October 7 was a day of global mourning at this century’s most heinous act of terrorism in 2023, when Hamas and allied factions killed over 1250 Israeli and other nationals and abducted 250 women, children, men and the elderly into the Gaza strip.

“The recent proposal by United States President Donald J. Trump presents an opportunity that must be seized to bring this tragic conflict to an end,” urged United Nations chief Antonio Guterres. “After two years of trauma, we must choose hope, now.”

“The horror of that dark day will be forever seared in the memories of us all. Two years later, hostages remain captive in Gaza in deplorable conditions,” he emphasized.

Trump has also voiced hope as his negotiators struggle in Cairo, Egypt, to at least obtain a truce leading to the immediate and unconditional return of the hostages. Of that single deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, reportedly just 48 hostages remain, comprising 20 alive and 28 dead.

But Gaza could still stay an open wound in the Levant region even if Trump’s negotiators succeed in stopping the fighting because Hamas and its allies see yielding their weapons as outright surrender. In turn, Israel’s Benyamin Netanyahu will refuse to end Gaza’s bombardment without certainty that his country will never be attacked again.

Without a complete long term end to the fighting, Trump’s plan to get the Gulf Arab states to help administer the strip and, importantly, finance Gaza’s restoration would collapse. They may refuse to pay and shoulder administrative burdens if they fear that Israel will demolish the strip again in a few years.

As long as Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank remain in mortal fear of future Israeli bombardment and destitution, the Jewish state may never secure a future as a liberal democracy and a prosperous state respected across the world.

Netanyahu’s near total destruction of Gaza as a habitable land through relentless bombardment for two years is already turning Israel into a pariah state surrounded by Palestinians thirsting for revenge.

This is especially bad news for all Jewish people around the world in whose name Netanyahu and his parliamentary allies are perpetrating such extraordinary destruction.

Netanyahu’s Israel has declared itself to be the biblical homeland to which Jews are rightfully returning after millennia. Its government is trying to secure permanent ownership and security for all the world’s Jews in a safe haven where they can never again be persecuted or killed by haters just because of their religion.

Many in the US and Europe see this as a compelling argument but the global majority of around 5.5 billion people have had very little historical contact with Jews. Mostly Christians and Muslims sharing Abrahamic roots with Jews have known them and oppressed them for centuries.

The global majority learned about Jews recently and mainly through a flood of harrowing images on their smart phones and TV screens of unarmed children, women, men and the elderly being killed, maimed and starved by heavily armed Israeli soldiers, tanks, drones and warplanes. They have seen schools, hospitals, mosques and churches being destroyed and rescue, health, humanitarian aid workers and journalists being killed.

They have witnessed only the heart-breaking suffering of Gaza’s people as Israeli bombs turn their land, twice the size of Washington, into an unhabitable desert.

The revulsion outside Israel for this human disaster is severe. Most see it as a wildly disproportionate response to the undeniable brutality dealt upon Israelis on October 7, 2023. Recovering goodwill for the Jewish religion among the global majority may become a hard slog because no amount of justification by Natanyahu’s government can make emotionally shocked people unsee the live-streamed images on their ubiquitous smart phones.

Even in the US, Israel’s chief decades-long and nearly unconditional ally, a YouGov/Economist poll from mid-August found that 43% of Americans think that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. Young Americans in particular are changing their minds about Israel, including many American Jews who have long admired Israelis.

A July 2025 poll aired on Israeli television showed that 74 percent of Israelis, including 60% of people who voted for Netanyahu’s coalition, support a ceasefire that brings not only immediate release of all hostages but also an end to the Gaza war.

Trump is still striving for permanent peace but Israel and Hamas seem frozen in the positions that led them to war two years ago.

Egyptian media cited Hamas leader Fawzi Barhoum emphasizing that “the Battle of the Flood of Al-Aqsa (Hamas’s name for the October 7, 2023, attack) has restored our Palestinian cause to its global standing and exposed the fascist occupation as a threat to the security of the region and the world.”

“We seek a complete ceasefire, the withdrawal of the occupation army from the Gaza Strip, and the guarantee of the return of the displaced,” he added.

For his part during the October 7 commemoration, Netanyahu vowed to “achieve all the goals of the war: the return of all the kidnapped, the elimination of the Hamas regime and the promise that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel”.

“This is a humanitarian catastrophe on a scale that defies comprehension,” lamented Guterres.

But, tragically, the chasm remains.