The horror from afar How I experienced October 7, 23 as a journalist in Zurich

What begins as an ordinary weekend shift in the home office mutates into a day of horror. October 7 is etched in the memory even if you only follow the horror from afar.

At first, there is nothing to suggest that October 7, 2023 will be a special day. I don't work my weekend shift from the blue News editorial office in Volketswil ZH, but sit down in front of my computer at home in Zurich at 6.30 am.

The shift starts without anything special happening. Police reports trickle in. There are updates from Ukraine. And then the news agencies report that some armed Hamas fighters have crossed into Israel from the Gaza Strip.

That doesn't ring any alarm bells for me yet: skirmishes between Palestinians and Israelis are unfortunately a daily occurrence. A first video lands on the net showing an excavator, a collapsed border fence and jeering young men standing on a smoking tank.

Middle East conflict? We're used to grief!

At first glance, that doesn't worry me. There have always been bloody escalations between the conflicting parties since the 90s. Back then, the Oslo peace process gave rise to justified hope that the eternal war would come to an end after all. It almost worked.

Israel put an offer on the table to withdraw from over 90 percent of the occupied territories. But the promising negotiations end with a bang on November 4, 1995, when a right-wing extremist Israeli shoots Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin with a pistol.

Since then, the escalator in the Middle East conflict has only ever led in one direction: steadily downwards. The construction of settlements in the Palestinian territories continues, as do the stabbings in Israel. The duration of this confrontation is blunting: at first, a few gunmen scaling the border fence doesn't seem like a big deal.

The pictures and videos get me down

Until more horror reports arrive. First there are reports that Hamas fighters have built their own aircraft to infiltrate Israel. Then there is talk of shootings and deaths, and it slowly becomes clear that this October 7 will not be a day like any other.

As I sit in the warmth of my living room in Zurich, I start looking for the latest information on social media. I find what I'm looking for, but I regret it. The pictures and videos I see are devastating. Israelis fleeing from the grounds of a festival in fear for their lives. I see young people with panic on their faces and then the first dead. Civilians who have been massacred.

I will never forget one clip in particular. It shows a pick-up truck with a half-naked Israeli woman lying on the back with blood running down her legs. She lies on the bed like a piece of cattle: young men hoot, scream and celebrate over the hostage, who is soon taken deeper into the Gaza Strip.

Seeing what you would rather not see

The woman will not survive this scene. German-Israeli Shani Louk is one of 797 civilian casualties on October 7. 36 of them are children. 397 security forces also die, raising the death toll to 1180. A further 3400 people are injured. It is the biggest loss Israel has had to cope with since the Yom Kippur War.

The full extent of the attack only emerges as the day progresses. Hamas terrorists hunted down civilians and murdered children who had cowered in fear in shelters. 251 people have been abducted: many are still in the hands of Hamas, and the hope of returning them to their homes alive is fading by the day.

The violence I see on the internet brings tears to my eyes as I sit at my desk in Zurich. The fate of the children in particular breaks my heart as a father. I would have liked to have spared myself the pictures and videos, but it is part of my job to filter the horror and show what I can on this date to inform people about the crime.

The spiral continues unabated

A year has passed since that black day, which reminds me of November 4, 1995. What Rabin's assassination and the Hamas terror attack have in common is that they set in motion a spiral of violence that is seemingly unstoppable.

Israel strikes back hard after October 7, invading the Gaza Strip and driving Hamas, but also the civilian population, before it. Now there are videos from there that would have been better left unseen. Desperate civilians pull relatives out of the rubble left behind by the Israeli forces.

Inconsolable fathers lament the death of their innocent children: the dad in me can hardly bear it either. The Gaza war is following a diabolical script: Hamas is deliberately entrenching itself behind the civilian population, which has little chance of escaping Israel's revenge. The number of victims is in the thousands, and the suffering cannot be grasped from the safety of Switzerland.

What remains is powerlessness

And the spiral continues unabated. Hezbollah fires rockets into northern Israel to support Hamas. 60,000 Israelis leave the area and their army responds with massive air strikes, which in turn force the Lebanese population in the south of their country to flee.

What should I write now that it is the first anniversary of this horror? I'm honestly at a loss.

I would like to forget this day, but I never will. I don't want to see any more pictures of desperate women, children and men, but that's a pious wish. I would like to believe that the spiral of violence will stop at some point. But I have no illusions.

Nothing will change in the Middle East, I'm afraid. Or a miracle will have to happen.