Israel commemorated this Monday the attacks of October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian group Hamas launched a large and surprising attack against communities in the south of the country, near the Gaza Strip. In these small isolated agricultural settlements, called in Hebrew kibbutzacts of tribute were held for the more than 1,200 people murdered that day and for those still kidnapped a year later.
Relatives of the victims, as well as survivors of the attacks and residents of these towns, participated in the tributes that began at dawn, when militants from Hamas and other Islamist groups began their assault on October 7. ‘last year. It was a Saturday, a holiday for Jews, but also a national holiday, and everyone was at home, sleeping or dancing at an electronic music festival.
Next to kibbutz Re’im, families remember the nearly 400 young people murdered during the Nova festival, as well as those kidnapped in this entertainment venue that became hell in just a few minutes. At 6:30 a.m., electronic music resumed in the park outside Re’im where the party was taking place, but it was interrupted to mark the moment of the attack a year ago.
To this day, there is still no certainty about how many people have lost their lives, how many have been kidnapped and, of those, how many are still alive in the hands of their captors in the Gaza Strip . The approximate figure of 400 makes Nova Day the place where the most people died on October 7 of all the communities and military posts attacked.
They were all young people, boys and girls, whose faces are visible on the hundreds of simple altars placed in the park. DJ Kido’s is his mixing console, since that night he was playing music. Other people working at the festival, such as security guards, also lost their lives. Yonathan Mordechai went with two friends from Tel Aviv to Re’im to dance and have a good time, his grandmother Stella tells elDiario.es. “They killed him and kidnapped him, they didn’t leave him here. We have no body, we have nowhere to cry,” he adds with his photo. He was the eldest of his nine grandchildren: he was 21 when he died, he would have 22 today.
After the attack, Yonathan’s body did not appear in the park and his relatives thought he had been kidnapped; but two months later the authorities informed them of his death. Now Stella wants his remains back so she can say goodbye, but she doesn’t have much hope of that happening anytime soon. “I don’t know if they’re going to bring us his bones, if they’re going to bring him back to us. “Who knows…”
Of the hundred hostages still held in Gaza, the deaths of 36 have been confirmed. That same Monday, the Hostage Families Forum revealed that another young man kidnapped during the Nova festival, Idan Shtivi, is dead and his body is on the premises. hands of the kidnappers. The corpses also have value in negotiations, because relatives want to bury them, and families denounce that some of those who died on October 7 were taken to Gaza already dead.
“This year has been unbearable”
“This year has been unbearable,” the forum said in a statement. “It is inconceivable that 101 hostages remain captive in the hands of the terrorist organization Hamas, in appalling conditions. “Time is running out,” the group assured and urged continued pressure on Hamas to accept a deal for the release of the 101 kidnapped people – most of the other 140 were exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in the Israeli prisons and remained at large as of late November.
The Hostages’ Families Forum has organized various tribute events over the past three days, including the demonstrations on Saturday evening, which have been repeated every week for months to demand the release of the hostages. On Saturday, October 5, there were not as many people as other times because exceptional security measures were in effect limiting crowds in public places in different regions of Israel. Authorities are on alert for the possibility of a new attack this October 7 and this has affected commemorative events, in addition to political divisions.
The main event of this Monday was organized by the group which brings together the families of the dead on October 7 and since that day until today, but the government organized another official tribute, in which the families of the dead and hostages boycotted. Everyone blames Benjamin Netanyahu’s executive for not having assumed its responsibilities in the tragedy of a year ago and for not having done enough to ensure that the hostages return alive as quickly as possible.
The group calling itself “the Grieving Families” is led by Yonatan Shamriz, whose brother Alon was accidentally shot dead by Israeli forces in Gaza last December.
Netanyahu and his ministers – who insisted on continuing the offensive on Gaza and the massacre instead of reaching a ceasefire agreement that would make the release of the hostages possible – were the protagonists of the official event, which was recorded and broadcast on social networks. Monday evening, after the ceremony for “bereaved families” in Tel Aviv.
For its part, the Hostage Families Forum demonstrated early Monday in front of the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the head of state, Isaac Herzog, attended the events of the Nova festival and other neighboring kibbutzim, such as Beeri.
The war doesn’t stop
The Israeli war machine did not stop on this day of mourning, not even when an exact year of the attack was marked in different countries. kibbutz and places that were attacked at dawn. Before dawn, warplanes bombarded the Gaza Strip and the army reported in a statement that it had hit Hamas’ rocket launch positions and underground infrastructure; In addition, he assured that the Islamist group had “the intention of firing projectiles against Israeli territory” and that the army “immediately thwarted this threat”.
During and after the tribute to the victims of the Nova festival, artillery fire did not stop from the Israeli border towards the interior of the Gaza Strip, where Netanyahu’s army assures that it continues to fight the Hamas and that she will not stop until she puts an end to her organization.
The Islamists fired several rockets during the day, triggering air raid sirens, but nothing compared to the thousands of projectiles that fell on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Yemen’s Houthi rebels, another armed group that have been acting for a year have attacked Israel, in support of the Palestinians – they sent a surface-to-surface missile towards Israel, but it was intercepted and caused no damage. In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) assured that they were “ready to defend the State of Israel against any threat, on any front.”
Sirens also sounded in the north of the country, due to the arrival of more than 130 projectiles from Lebanon (according to army data), where Israel is conducting an intense bombing and field campaign. On Monday, the Israeli military announced it would soon launch operations on Lebanon’s southern coast and ordered residents to stay away from beaches and the sea in a 60-kilometer strip along the Mediterranean.
Between Sunday and Monday afternoon, 22 people were killed and more than 100 injured by Israeli attacks, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health. In total, since the start of Tel Aviv’s escalation against the Shiite group Hezbollah, 2,083 people have lost their lives, 9,869 have been injured and 1.2 million have been displaced from their homes.
Gaza death toll most tragic after a year of massacres due to the Israeli offensivewhich left some 42,000 Palestinians dead and nearly 100,000 injured, in addition to widespread destruction and starvation. On Monday alone, 77 people died in the Gaza Strip, according to local authorities.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres deplored the violence that has “engulfed” the Middle East region since October 7, 2023 and declared that “it is time to free the hostages and silence the guns”, but this moment does not seem to have arrived yet, not even for Israel or its enemies.
