In Israel, 2nd anniversary of Oct. 7 attack is quiet but inescapable
- The San Juan Daily Star
- Oct 8
- 4 min read
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
Israel marked the second anniversary of the Hamas-led attack that began its longest war in subdued fashion Tuesday, with new hopes of ending the conflict but with hostages still in captivity and its exhausted military adding to the death toll of Palestinians and to the destruction in the Gaza Strip.
The arrival of the Jewish harvest festival, Sukkot, a national and religious holiday, shut down most businesses across Israel for the day. The government delayed official remembrances of the war’s traumatic first day until Oct. 16, after the end of the High Holiday season.
But Tuesday’s milestone was inescapable.
There were quiet gatherings at some of the kibbutzim near Gaza that suffered the most in the massacres of Oct. 7, 2023, and informal events drew participants throughout the country.
In the city of Rehovot, south of Tel Aviv, about 20 runners in T-shirts with messages advocating the return of the hostages made their way early in the morning along a popular route surrounding the town, which is home to Nimrod Cohen, a soldier held hostage. Passing cars honked in solidarity.
Hundreds of Israelis came to Hostages Square in the center of Tel Aviv, silently meditating over art installations and memorials to those still captive and citizens killed on Oct. 7 or while in captivity. Israel believes that about 20 living hostages are still being held in Gaza along with the remains of 28 others who died in captivity.
Ilana Yahav, 69, a therapist, said Oct. 7 had opened so many wounds that it was impossible to care for everyone who was suffering.
“If you were there, or someone in your family was there, or you only saw a video — it will be a lot of years of treatment,” she said.
Tzlil Sasson, 38, and her husband had driven from Lehavim, east of Gaza, with their three young children.
“It was important for us as parents to bring them here, to remember, and to pray,” she said. “Maybe, in a couple of days, the hostages will be free — we hope.”
In Kfar Aza, a tiny kibbutz less than 2 miles from Gaza where at least 62 neighbors were killed and 19 taken hostage, several dozen residents held a memorial that began with a moment of silence at 6:29 a.m. That was the moment on a Saturday morning when Hamas began launching thousands of rockets, overwhelming Israel’s air-defense system.
Under cover of that aerial onslaught was the main Hamas offensive: an invasion by thousands of assailants who swarmed across the fence separating Gaza from border towns anddozens of tiny agricultural communities. They killed residents in their homes, gunned young people down at a music festival and overran Israeli military bases.
All told, Hamas killed some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 captives back to Gaza. It was the bloodiest day in Israel’s history and the deadliest for Jews anywhere since the Holocaust.
A shocked Israel mobilized to unleash a devastating military response that has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians in the past two years, including both civilians and combatants, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
It has wounded tens of thousands more, flattened thousands of buildings and reduced much of the territory’s infrastructure — and its landscape — to rubble, shrapnel and sand.
On both sides of the Israel-Gaza border, the war seemed far from over Tuesday.
Though Hamas is weakened and its arsenal depleted, after 7 a.m., rocket sirens sounded in Netiv HaAsara, an Israeli community on Gaza’s northern border, and the Israeli military said a projectile had fallen in the area.
In Deir al-Balah, in Gaza, Israeli warplanes could be heard overhead at 1 a.m. and again after 5:30 a.m. As the sun rose, gunfire could be heard in the eastern part of the town, along with the blasts of occasional artillery rounds.
Ahmed al-Haddad, 51, a Gaza resident who said he, his wife and their four children had been displaced five times, said their suffering had surpassed what his grandparents had told him about the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” when Palestinians were displaced in Israel’s war for independence.
“This war is the harshest, the most merciless,” he said. “It feels like history repeating itself, only harder.”
Back in Israel, a moment of silence in kibbutz Kfar Aza at 6:29 was anything but, as drones whined, helicopters flew overhead and explosions frequently ripped through the air.
Zion Regev, a municipal leader, read out an adapted version of the traditional Jewish prayer of mourning. His voice dropped as he noted that “our Gali and Ziv” — two brothers from Kfar Aza still held hostage in Gaza — had yet to return home.
“Some say what happened is receding into the distance, but for me, it’s stronger than ever,” said Nitzan Kaner, 37. She said she was trapped for about 30 hours when militants attacked.
On Tuesday morning, she said she had experienced a sleepless night. “I couldn’t stop thinking about what we went through.”
A few minutes away, hundreds of Israelis visited the site of the Nova music festival, where more than 300 people were killed. Signs bearing the faces of the victims are arranged in rows, like dancers at a rave.
Anat Magnezi held a poster with a photo of her son Amit, 22, who was killed, over her own face.
“I wish that all the world would see this and know what happened to us and that it is real,” she said. “But all the world is against us now.”
Roman Fourmann, whose stepdaughter Dana Petrenko, 23, was killed along with her boyfriend, stood with his family at a small memorial erected in their honor.
“It feels no different today than when it happened two years ago,” he said. “We go to work, we keep on living. But we can’t shake the feeling that it’s still Oct. 7.”
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