How October 7 changed everything

Israelis visit the Nova music festival memorial site to mark the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023 attacks. | Saeed Qaq/Anadolu via Getty Images This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day.

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Jewish communities in Israel and around the world are currently marking the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks that killed 1,200 people and triggered the war in Gaza.

Memorials for the victims of the attacks have been held at homes , on highways , and at the site of the Nova music festival.

In Tel Aviv, a massive art installation at the Trumpeldor beach commemorated both the victims and the 251 hostages taken by Hamas three years ago.

Of those hostages, 166 have since returned alive, and the remains of the last deceased captive were released to Israel in January.

But there’s no undoing the national trauma of the October 7 attacks — the deadliest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust — or the brutal retaliatory campaign that Israel launched afterward.

Those events profoundly changed Israel, Gaza, the broader Middle East, and the United States, and they continue to shape global and domestic politics.

So today, we’re taking a look at the very long shadow of the October 7 attacks and Israel’s response to them.

Go a little deeper View Link Writing about the first anniversary of October 7 two years ago, Vox’s Zack Beauchamp warned that the “horrors” first triggered by the attacks would continue to unfold in tragic and unforeseeable ways .

“Events that might seem contained to the Middle East have come to hurt people around the world,” he wrote, “in ways that we may not yet fully understand or even be capable of predicting.” That hurt has undeniably been most acute in the Gaza Strip, where three years of war have reduced entire cities to rubble.

Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians — most of them civilians — since October 2023.

Most of Gaza’s 2 million residents have also been displaced from their homes, crowded into makeshift shelters and refugee camps riddled with hunger and disease.

But the consequences of October 7 extended beyond Gaza.