the war started, and the humanitarian situation is getting worse. What are you hearing from your contacts there?
The situation in Gaza is staggeringly bad. The death toll reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health is already shocking – it’s now approaching 41,800 people. Let that number sink in. The United Nations says 1.9 million people – 90 per cent of the population – have been driven from their homes, and almost 500,000 are facing “catastrophic” levels of food insecurity.
Last week I met with Mohammad Aboualrob, communications director for the Palestinian prime minister, and he told me two things. First of all, that death toll is not compiled by Hamas, as many media have been misreporting, but by employees of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, which has always maintained responsibility for the Health and Education departments in Hamas-run Gaza. The other thing he said was that the 41,800 are just those who have been registered as dead at hospitals and morgues. Another 10,000 people are believed to lie under the rubble of destroyed buildings, but no one can get to them while the war continues.
I spoke to one woman last week who had been displaced eight times since the war began. Eight. She paused speaking to me on Thursday and held up her phone so that I could hear the sound of Israeli tank fire outside of where she was in the Nuseirat refugee camp.
Gazans are now very worried that the world is focused on Lebanon and the threat of a wider war, and is no longer pressing Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza.
It’s a worry they actually share with the relatives of the Israeli hostages being held there – that the threat of a wider war means we’re getting further away from a deal.
In the weeks after Oct. 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s popularity was at an all-time low. Has the war changed his political fortunes?
Mr. Netanyahu’s political future looked grim even a month ago. The polls said he was doomed to lose the next election, whenever that was, and he was looking at a future where he would be facing corruption charges at home – that could see him jailed for up to 10 years – and would always have to worry about the request for an arrest warrant by International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan over alleged war crimes.
Today, he’s riding high again after a series of wins. First came his July appearance at the U.S. Congress during which he received a series of standing ovations. Then came the assassination in Tehran of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Then the shocking episode that saw thousands of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies explode in the hands and pockets of their operatives. Then came the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Netanyahu, of course, didn’t carry out those attacks, but he gets the credit for ordering them. Many Israelis are again calling him “King Bibi,” because it once more seems like the man who has ruled here almost continuously since 2009 isn’t going anywhere soon.
You’ve covered conflict in the Middle East for many years. What’s different this time around?
The hate, on all sides. And the feeling this isn’t going to end any time soon.
You now hear things said out loud by Israelis and Palestinians alike that people would only whisper before when I lived here 15 years ago – namely that they don’t think they can live beside each other anymore. That kind of language opens the way to all sorts of awful things.
There’s also a sense that the Biden administration has lost control of the situation and that it’s now Benjamin Netanyahu and Ayatollah Khamenei who are deciding what happens next. Again, that’s not a direction that leads to good things.
The most hopeful person I spoke to, amazingly, was Yonatan Zeigen, the son of Vivian Silver. Yonatan has decided to pick up his mother’s torch as a peace activist and to embrace optimism despite the horrific loss he’s endured.
He told me that he knows people think he’s naïve, but he’s working with Palestinians who have also lost people they love to try and find a way forward, to make peace.
He said he owes it not only to his mom, but to his kids. Her grandkids.
After last spring’s heartbreaking Stanley Cup run, will the Oilers be the first Canadian team to win a cup in more than 30 years? Here’s how things are shaping up for Canada’s teams.
Tuesday: The only televised debate of the B.C. election campaign airs at 6:30 p.m. PT. Here are the key issues to watch for.
Wednesday: The shortlist for the Giller Prize is announced. (Here’s the long list.)
Thursday: Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly and former public safety minister Marco Mendicino appear at the foreign interference inquiry.
Friday: Statistics Canada releases jobs numbers for September.
All week: The Nobel Prize announcements will roll out through the week. Today is medicine; Tuesday is physics; Wednesday is chemistry; Thursday is literature; and Friday is peace.