The lost plot of October 7

Two years in, let's remember how we got here

TODAY I will be holding a special Substack Live conversation with

Steven A. Cook

, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, columnist at Foreign Policy and the author of The End of AmbitionAmerica’s Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East. If you caught our last chat, you know Steven’s signature blend of clear-headed analysis is exactly what we need on the two-year anniversary of October 7 to discuss President Trump’s plan, and what happens next. I hope you will join us at NOON

Today marks two years since the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust. As Israeli and Hamas negotiators sit in Egypt hammering out details of President Trump’s ceasefire plan, it’s worth remembering: How did we get here?

October 7, 2023, was supposed to be Israel’s never-again moment. Hamas terrorists stormed across the border, murdered 1,200 people in acts of unspeakable savagery, and dragged 251 hostages back to Gaza. Israel went to war with a clear mission: destroy Hamas so completely it could never threaten Israel again.

Two years later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has prosecuted a war across half a dozen countries, killed tens of thousands of civilians, and fundamentally lost sight of what the war was supposed to accomplish. Worse still, the world has lost the plot entirely - responding to the crisis with symbolic gestures untethered from reality while scapegoating Jews everywhere for policies they didn’t choose and don’t control.

Netanyahu’s losing strategy

Let’s be clear about what Israel has achieved militarily. Iran is dramatically weakened. Its nuclear program was set back years. Syria’s Assad regime has fallen. Hezbollah is gutted. Hamas has lost 20,000 fighters and can’t mount anything close to October 7 again.

By every military metric, Israel has reshaped the Middle East battlefield to its advantage. Netanyahu stood at the UN last week boasting he’d “devastated Iran’s atomic weapons” and “crippled” the enemy axis threatening Israel.

Yet these victories mask a catastrophic strategic failure. Netanyahu’s reckless strike on Qatar - a key mediator - isolated Israel from the very Arab partners needed for any sustainable peace. At a recent summit of Arab and Muslim leaders, it wasn’t Iran being discussed as the region’s primary threat. It was Israel.

And what about the original war aim? Hamas is weakened but not destroyed. Its leaders remain in hiding. And 48 hostages - roughly 20 still alive - remain in captivity after 730 days. Their families have watched Netanyahu reject deal after deal, prioritizing his far-right coalition’s survival over bringing their loved ones home.

Sixty-four percent of Israelis now say Netanyahu should resign over his role in the October 7 security failures. Sixty-six percent say it’s time to end the war. The number one reason? The hostages still in Gaza. Israelis are traumatized less by the attack itself than by their prime minister’s apparent indifference to ending their countrymen’s torment.

Even Israel’s own military leaders are warning Netanyahu has lost the plot. IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said the Gaza City offensive lacks a “political endgame” and endangers the remaining hostages. An internal military report concluded the campaign has “failed to meet its core objectives.”

This is the law of diminishing returns in real time. No more good can come from this war. Netanyahu called for Israel to become a “super-Sparta” before the anniversary - a militarized, isolated, besieged state. Even Israeli business leaders recoiled. That’s not security. That’s a national death wish.

The world’s misguided response

But if Netanyahu has lost the plot, the world’s response has been profoundly misguided.

This war started because Israel was viciously attacked. One thousand two hundred people - grandmothers, children, young people at a music festival - were slaughtered in their homes and at a dance party. Women were raped. Families were burned alive. Hostages were dragged through the streets as crowds cheered.

Hamas launched this war. Hamas still holds hostages. Hamas deliberately embeds its fighters among civilians, uses hospitals and schools as command centers, and has diverted portion a portion of humanitarian aid for its own purposes while Gazans starve.

None of this justifies the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza - more than 66,000 Palestinians killed, entire cities reduced to rubble, 2 million people displaced multiple times, famine gripping the territory. The suffering is real and inexcusable. The war has gone on too long and killed too many people.

Palestinians deserve self-determination. They deserve a state. After decades of occupation, broken promises since Oslo, and leadership failures on all sides, the Palestinian people’s legitimate aspirations for sovereignty cannot be dismissed.

But here’s what’s troubling: France, Britain, Canada, Australia, and others responded to this moment - with hostages still in captivity, Hamas still in power, and the ashes of October 7 barely cold - by rushing to recognize Palestinian statehood at the UN.

The French-Saudi “New York Declaration” endorsed by 142 countries has real merit. It calls for recognition, full UN membership, demands Hamas “end its rule and hand over its weapons” to the Palestinian Authority, and lays out a framework for institution-building and reconstruction. It’s a serious plan addressing legitimate Palestinian aspirations.

The timing matters. The shame is that it took a war killing more than 66,000 Palestinians for the world to sign on to such a plan.

Recognition doesn’t end Israel’s campaign in Gaza or its occupation of the West Bank. It doesn’t conjure functioning Palestinian ministries, unify fractured leadership, or make Mahmoud Abbas - ruling by decree since 2006,- into a credible partner for peace.

And the message it sends is problematic: that the path to statehood runs through violence, that Hamas’s massacre somehow accelerated the very recognition Palestinians have sought for decades through negotiation. That’s not rewarding the Palestinian people - it’s inadvertently validating Hamas’s strategy of terror.

Then there’s the surge in global antisemitism. Synagogues firebombed. Jewish students harassed on campuses. “From the river to the sea” chanted at rallies celebrating the October 7 “martyrs.” Within days of the massacre, protesters were literally celebrating at the Sydney Opera House.

Now, on the two-year anniversary, groups are organizing “Week of Rage” protests, honoring October 7 as a “glorious day of crossing,” plastering college campuses with photos of Hamas fighters as “heroes,” and demanding the world recognize two years of supposed “genocide” by Israel.

Here’s a radical idea: You can support Palestinian statehood without celebrating the massacre that started this war. You can oppose Netanyahu’s policies in Gaza without hating Jews. Criticism of Israeli government actions is legitimate political discourse. Blaming Jews everywhere for Netanyahu’s choices - or worse, treating October 7 as justified resistance - is antisemitism, plain and simple. The opposite is also true: the blanket labeling of all criticism as antisemitic may offer a convenient detour around meaningful debate of Israel’s policies but also inadvertently turns a self-fulfilling prophecy into reality, where the backlash against such accusations stokes the flames of antisemitism it purports to extinguish.

I’m a journalist and a Jew, and I’ve never had to confront my identity like this. I feel grief over October 7. I feel horror at the suffering in Gaza. I feel anger that Netanyahu has conflated any criticism of his policies with antisemitism, poisoning legitimate debate. And I feel rage that many of the policies enacted in my name as a Jew are ones I don’t support and can’t control.

Jewish communities worldwide are being scapegoated from both sides - blamed by antisemites for Israeli policies they oppose, and told by Netanyahu that any criticism is betrayal.

The first real hope

But here’s the thing: For all the darkness, there’s suddenly light.

President Trump’s 20-point plan isn’t perfect. It’s vague on details. It demands things Hamas has always rejected. The 72-hour hostage release deadline may be impossible. Disputes over troop withdrawals and disarmament could sink the whole thing.

But both sides are at the table in Egypt right now. Both have endorsed the plan’s basic framework. That’s closer to agreement than we’ve been at any point in two years.

Hamas feels pressure. Gazans are exhausted and blame the group for their misery. Arab backers want the war over. Trump has made clear Israel will have his full backing to resume operations if Hamas walks away.

Netanyahu feels pressure too. He can’t afford a public break with Trump, who’s more popular in Israel than he is. Elections must happen within a year. The hostage families are protesting in Tel Aviv. Even his own generals are pushing back.

This may not lead to peace - the underlying issues remain unresolved, mutual trust is nonexistent, and both sides will likely resume fighting eventually. But sometimes you can’t achieve comprehensive peace. Sometimes a deal that stops people from fighting today is enough – for now.

Two years after the worst day in modern Jewish history, we have a chance - however imperfect - to bring the hostages home and stop the killing.

Netanyahu should take it. The world should support it. And maybe, just maybe, we can all remember why this war started and why it needs to end: because on October 7, 2023, something unspeakable happened, and the only way to honor all of those who died in this war is to make sure their families, and the survivors can finally find peace.

That would be a victory worth claiming.