At precisely 6:29 a.m., on Monday, October 7, relatives of the 101 hostages still held in captivity in Gaza and hundreds of their supporters sounded a bullhorn for two long minutes outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence in Jerusalem.
Some stood at tense attention, others cried silently. Exactly one year ago, at exactly that time, Hamas launched massive volleys of rockets at Israel, providing cover for the onslaught of the thousands of terrorists who broke through the border to rape, slaughter and mutilate the bodies of some 1,200 Israelis, burn and devastate towns and kibbutzim and take hostage more than 250 people, including elderly and infants.
Similar vigils took place throughout the country on Monday morning. In some places, local organizers had wanted to sound sirens, as is done at all Israeli memorials, but the Home Command forbade it. This is because much of the country is still on alert for real-time sirens, as Hamas from the south, Hezbollah from the north, and Yemen and Iran from the east continue to pound Israel with rockets and missiles.
Two high-profile events took place in the evening—and there was a definite tension between the two.
The early morning vigils began a series of commemorative and memorializing events that took place throughout the day. Yet it is impossible to memorialize the events of October 7, 2023, because it seems they never ended. On that day, the government and its institutions and all of the security forces and the police failed us terribly, leaving mostly unarmed citizens to fend for themselves for hours and days against the onslaught. And as the violence continues and the death toll grows, the government and state institutions continue to abandon their responsibilities and betray their citizens and their society’s most basic values.
And it is impossible to commemorate those events when 101 hostages, alive and dead, are still being held in the worst conditions in Gaza, subject to the most extreme forms of torture and deprivation we can imagine, while our government does nothing to save them.
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Later that morning, flags throughout the country were lowered to half-mast (although most official institutions will hold their ceremonies later this month, according to the Hebrew rather than the Gregorian calendar). Kibbutzim near the Gaza border, many of which were partly or almost completely destroyed on October 7, held small communal services for the members of their communities, many of whom had been burned alive and murdered in their homes. Since they no longer live there, having been evacuated following the carnage, the members of the kibbutzim left after the ceremonies. Most are still displaced throughout the country, and the continued rocket fire from Hamas in Gaza keeps them from returning to their homes.
On Rte. 232, a rural highway where more than 250 people were murdered one year ago as they tried to flee the carnage by the Hamas terrorists, dozens of people congregated. Some wanted to touch the spot where their loved ones died. Others merely wanted to pay homage. A year ago, the route was full of burned-out cars and dead bodies. The road is clear now and has largely been resurfaced, although there are still scars from the fires, and families and survivors have set up benches along the road.
The Tribe of Nova Community Association, a grassroots movement founded by surviving staff of the Nova festival to “strengthen and honor the bereaved families,” organized a gathering to commemorate the 364 people killed on October 7 at the festival and other outdoor raves in that area. Family members and friends laid fresh flowers or papier mâché poppies (the unofficial symbol for the dead) next to handmade signs and printed pictures of their loved ones.
There were countless other events throughout the day, most of them heartfelt local initiatives. The two highest-profile events took place Monday evening—and there was a definite tension between the two.
When the government announced that it planned to hold an official event, and that Transportation Minister Miri Regev, a polarizing figure in Israeli politics and an inveterate Netanyahu ally, would be in charge, many of the families spoke out against it. They accused the government of taking advantage of the trauma and the grief to promote itself and argued that until the government establishes an independent investigation of its own failures before, during and after October 7—which Netanyahu vehemently opposes—and until the hostages are returned, such events are a moral and political affront. Some forbade the government to even mention the names or use the pictures of their loved ones.
In response, a group of family members of people who were killed or taken hostage organized an event in Tel Aviv’s large Yarkon Park. In a temporary truce-like gesture, the events, both of which were televised and live-streamed, were held at different times.
More than 40,000 people had registered for the Yarkon Park event, but, once again, because of the threat of missile attacks, the Home Front Command imposed restrictions, and only family members and the press were allowed to attend. And in fact, just as the participants were filing in, a barrage of missiles, apparently sent over by the Houthis in Yemen, forced attendees to lie on the ground and cover their heads until the danger passed. No one was hurt.
The two-hour ceremony was carried live on most television stations and social media; all over the country, viewings were organized. The staging was simple, the format familiar to Israelis: family members telling heart-wrenching stories interspersed with songs, most of them well-known from the Israeli popular and folk canon, performed by many of Israel’s top performers. There were no politicians or symbols of government or military insignia. Some of the bereaved speakers were Arabs and Druze, signifying a quiet social inclusiveness in grief.
As the cameras panned on the small crowd, we saw grief-stricken people crying quietly. They appeared not to sing out loud but rather mouthed the familiar words quietly. Some of the speakers called on the government to take responsibility for its failures on October 7 and since, and to establish a state commission of inquiry. A few openly accused the government of preferring to prolong the war rather than return the hostages, for political reasons. But there were few cheers and little applause.
The official state ceremony, which started almost immediately afterwards, was very different. The spiffy and clearly high-priced production included virtual pyrotechnics and a writhing, dramatized dance performance intended to symbolize the death and suffering experienced on October 7 last year. This had been recorded weeks earlier, in the southern town of Ofakim, where more than 50 people were killed, without an audience. The government claimed that it was pre-recorded due to “security risks,” although others wondered if it was an attempt to prevent any outbursts by family members.
In another pre-recorded video, Israeli President Isaac Herzog spoke about unity and, in an only slightly veiled criticism, repeated that the hostages must be returned. Netanyahu, also in a pre-recorded video, rejected the families’ and the public’s calls for a hostage deal, saying that “in every meeting he and his wife have held with soldiers, the wounded and the bereaved, they have heard the same message again and again: not to stop the war prematurely.”
Promising to rebuild “on a much larger scale,” Netanyahu stated that “October 7 will symbolize for generations the price of our revival, and it will express for generations the magnitude of our determination and the strength of our spirit…Together we will continue to fight, and together—with God’s grace—we will win,” he concluded.
[Full video of both ceremonies, provided through the Knesset Channel, is here.]
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Memorial ceremonies are not meant to take away our pain. Ritualized and structured, they are supposed to give us an outline for living with the pain and grief. We may no longer be on the same path we were on before, and our lives’ outlines may have changed, yet we learn to step forward, to hesitantly, gingerly, begin to envision a future.
But how can we envision a future when the present is nothing more than an ongoing past? The missiles, the terror and the violence continue. Soldiers and civilians are dying—in Israel, in Gaza, in Lebanon. The government and its institutions that failed us so terribly on October 7, 2023—the IDF, the police, and ministries that are supposed to care for our welfare—continue to fail us. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the north and south are displaced, with no plan for when they will return. Many classes are on zoom, because the government never properly prepared the schools with shelters and safe spaces. Our forces penetrate further and further into Gaza and Lebanon, but the government seems to have no strategy or endgame, and all it offers is more violence without vision or hope.
Above all, we cannot move on because 101 hostages, many of them probably dead, are still not home. Mutual responsibility and the sanctity of life are among the most precious principles of Jewish and Israeli identity. But Netanyahu and his government have abandoned these principles by sacrificing the lives of the hostages and cheapening all our lives, leaving us fearful and vulnerable.
Netanyahu claims he is “doing all” to bring the hostages home. The negotiators that he appointed say otherwise. Netanyahu, they say, has repeatedly blocked any possibility of making a deal, because his far-right partners have threatened to bring down his coalition if he does. He and his government do not care about the hostages, and they do not care about any of us. They are willing to tear apart the basic fibers of Israeli society in order to self-serve their political needs.
“Choose life.” Credit: Eetta Prince-Gibson
Fearful for our physical selves and existential individual and collective existences, we remain self-absorbed in our grief. We continually pick at our wounds, making them deeper and more painful. Like the United States after 9/11, we lash out for revenge and don’t care about—we even celebrate—the pain of others. After 9/11, many Americans, fearful of and incensed by the supposed existence of “weapons of mass destruction,” ignored the catastrophe they caused others. We are ignoring the catastrophe that the Gazans and the Lebanese are facing.
Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran are cruel, vicious enemies who seek to destroy us, and yes, we must destroy them first if we want to save ourselves. But killing innocents is not a strategy that will help us to emerge from grief and trauma and move forward, however hesitantly, to a better future.
Yesterday, on October 7, I saw a woman standing alone by the Knesset holding a sign that said, “Choose life” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20). I hugged her and we cried together. And yes, despite Netanyahu, despite the extremists on all sides, we will continue to try to choose life.
Opening image: Memorial ceremony to mark the anniversary of the October 7 massacre, Sderot, Israel. Photo credit: Nizzan Cohen, CC BY 4.0.
Very emotional!! And sad.
Roz Schwartz-Fein