By RORY MOORE
Tiger Media Network
On the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, an informative talk about the current Middle Eastern conflict was led by Mayan Paz and political science assistant professor Jay Steinmetz on Monday.
Paz, a political science major from Israel, began his lecture by emphasizing how the attack was targeted mainly at Jews and has expanded the conflict regionally.
“It was the largest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust,” he said. “It backfired to a state of war between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel and Iran, and Israel and Yemen. So, it’s not only a shocking day for Israelis, but also something that shapes and will continue to shape the future of Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iranians.”
An informative talk about the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is hosted inside the Stouffer Lounge. 
Maayan Paz, a political science major from Israel, spoke about the events that led to the Oct. 7 attack and the aftermath. 
Prof. Jay Steinmetz gives a history lesson on the tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. 
Steinmetz gives an update on the growing conflict in the Middle East. 
Hamas, as Steinmetz explained to students, has been in power of Palestine since 2006 and maintains is responsible for numerous terror attacks directed at civilians. 
Paz gives a chronological and analytical summary of how Hamas carried out the attack. 
Paz points out the initiatives civilians took to help families impacted by the attack and how ceasefire negotiations have failed.
Steinmetz continued Paz’s point of how discriminatory the attack was on a historic level.
“It really was a wakeup call to Jews all over the world,” Steinmetz said. “The rising antisemitism, the fear of it, and the increase of it throughout the globe. There’s a tremendous amount of death, destruction, and violence that this war has brought about. We don’t know how many people died in Gaza, but it’s a significant number, and this war has no sign of letting up anytime soon.”
He went on to explain the history of Zionism and how it ties to the current tensions.
“Zionism is the notion that Jews experiencing antisemitism around the world for hundreds of years need a homeland of their own,” Steinmetz said. “To return to their homeland was a response and reaction to centuries of antisemitism that especially European Jews had experienced for many years. Zionism became a political idea to solve the global and intractable problem of antisemitism that existed and by the early 20th century, Zionist settlers are moving into the land, and political conflicts emerge almost immediately, and those became heightened and elevated as we got closer to 1948.”
Steinmetz noted how 1948 was an important year for both nations and how it pertains to the debate over a two-state solution.
“It is the year of Israeli independence,” he said. “It is also the year of the Nakba, the Arabic word for the tragedy of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their traditional homelands in what is now Israel proper. It set the seeds for the Palestinian struggle, which has different components to it. One of its elements is a sense of independence for the Palestinian people, and that is a nation-state. Another element is to return to their ancestral homelands, back to the place in Israel proper, but if Palestinians are to return there, what happens to Jews? Can Israelis and Palestinians live side-by-side? That’s a difficult political question.”
While the conflict has occurred for decades, last year’s surprise attack was the largest and deadliest in Israel, which saw over 1,200 Israeli civilians murdered and 251 people taken hostage. Many of the hostages have been rescued or found dead.
“In 2022, There was an extremely right ring government elected in Israel,” Paz said. “They stated they wanted to change the judicial system to weaken it to make only their branch of government the strongest. That provoked the largest demonstrations that were even seen in the country. Thousands of people protested and succeeded in preventing the changing of laws, but what happened was a huge divide in Israeli society, government, and a lot of military people.
“Some people associated with the left withdrew their service to protest the government, and that caused Hamas to see Israel as weak. So, it was a major flaw in military preparation that caused the attack, and lower ranked soldiers alarmed their superiors for a long time before it happened, and the high ranks shut them down.”
Paz played audio of his friend who gave a testimony of the attack and is currently a special operator in a special unit of the Israel Defense Forces.
“On October 7, it was Saturday morning,” he said in the audio. “I was on vacation at my home. I got a phone call from my staff sergeant, who tells me that I need to come back to my unit urgently because there was some attack on civilians. At the moment, we’ve got no intelligence. Nobody really understands what’s happening.”
Paz’s friend, Sergeant Major O, shared what he experienced firsthand.
“I was a witness to one of the most horrific and terrible things a man can see,” he said. “I saw dozens of Israeli civilians murdered, women, children, elderly. The Hamas terrorists did not care who you were. They murdered Arab civilians of Israel. They murdered Thai people who work in Israel. And, of course, they murdered every Jew they could put their hands on. I saw a whole family [murdered] in their car.”
He also experienced direct combat during the conflict with Hamas terrorists.
“I saw bodies had been tortured,” he recounted. “I fought a terrorist face-to-face. I was lucky enough to be the one who won that fight. They did not care about civilians, nor did they care about the children. They would do everything they could to kill Israeli civilians, kill Israeli soldiers without any hesitation or thinking about what it could do to their own civilians.”
The soldier concluded his testimony by stressing that the war was not against a nation, but against those who carried out the attack.
“It’s important for me to say it’s not a way of Israelis and Palestinians. It’s not a conflict between Jews and Arabs. It’s a conflict between the IDF and Israel against Hamas, one of the most brutal, merciless, bad, and evil organizations that ever existed.”
While a ceasefire has been encouraged by the United States and other nations in the U.N. and NATO, neither side has shown any desire to stop all fighting.
“In November 2023, there was a temporary ceasefire in exchange for 10 hostages per day,” Paz said. “…50 people came back in this five-day ceasefire. Then the Israeli government didn’t speak. They broke the ceasefire. After that happened, after we had so much hope with the ceasefire deal, when we tried to heal from this blow, this happened. All the Israeli government cares about is the war and the continuation of the war.”