ADC Statement on the Three-Year Anniversary of October 7

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 7, 2026

[email protected]

Washington, D.C. | Three years ago today, members of the Palestinian militant group Hamas crossed from Gaza into Israel and launched an attack that precipitated a devastating and disproportionate Israeli counteroffensive. About 1,200 Israelis were killed and 251 were taken hostage, though we now know that some of those killed died at the hands of their own government.

Most American politicians and much of the media portrayed Hamas’ attack as an unprovoked act driven by irrational hatred of Jews. But history did not begin on October 7, 2023.

The genocide of Palestine began 78 years ago.

In 1947, the United Kingdom gave Israel the green light to invade Palestine. Between 1947 and 1949, Zionist militia groups expelled 1 million Palestinians from their homes, and more than 400 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed and invaded.

The second wave came in 1967, when more than 300,000 Palestinians were displaced, and countless innocent children, women and men were executed by Zionist forces that sought to expand Israel’s borders to encompass the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

By 2023, at least 6 million Palestinians had become refugees. For decades, Palestinians who survived Israel’s brutal attempts to ethnically cleanse them have been forced into refugee camps, where they live in miserable, substandard conditions. At the same time, 700,000 Israeli settlers lived in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

ADC condemns all violence against civilians. But October 7 did not happen in a vacuum. It happened in Gaza, which human rights groups describe as the world’s largest open-air prison. Prior to October 7, Palestinians in Gaza had no freedom of movement; no ability to attain medical care, education, and other opportunities that are considered basic human rights. Israeli officials gloated openly about keeping them on a starvation diet, and “mowing the lawn” whenever the population got too large (a euphemism for killing Palestinians). In 2014, Israel killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, including at least 550 children. No human should be forced to live in the conditions Palestinians have endured in Gaza for decades: lives without freedom, dignity, and hope. Israel’s reaction immediately after October 7 marked an escalation from its prior tactics.

Before October 7, few Americans were aware of the conditions in Gaza, and the mainstream media’s extreme pro-Israel bias prevented the American public from learning the reality. Israel was not prepared for the fact that social media would allow the world to witness its genocide. Americans have now viewed, in real time, the annihilation of the Palestinian people, with the full support of the United States government and American taxpayer dollars.

Since October 7, 2023, at least 74,000 Palestinians have been killed—more than 20,000 of them children. Some estimates state the true figure is at least 40 percent higher than reported. Given the sheer destruction we have witnessed across Gaza, and the ongoing attacks in the West Bank, that number is not difficult to believe.

Three years and counting into this latest genocide, the killing continues, despite a so-called “ceasefire.”

More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the “ceasefire” began. Almost the entire population of Gaza—roughly 2 million people—have been forced into concentration camps. Gaza’s health and education systems completely decimated.

In the West Bank, IDF-backed settler terror has long been a daily reality. Since 2023, more than 100 Palestinian communities have been displaced and ethnically cleansed, and an additional 250 settler outposts established.

All the while, the United States continues to enable and support Israel as its “ally” inflicts this modern-day holocaust on the Palestinian people. The occupation is the system that produces and perpetuates this violence. The only way to break the cycle is to dismantle it.

History did not begin on October 7, 2023, but the awakening of people around the world did. As time passes, more and more people are rejecting the horrors of Israel’s occupation.

And here in the United States, we have been affected too. Since October 2023, at the behest of the Israel lobby, the United States has tightened its grip on Americans’ fundamental constitutional rights: free speech, the right to assembly and the right to dissent.

We mourn every innocent child, woman and man who has been killed or impacted by Israel’s 78-year genocide of the Palestinian people.

ADC will never relent in our fight for a free Palestine and a United States free from the grip of the Israel lobby.

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About ADC

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is the largest Arab American civil rights organization in the United States, founded in 1980 by former Senator James Abourezk. ADC takes on powerful institutions and interests that threaten Americans’ constitutional rights and civil liberties. Our impact litigation and legal advocacy challenge government overreach, defend freedom of speech and dissent, and protect the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. ADC also works with national and international media to challenge discrimination, stereotypes, and misinformation, while ensuring Arab American perspectives are represented accurately and meaningfully in public debate.