There Was Nothing Victorious About October 7

Three years later, parts of the Western left still romanticize the Hamas attack as Palestinian “resistance.” The people who experienced that day and the war that followed tell a very different story.

At noon today, a group of students at Queen Mary University of London is due to gather to rally “for Palestine,” marking what they describe as “three years of steadfastness and resistance.”

The date is October 7.

Three years ago today, southern Israel was still under attack.

Bodies lay mangled on roads. Families desperately phoned their loved ones to check if they were okay. Many such calls went unanswered.

At 6:30am local time, Hamas-led militants tore down the border between Gaza and Israel and poured into southern Israel, rampaging through more than 20 towns and villages, military bases, and the Nova music festival, which had been going on overnight.

Civilians were shot with rifles and RPGs. Some were burned alive. Some were brutally sexually assaulted. A Thai agricultural worker was beheaded with a garden hoe. 251 people were kidnapped. Most were Israeli, but 35 of the hostages taken were foreign nationals: 31 Thais, one Filipino, one Nepalese, one Tanzanian, and one Franco-Mexican.

Israelis remember men in Hamas headbands breaking into homes, families trapped inside their safe rooms, some burned alive when their houses were set on fire, and victims left bloodied or burned. They remember hostages being driven into Gaza on pickup trucks and motorcycles. They remember the fear and the smoke.

For Palestinians, the war may have started that day in Israel, but it did not stay there for long.

They remember homes and entire neighborhoods destroyed by bombing, thousands killed, and families displaced again and again. They remember the rubble, the hunger, and the desperation.

Recent polling suggests that many Palestinians have come to view October 7 as a mistake. In a September 2025 survey in the West Bank, 46 percent told surveyors Hamas had been wrong to launch the attack, compared with 26 percent who said the decision was right. A majority—57 percent—also said that kidnapping Israeli civilians had not advanced Palestinian national goals.

And yet, parts of the Western left have become increasingly sympathetic to the attackers themselves, even as Palestinians have been left to grapple with the devastating consequences and many have come to view the attack as a mistake.

At the University of Washington, the student group SUPER-UW has described October 7 as a “victory for the resistance” and referred to Yahya Sinwar—the now-deceased Hamas leader, and one of the principal architects of the attack—as “our martyr leader.” The group later joined a coalition promoting a walkout under the slogan “LONG LIVE OCT 7th.”

At an anti-Israel rally in New York in October 2025, protesters displayed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad flags alongside a sign reading “Glory to the Axis of Resistance” and images of militant leaders including Sinwar. A Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) flyer advertising the event also featured Sinwar’s image.

At Barnard College that same year, activists associated with Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine and Columbia University Apartheid Divest distributed a Hamas document defending the October 7 attack and offered stickers depicting Sinwar and former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. At Wayne State University, an SJP account argued that Hamas should not be considered a terrorist organization.

This goes far beyond demanding Palestinian statehood, condemning Israel, or calling for humanitarian aid. These are explicit attempts to portray Hamas as heroes, and October 7 as a heroic act. Somewhere along the way, some Western activists appear to have started fancying themselves as would-be jihadis, only without any of the personal risk that usually comes with the job.

There was nothing heroic about October 7.

That day did not liberate Gaza. It did not achieve Palestinian statehood, end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, or resolve the conflict. It began with the murder and kidnapping of innocent Israelis and was followed by a war in which Palestinians have suffered enormously.

Three years later, Israeli families are still grieving the people killed that day. Communities attacked on October 7 are still living with what happened to them. Some hostages lost months or years of their lives in captivity that they will never get back, and those who survived have returned home carrying the effects of what was done to them. Some October 7 survivors have struggled so severely with the trauma that they later took their own lives. Families who survived the attack have had to rebuild homes and lives that were destroyed in a matter of hours.

In Gaza, families are grieving their own dead, and many are still waiting for the remains of loved ones to be recovered from beneath the rubble. More than 60 percent of the population has lost their home, and approximately 1.9 million people have been displaced. Entire neighborhoods have been destroyed, hospitals and schools have been damaged or put out of service, and families who survived the bombing have spent months or years living in tents or shelters. For many children, three years that should have been spent in school and growing up like any other child have instead been spent moving from one shelter to another, going without enough food, and mourning parents, siblings, or friends.

So what exactly is being celebrated when someone thousands of miles away says “long live October 7”?

There is a huge difference between living through terrorism and political violence and cheering it on from somewhere safe. October 7 is easier to call a victory when you were not hiding from gunmen, waiting to find out whether someone you loved was dead or alive, or losing your home in the war that followed.

Three years later, Israelis and Palestinians are still living with the consequences. The people celebrating October 7 from campuses abroad never had to bear them.

If the celebration is supposedly an expression of solidarity with Palestinians, the past three years should have put that idea to rest. October 7 brought Palestinians no closer to freedom or statehood. It brought devastation. And none of that changes what happened in Israel that morning: civilians were murdered, kidnapped, raped, and terrorized.

Three years later, there is nothing about October 7, 2023, to celebrate. There never was, and there never will be.

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