Third anniversary of October 7: ex-hostage Mia Schem's account and opinion on Gaza's future

Mixed · 2The third anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel of 7 October 2023 was marked on 7 October 2026 with commentary and testimony in the Daily Mail and The National. 1 2 Mixed · 2Both outlets put the death toll at about 1,200: The National's Nickolay Mladenov wrote that about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage into Gaza, and the Daily Mail's Alex Brummer wrote that 1,200 people were murdered. 3 4 Right · 1In an interview with the Daily Mail's Middle East correspondent Natalie Lisbona, Mia Schem, 24, a French-Israeli former hostage, described being shot at point-blank range as she was abducted from the Nova music festival; the Mail reports that the gunshot left one arm permanently damaged and shorter than the other. 1

Right · 1Schem said she lost about five litres of blood and received no anaesthetic when operated on in Gaza by a 'surgeon'. 1 Right · 1She was held for 55 days, freed on 30 November 2023 and handed to the Red Cross; she was the first hostage forced to appear in a Hamas propaganda video, released on 16 October 2023. She says she was kept in a cage in a tunnel about 60 metres underground and that her captor threatened her if she cried. 1 Right · 1Schem said she is only now beginning to process what happened, finds it impossible to speak about the death of her friend Elia Toledano, whose body was later recovered from Gaza, and said that what she saw among Gaza civilians, including her captor's family and children, changed her view of the conflict. These are her own claims, reported in the Mail. 1

Right · 1In a Daily Mail opinion column, Alex Brummer wrote that the fallout from October 7 is fuelling hatred of Jews and that Britain's Jewish community 'has never felt more under siege'. The column criticises a Green Party conference resolution that 'Zionism is Racism', sanctions on Israel imposed by Prime Minister Andy Burnham, and Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband's use of 'ethnic cleansing' about the West Bank, and recounts the author's family's survival of Auschwitz and refuge in Britain. 4 Centre · 1In The National, Nickolay Mladenov wrote that the war brought devastation to Gaza, with tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, and that 'grief has no nationality'. Mladenov set out three possible futures for Gaza: a renewed cycle of conflict, permanent uncertainty, or a path of verified weapons decommissioning, accountable Palestinian civilian governance, phased Israeli withdrawal and reconstruction under US President Donald Trump's plan, endorsed by UN Security Council resolution 2803. 3 Centre · 1Mladenov also called on Israelis to accept that walls, buffer zones and recurring military operations cannot deliver lasting security, and on Palestinians to ask whether the dominance of armed factions has brought them closer to statehood. 3

Centre · 1The National's editorial argued that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict did not begin on October 7, that the attacks exposed the flawed assumption that occupation could be managed rather than ended, and that the occupation must end. It also said Hamas's crimes against civilians should not be obscured, that security cannot justify open-ended war, and that Palestinian elections are needed. 2 Centre · 1The editorial also noted that the response to the attacks has spread beyond Gaza, with Israeli military action against targets linked to Iran and its allies in Lebanon, Syria and Iran itself, and an attack on Hamas figures in Qatar in September 2025, and said Israel's coming election offers a chance to debate what a secure Israel looks like. 2