Approaching the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas against Israeli civilians, which ignited a year of war and violence in Israel, Gaza and the surrounding region, America takes a look back at our coverage of the conflict as it unfolded. We have striven to feature a variety of voices and perspectives, and to shed light not only on the geopolitical issues at stake in this war, but on the plight of the poorest and most vulnerable and on the efforts of religious leaders to work for peace, reconciliation and dialogue.
We remember the hostages still held in Gaza and the civilians in Gaza living in an active war zone. We mourn the almost 1,200 Israeli lives lost in the attacks, the hostages who have been killed and the more than 40,000 Palestinian lives lost in Gaza in the past year, and even as conflict intensifies between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, we pray for an end to violence and a just and lasting peace for all peoples in the Middle East.
The following are selections from America’s coverage; a full archive of what we have published on this topic may be found at this link.
The involvement of the Holy See and Catholic leaders
The day after the attacks, Pope Francis immediately called for an end to conflict, saying “every war is a defeat.”
Pope Francis appealed for “a stop to the armed attacks” on Sunday, Oct. 8, as fighting continued between Hamas and Israeli forces in southern Israel near the border with Gaza, and Israeli jets continued bombing buildings in Gaza City. He called on people worldwide “to pray that there be peace in Israel and Palestine”...
“Let the armed attacks stop, please,” he said. “Let it be understood that terrorism and war bring no solution but only death and the suffering of many innocent people. War is a defeat. Every war is a defeat. Let us pray that there be peace in Israel and in Palestine.”
In the early days of the conflict, Pope Francis also called for the release of all hostages and expressed concern for civilians. Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, offered himself in exchange for hostages. In November 2023, America’s “Inside the Vatican” podcast looked at how Pope Francis was responding to the conflict.
A Jesuit perspective on the conflict
America has featured a number of interviews with David Neuhaus, S.J., a Jesuit priest and Israeli citizen. On Oct. 12, 2023, our correspondent Russell Pollitt, S.J., spoke with him both about the roots of Israeli-Palestinian conflict and about hopes for peace.
Today, ideologues and politicians are mobilizing religion to promote the rejection of the other, the dehumanization necessary to ignore the rights of the other, and the campaign to extinguish the other. Nationalism, a fierce force in the Middle East, becomes even more ferocious when God is appended to the exclusivist claims of those arguing that “the land is all mine and there is no place for you.”
Karma Ben Johanan, who teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, found her friend Father Neuhaus’s approach in the interview problematic, explaining that Israel’s response cannot be boiled down to “intergenerational trauma and revenge” or “some sort of psychological breakdown in the Jewish-Israeli psyche.”
“Was Father Neuhaus unable to find or give voice to one rational reason that drove Israel to send her sons and daughters to kill and be killed, en masse, in a seemingly endless war?” she wrote. “At the moment, Israel is in a monstrous moral trap, caught between the rock of being a victim and the hard place of being a perpetrator. Hamas not only threatens it militarily but also poses a horrific moral threat by forcing Israel to fight amid the civilian population of Gaza.”
Last November, Father Neuhaus described the complexities involved in the conflict in a piece written for America, including explanations of the competing narratives offered by Israel and Palestine. Both sides, for example, describe their opponents as demonic. And the church has a specific role to play.
“The church is called to witness to a different reality than that of division and strife,” Father Neuhaus wrote. “The ministry of the word is one in which the words spoken by the church can unlock new horizons, creative possibilities and bear witness to them.” He added:
The pope asks us, as Jews and Israelis, to differentiate between the religious, theological and spiritual dimensions of our relationship and the political, worldly and diplomatic dimensions. I am not sure whether Israeli society wants to do this or is even capable of doing it. However, at the very least we should allow him to make such a separation himself. It may not currently meet the immediate interests of the State of Israel, but it certainly does serve the long-term interests of the Jewish people.
America’s editorials
Over the years, the editors of America have frequently commented on the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, as well as reactions to it in the United States. In 2007, for example, the editors wrote that “achieving peace requires that both sides find a new way to engage Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza and a majority in the Palestinian legislature. Only determination by the United States to grasp the nettles represented by Hamas will make this happen.”
Last November, the editors called on Catholics to “stand in solidarity with the dead and grieving against the antisemitic, sectarian ideology that fueled this terrorist attack.”
Countries that have suffered terrorist attacks—including the United States—are right to feel solidarity with the people of Israel. But such sympathy does not require, and cannot justify, ignoring the needs of the people of Gaza. The rule of international law, and even more, a basic commitment to human dignity, both demand something more than the meeting of terror with terror.
In another editorial later that month, the editors wrote that the rising antisemitism necessitated a Catholic response.
The United States has long been a refuge for the Jewish people, a place where they could live without fear. It is incumbent on Catholics, and all people of good will, to ensure it remains so….As Catholics continue their witness for a just peace, they should remain in dialogue with Jews who see calls for a ceasefire as a double standard that would never be applied to a country that has been so ruthlessly attacked and whose adversaries show no appetite for peace.
Family and faith in the midst of conflict
As the conflict continued, America looked at how families were relying on their faith in the midst of uncertainty, violence and destruction. On the Jesuitical podcast in December, Rachel Goldberg, whose son Hersh Goldberg-Polin was being held hostage in Gaza, spoke about the way she was praying. (Tragically, Hersh was killed by his captors in late August 2024.):
I have continued praying every morning, and I say Psalms throughout the day. I always say that Psalms are like a self-help book. You can go through and find [a Psalm for] when you’re feeling, “Hallelujah, praise the Lord” and when you’re feeling, “Where are you? Why is this happening?” We have words for that, and that’s important. It’s validating. I’m very cognizant of which part of the prayers I’m saying for Hersh. I do call out to God—my kids kind of make fun of me—I’m talking to God, my hands are up in the air, and it is really challenging.
And on the other hand, I also feel like having the conversation with God is part of the relationship, saying: “Why are you making this child suffer? Why are you making us suffer?” But that’s belief. Having a conversation is being in a relationship. So my faith is still there and my curiosity of saying, “Why is this happening?” Such horrible things happened on Oct. 7, and part of being a religious person is saying: “It doesn’t make sense. And I still believe.”
Later that same month, Stephanie Saldaña, who lives in Bethlehem, wrote about her young daughter’s hope that “maybe Christmas will stop the war,” and was interviewed on Jesuitical as well.
Sources of conflict, hopes for reconciliation
On October 20, 2023, Cantor Olivia Brodsky and Rabbi Joshua Stanton, who serve as co-clergy at East End Temple in New York City, wrote about the need to engage each other from a “place of humility … all the while maintaining ethical guardrails to prevent the glorification of civilian deaths or human suffering.” In the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they argued, that means reflecting carefully on where we choose to start the story:
What you choose to include or exclude from your retelling of the region’s history determines your understanding of the more recent Israeli and Palestinian conflict. Even so, there is no way to include every detail, much less to give each event the same weight as another person might. So-called objective history is woven through a process that is as much creatively subjective as it is analytical. Our inherently disparate narratives of the Holy Land give rise to yawning differences in how we understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As the war in Gaza continued into the second half of 2024, America featured further voices on the conflict, including contributions from bishops, editors, an army veteran and more. On April 23, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York offered a reflection on what he had seen during a recent visit to the Holy Land.
I remember two grandmas. One came in the group of Jewish survivors of Oct. 7 with whom we visited. She is now in residence at a hotel because her home was destroyed by Hamas fanatics, her granddaughters spared from rape and beheading while hidden in the “safe room,” her son-in-law murdered. “I’m sure thankful for the care I’ve gotten and the nice hotel room where I’m staying,” she said, “but...I just want to go home!” Will she ever be able to? When?
Then a second grandma at the Palestinian refugee camp I visited near the ominous wall separating Israelis and Palestinians in Bethlehem. She wore around her neck the actual key to the house in Jerusalem from which she had to flee in 1948. Seventy-six years ago and she still had the key! “I just want to go home!” Will she ever be able to? When?
On May 9, America editor in chief Sam Sawyer, S.J., opined on the dangers that could arise during campus protests in the United States for and against the Israeli invasion. Father Sawyer wrote:
The danger of an opponent whom you can thoroughly hate is as basic as the problem of the ends justifying the means. If a cause is so evil that it must be opposed at all costs, it becomes all too easy to ignore anyone who suffers those costs. The seductive temptation of completely detesting an enemy is that no matter how much power we might actually hold, we get to play David to another’s Goliath. We do not have to ask how we can make peace, because any means that can destroy an evil so immense and dangerous is automatically justified.
On July 3, Army veteran John Davis wrote of an encounter he had with a Palestinian man who had lost much of his family in the current war in Gaza—and how that encounter made him reflect on the ways in which we euphemize the violence of war. Maybe part of the contribution of veterans, he wrote, was to push back against the romanticization or sanitization of war’s horrors:
We who are veterans, who see the dead, maimed, and slaughtered, can be oracles of honesty. We can advise our neighbors, our families, our representatives that war is no adventure. Anything must be tried rather than going to war first. A child dead from a bombing brings no honor, resolves nothing, even fuels revenge. Perhaps we will be treated like Cassandra and ignored. But if we veterans know the true cost of war, we must act. With the knowledge that with memory comes obligation, we must tell the truth.
