October 7 marked three years since the Hamas attacks on Israel that left some 1,200 people dead and 251 taken hostage. It also marks three years since Israel launched its genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with material and moral support from the United States, with an official death toll surpassing 74,000—including more than 20,000 children.
The official death toll is no doubt an underestimate, given the large number of missing and disappeared persons. (When Western corporate media outlets cite this toll, they often feel compelled to qualify it—e.g., as the BBC [10/7/26] had it, the “war between Israel and Hamas has killed more than 74,200 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, whose overall figures are seen as accurate by the UN”—lest, presumably, they be seen as taking Hamas’s word for it that the figure is so high.)
The killing spree continues in spite of an alleged ceasefire implemented last year, although the Jerusalem Post (10/5/26) charitably reckons that “less than 50%” of the casualties have been civilians.
The genocide was not, of course, a sudden violent outburst that came out of nowhere. Rather, it was a climax of genocidal momentum that had been building since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, which was itself achieved via the destruction of some 530 Palestinian villages, the killing of 15,000 Palestinians, and the expulsion of three-quarters of a million more.
Now, three years later, the corporate media still can’t bring themselves to refer to the genocide of Palestinians as such—notwithstanding it being a pretty textbook case of the phenomenon. Predictably, then, the third anniversary of the commencement of mass slaughter and devastation in Gaza has been cast in corporate media as an afterthought to the anniversary of the Hamas attacks.
