Israel reels as Hamas launches a spectacular and bloody offensive

ISRAELIS WOKE on October 7th, Simchat Torah, the Jewish festival which celebrates the end of the yearly cycle of reading the Torah, to a hail of more than 2,000 rockets from the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians’ tiny coastal enclave. But soon reports began filtering through of a much more devastating attack. Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist organisation which runs Gaza, had launched a series of attacks within Israel. The fortified border fence between Israel and Gaza was breached by trucks and bulldozers laden with explosives while fighters in motorised gliders flew over the fence. Hamas fighters also used boats to attack an Israeli coastal base.The footage of the attacks, shared by both Hamas and Israeli citizens on social media, was shocking for Israelis hunkered down in their bomb-shelters who are used to their military dominance. Videos showed Palestinian fighters in jeeps and on motorcycles firing on civilians on the streets of small Israeli towns and kibbutzim near Gaza. Shooting was reported within the Israeli military’s main divisional headquarters for Gaza. Palestinian militants killed and wounded dozens at a music festival. As civilians, off-duty soldiers and police officers battled on their own, special-forces units were being rushed south. In the evening of October 7th, Israel’s emergency rescue service said that at least 200 had been killed.