The world became a hugely more dangerous place on this day last year when Hamas attacked Israel, instigating a crisis which has already claimed tens of thousands of lives and is still escalating rapidly.
We still do not know the full truth behind the terrible events of October 7 2023, but what can be said with certainty is that since then large parts of the Middle East have been drawn into a serious conflict which has the potential to spread well beyond the region.
Many observers have asked pertinent questions about Israel’s role in providing financial and strategic support during the initial development of Hamas as a rival to groups like the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) back in the 1980s.
The late PLO leader Yasser Arafat always insisted that Hamas was Israel’s creation, with the alleged involvement of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu placed under particular scrutiny in recent years.
There is still an enormous mystery over the failure of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), regarded as among the best equipped and most sophisticated military organisations on the planet, to prevent or even anticipate what was effectively the first invasion of the country in some 75 years.
Up to 7,000 combatants from Hamas and its associates surged across the border, meeting with little opposition before killing an estimated 1,200 people and taking 250 hostages back to Gaza.
Israel then launched an offensive of massive proportions against Gaza, reducing many urban areas to rubble and resulting in a death toll of up to 42,000, the vast majority of them women and children.
The violence has spread to neighbouring countries, with deadly missiles fired in all directions and Israel increasingly prepared to target its perceived enemies in the Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen.
Iran plainly believes that Israel is firmly backed by the US and to a lesser extent the UK, and the disturbing prospect that the bases maintained by the latter two countries in the region could be attacked is causing significant alarm.
It is entirely appropriate that Ireland is supporting international calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, and the return of all hostages, as we enter a period of enormous risk on a global basis.
Around 350 Irish soldiers are involved in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and have found themselves facing unwelcome attention from Israel in recent days.
President Michael D Higgins was fully entitled to express his concern over weekend reports that the IDF pressed the UNIFIL peacekeepers to withdraw from the villages they have been protecting, and it is essential that Israel fully respects the impartial duties of the Irish troops.
