October 7: Two lives torn apart by the Hamas attack – and Israel’s response

Published

1 month ago

October 7, 2025

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For a long time, Rita Lifshitz would come back to Kibbutz Nir Oz every week, sit outside the house of her father-in-law, Oded, and have a drink.

To raise a glass to the people who had gone. To remember October 7.

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“We used to drink a beer every weekend,” she tells me, her eyes trained on the small little table on the patio where they would sit and talk.

“So for 500 days I came to have a beer outside the table. Here I put the beer for grandpa and I put the beer for me. He was my psychologist for 500 days.

“He was only a few kilometres from me and I just imagine him coming in with a big smile.”

Around her, the charred remains of violence, death, and devastation. The burnt-out wreckage of happy lives that came to a horrific end.

I spent two hours walking around this kibbutz with Rita. She showed me the places where friends had been murdered, where loved ones had been taken hostage, and where her best friend had been shot and then dragged away, his blood still smeared over the floor of his home.

“It is a trauma,” she says. “And all of us, the whole kibbutz, wakes up every morning to the 7th of October.”

On the morning of 7 October 2023, this small kibbutz, which sits within sight of the border with Gaza, was overrun by Hamas fighters.

In total, 117 people, more than a quarter of those who were there that morning, were either killed or kidnapped. No other kibbutz suffered such a high proportion of casualties.

Among them, Oded Lifshitz and his wife, Yocheved. Both were in their 80s, and both had volunteered for charities promoting peaceful relations with Gazans. Both were taken hostage on October 7.

Oded used to drive sick children from Gaza and take them to Israeli hospitals for treatment. Now we stand in the charred remains of their home.

Yocheved was eventually released after 16 days as a hostage, but Oded died in captivity. His body was not returned until earlier this year, but he had probably died a year earlier.

And now we stand in the charred remains of their house.

To Rita, this place is both a touchstone to a happier time and also a stark warning of inhumanity. A panel of metal is all that is left of the piano that Oded loved to play.

The couple’s crockery is still scattered in a corner, thrown there when their furniture was upended.

“They started firing rockets at us at 6.30 in the morning, but we didn’t worry because they have been firing rockets at us for 20 years,” says Rita.

“There was one day we had 800 rockets land round here, so we are not scared of rockets. We didn’t get any information about what was happening, no warning.

“The first we knew was when two people working in the fields saw Hamas, and they were the first ones to be killed.”

It is believed that around 540 fighters attacked the kibbutz – far more than Nir Oz’s entire population. It was a massacre. Only six houses escaped attack.

The nursery school workshops, gardens – all of them shot, burnt, destroyed.

We move to the far end of the home, picking our way through the debris that still litters the floor.

There is a steel door, the entrance to the bomb shelter where Oded and Yocheved often slept and where they tried to hide.

Their beds are still here, blackened and burnt. In the door are bullet holes – Oded had done his best to hold the door shut, but he was shot in the hand and the attackers stormed in.

‘The death road’

The last time Yocheved saw her husband was him lying on the floor, bleeding. As she was taken away, rolled into a carpet, she didn’t know if he was dead or alive.

To walk around this kibbutz is to witness the scars of trauma again and again. A black flag outside a house means someone died there.

A yellow flag designates that an occupant was taken hostage. There is a road that Rita calls “the death road,” where almost every house has at least one flag outside.

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We go into the home of one friend, who was murdered in the living room. Her clothes are still there, her handbag hangs on the bedroom door. It feels so intrusive to be here, but Rita insists the world needs to see.

We see Natan, a long-term resident who is now 88 years old. His home was one of only six to escape being ransacked, because the Hamas attackers couldn’t work out how to get through the front door.

He says he came back as soon as he could, despite the destruction around him, insistent he is not fearful.

“This is my home,” he says emphatically.

Rita takes me to the home of her best friend, Itzhak Elgarat. Unlike most of the homes, his was not set ablaze, so it still looks now as it did then.

A bottle of olive oil is on the side, cooking ingredients laid out, a couple of bottles of wine set on the table.

But also bullet holes strewn across the walls, in the furniture. Possessions thrown around and, horrendously, Itzhak’s blood still smeared across the walls, the floor, and the door where he was shot.

The other side

I climb a set of stairs, which used to belong to a house that has now been demolished.

You can see Gaza in the near distance, across a few fields.

And over there, not so long ago, Sabah might have been looking back.

Just as Rita’s life has been torn apart by the war, so has Sabah’s. For Rita, it is the mental torment of what happened on October 7, the struggle to process and to move on.

For Sabah, it is something more fundamental. A Gazan displaced from Khan Younis, she once lived in a grand home near the border, only a couple of miles from Kibbutz Nir Oz, as the crow flies.

It was a home for multiple generations, the pride of her life, “a place meant to give us stability and peace”.

Since then, she has been displaced 13 times, and she worries that her home has been reduced to rubble.

“Personally, I long to go back to even the ruins of my house, to sit among the rubble, simply to be there,” she says.

“Even that would be better than this life. At least then I might find a little peace.”

The last time she saw her home, it had been hit by an explosion. Some of it was destroyed, but other parts were habitable.

But since then, Sabah has been told that it has been damaged by both fire and military action – news that devastated her.

She says: “Someone told me ‘your house was the very first thing they burned. The fire raged inside for three days. And after they burned it, they brought in an armoured vehicle and blew it up’.

“Just imagine losing your home. When they told me what happened to mine, I spent nearly ten days doing nothing but crying.

“It feels like your soul is torn away. Your spirit leaves you.”

She insists that this story is not just about October 7, not just about Hamas, but about decades of struggle that led to this point, about Palestinian anger and accusations that they are oppressed by Israel.

“This goes back generations. What happened on October 7 was not the beginning of the story. I remember my father, my grandfather, and their fathers before them telling what they had endured. We have lived our entire lives under this weight.

“This land is ours, our homeland. We did not buy it. It has been passed down from our ancestors, generation to generation. That is why it is not easy for me, or for any of us, to surrender it.

“The truth is that we are exhausted. We are an oppressed people. October 7 was just one day, but for us, it has felt like living through hundreds of October 7th’s, over and over again.”

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At least 12 killed after suicide bombing in Pakistan

Published

10 hours ago

November 11, 2025

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At least 12 killed after suicide bombing in Pakistan

At least 12 people have been killed in a suicide bombing outside the gates of a court in Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad, the country’s interior minister has said.

At least 27 other people were also wounded after the bomber detonated his explosives next to a police car.

Interior minister Mohsin Naqvi said the attacker tried to “enter the court premises but, failing to do so, targeted a police vehicle”.

Mr Naqvi added that authorities are “looking into all aspects” of the attack.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion, but authorities have recently struggled with a resurgent Pakistani Taliban.

The explosion, which was heard from miles away, occurred at a busy time of day when the area outside the court is typically crowded with hundreds of visitors attending hearings.

More than a dozen badly wounded people were screaming for help as ambulances rushed to the scene.

“People started running in all directions,” said Mohammad Afzal, who claimed he was at the court when he heard the blast.

Pakistani security forces earlier said they foiled an attempt by militants to take cadets hostage at an army-run college overnight, when a suicide car bomber and five other attackers targeted the facility in a northwestern province.

The authorities blamed the Pakistani Taliban, which is separate from but allied with Afghanistan’s Taliban, but the group denied involvement in that attack on Monday evening.

The assault began when a bomber attempted to storm the cadet college in Wana, a city in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province near the Afghan border.

The area had, until recent years, served as a base for the Pakistani Taliban, al Qaeda and other foreign militants.

According to local police chief Alamgir Mahsud, two of the militants were quickly killed by troops while three others managed to enter the compound before being cornered in an administrative block.

The army’s commandos were among the forces conducting a clearance operation, and an intermittent exchange of fire went on into Tuesday, Mr Mahsud said.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif denounced both attacks and said those responsible must be brought to justice swiftly.

“We will ensure the perpetrators are apprehended and held accountable,” he said.

Mr Sharif described attacks on unarmed civilians as “reprehensible”, adding: “We will not allow the blood of innocent Pakistanis to go to waste.”

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At least eight people killed in car explosion in New Delhi, police say

Published

1 day ago

November 10, 2025

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At least eight people killed in car explosion in New Delhi, police say

At least eight people have been killed and at least 19 others injured after a car exploded in New Delhi, say Indian police.

The blast, which triggered a fire that damaged several vehicles parked nearby, happened at the gates of the metro station at the Red Fort, a former Mughal palace and a busy tourist spot.

New Delhi’s international airport, metro stations and government buildings were put on a high security alert after the explosion, the government said. The cause of the explosion is being investigated.

The city’s police commissioner, Satish Golcha, said it happened a few minutes before 7pm.

“A slow-moving vehicle stopped at a red light. An explosion happened in that vehicle, and due to the explosion,
nearby vehicles were also damaged,” he told reporters.

One resident, who did not give a name, told NDTV: “We heard a big sound, our windows shook.”

Sanjay Tyagi, a Delhi police spokesman, said they were still investigating the cause, while the fire service reported that at least six vehicles and three autorickshaws had caught fire.

Images show the burnt-out remnants of several cars and forensic officers at the scene.

Home minister Amit Shah told local media that a Hyundai i20 car exploded near a traffic signal close to the Red Fort. He said CCTV footage from cameras in the area will form part of the investigation.

“We are exploring all possibilities and will conduct a thorough investigation, taking all possibilities into account,” Shah said. “All options will be investigated immediately, and we will present the results to the public.”

The investigation is being conducted by the National Investigation Agency, India’s federal terror investigating agency, and other agencies.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered his condolences to those who have lost their loved ones in the blast.

He posted on X: “May the injured recover at the earliest. Those affected are being assisted by authorities.

“Reviewed the situation with Home Minister Amit Shah Ji and other officials.”

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From US enemy to ally? Why ex-jihadist Syrian president’s meeting with Trump is a big deal

Published

2 days ago

November 10, 2025

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From US enemy to ally? Why ex-jihadist Syrian president's meeting with Trump is a big deal

It is a moment few could have imagined just a few years ago but the Syrian president, Ahmed al Sharaa, has arrived in Washington for a landmark series of meetings, which will culminate in a face-to-face with Donald Trump at the White House.

His journey to this point is a remarkable story, and it’s a tale of how one man went from being a jihadist battlefield commander to a statesman on the global stage – now being welcomed by the world’s most powerful nation.

Mr Sharaa became leader of Syria after the fall of the Bashar al Assad regime in December last year.

Before that he went by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al Jolani.

During Syria’s brutal civil war, he was the leader of the Nusra Front – a designated terror organisation, the Syrian branch of al Qaeda.

Back then, the thought of him setting foot on US soil and meeting a US president would have been unthinkable. There was a $10m reward for information leading to his capture.

So what is going on? Why is diplomacy being turned on its head?

After 14 years of conflict which started during the so-called Arab Spring, Syria is in a mess.

Mr Sharaa – as the head of the transitional government – is seen by the US as having the greatest chance of holding the country together and stopping it from falling back into civil war and failed state territory.

But to do that, Syria has to emerge from its pariah status and that’s what the US is gambling on and why it’s inclined to offer its support and a warm embrace.

By endorsing Mr Sharaa, it is hoping he will shed his past and emerge as a leader for everyone and unite the country.

Holding him close also means it’s less likely that Iran and Russia will again be able to gain a strong strategic foothold in the country.

So, a man who was once an enemy of the US is now being feted as a potential ally.

There are big questions, though. He has rejected his extremist background, saying he did what he did because of the circumstances of the civil war.

But since he took power, there have been sectarian clashes. In July, fighting broke out between Druze armed groups and Bedouin tribal fighters in Sweida.

It was a sign of just how fragile the country remains and also raises concerns about his ability to be a leader for everyone.

Nonetheless, Mr Sharaa is viewed as the best chance of stabilising Syria and by extension an important part of the Middle East.

Get Syria right, the logic goes, and the rest of the jigsaw will be easier to put and hold together.

The visit to Washington is highly significant and historic. It’s the first-ever official visit by a Syrian head of state since the country’s independence in 1946.

The meeting with Donald Trump is, though, the really big deal. The two men met in Riyadh in May but in the meeting later today they will discuss lifting sanctions – crucial to Syria’s post-war reconstruction – how Syria can help in the fight against Islamic State, and a possible pathway to normalisation of relations with Israel.

The optics will be fascinating as the US continues to engage with a former militant with jihadi links.

It’s a risk, but if successful, it could reshape Syria’s role in the region from US enemy to strong regional ally.