Israel Marks Three Years Since October 7: Grief, Protest, and a Demand for Answers

JERUSALEM — At 6:29 on Wednesday morning, Israel stopped. Three years to the minute after the first rockets were fired and Hamas militants began breaking through the Gaza border fence, the country observed a national moment of silence for the more than 1,200 people killed on October 7, 2023 — the deadliest single day in Israel’s history, and the start of a war that has now run for three years.

The day’s commemorations were not the official state ceremonies — those were held earlier in the week. Wednesday belonged to survivors, bereaved families, former hostages and campaigners, with memorials and protests at more than 400 locations across the country, The Times reported. Art exhibitions, gatherings and impromptu memorials filled the day, including at the officially renamed Hostages Square in central Tel Aviv.

Nova and the kibbutzimMourning where it happened

At the site of the Nova music festival in the Re’im Forest, where 378 people were murdered, mourners gathered from dawn around pillars displaying photographs of those killed near the former dance floor, now strewn with flowers, The Times reported. President Isaac Herzog was to address an evening crowd. The day was the first commemoration at which, as the chief executive of the Nova Tribe Community Association Reef Peretz put it, survivors, the bereaved and the returned hostages could all be together — the last of the hostages having come home in October of last year.

Even as people gathered at the site, loud bangs were heard from across the border in Gaza. The Israeli military was carrying out further strikes, and Palestinian officials reported two dead, The Times reported. More than 74,000 people have been killed in Gaza in three years of war, according to the Hamas-run authorities, including 1,400 since a ceasefire was declared in October last year.

In the hardest-hit kibbutzim on the Gaza border, residents who have returned — and those who have yet to return — gathered at the graves of murdered loved ones and neighbors. In Be’eri, the kibbutz had to expand to accommodate a new graveyard for 132 local residents killed that day, The Times reported. At Kfar Aza, where Hamas militants killed dozens of Israelis before taking 19 hostages back into Gaza, residents held a vigil, standing in silence as a trumpet played a solemn bugle call while a resident read out a roll call of the dead, Reuters reported.

“This is the first time we are doing all the things here in the kibbutz,” said Zion Regev, a community leader in Kfar Aza, adding that most residents remain displaced. “It’s a very emotional day, it’s a very difficult day for our community, three years after October 7th,” Reuters reported.

Tel Aviv“Price of failure”

Grief on Wednesday was inseparable from anger. On a Tel Aviv beach Wednesday morning, protesters created an installation on the sand spelling out “Price of Failure: 1,163 murdered, 251 kidnapped.” Aviv Atlas, an organizer and artist, told The Times the installation showed the cost of the “most cursed day in the history of the state”: “Lying here are families butchered in their homes, the founding pioneers of our nation, party-goers who only wanted to dance, security forces, citizens who rushed to help… men, women and little children.”

Atlas is among those who accuse Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of failing to heed warnings and doing more to prevent the Hamas-led attack. Although many of Israel’s military and intelligence leaders from October 7 have since resigned, the prime minister has refused to announce an official state commission of inquiry, The Times reported. A recurring demand of the October Council and the Kumu movement — groups of survivors and victims’ families — is exactly such an inquiry, the most powerful investigative mechanism in Israeli law, CNN reported.

A motorcade left Caesarea, outside Netanyahu’s private residence, and joined a larger parade of cars carrying Israeli flags along the Tel Aviv beach road, calling on the prime minister to “take accountability for the disaster.” Standing outside the American embassy on the same road, Israelis chanted “you are in charge, you are to blame” as passing cars honked in support, The Times reported. Atlas vowed the campaign would not rest until the government fell and a state commission of inquiry was forced into motion.

The stateOfficial ceremonies and the coming election

Israel held its official state memorials on Monday. “Even three years after the outbreak of the war — when the State of Israel is stronger than ever — the terrible hours of the Simchat Torah attack remain seared within us,” Netanyahu said at Mount Herzl Cemetery in Jerusalem, CNN reported. At a cabinet meeting a day later, Netanyahu said Israel had killed “4,000 out of 6,000” militants who infiltrated Israel on October 7, 2023, and added: “We will reach all of them,” amid near-daily Israeli strikes in Gaza, per CNN.

Netanyahu has rejected blame for the security breach and resisted calls for an independent investigation — a stance that has frustrated many Israelis, including families of those killed, some of whom have joined the election race, Reuters reported. This is the first anniversary for Israelis without any hostages still held in Gaza, with those dead and alive exchanged in swaps for Palestinians held in Israeli jails; the remains of the last Israeli hostage were recovered in January, Reuters reported.

And it comes just three weeks ahead of Israel’s first general election since the attack, a vote widely viewed as a referendum on Netanyahu’s long tenure. A poll by the Israel Democracy Institute showed that 68 percent of Jewish Israelis said the events of October 7 were a very central or fairly central element in their voting decision — though election polls show neither Netanyahu nor his main competitors would muster enough seats to form a coalition if a vote were held today, Reuters reported.

At noon on Wednesday, bereaved families and grassroots groups held a national minute of reflection, joined by public hospitals, municipalities, universities and private businesses, CNN reported. On Wednesday evening, a national memorial ceremony organized by the Kumu movement was expected to draw tens of thousands in Tel Aviv, hosted by former hostage Eli Sharabi and actress Shani Cohen. One bereaved daughter, Shir Mathias — whose parents were killed at Kibbutz Holit — wrote on X ahead of the day that everyone who had a hand on the wheel that day, in uniform and in suits alike, must go home, CNN reported.

Three years on, the dead are buried, the hostages are home, and the country that mourned them is about to vote. The question that hung over every ceremony on Wednesday — who failed, and who answers for it — is the one the election will try to settle.