The sounds of helicopters and artillery fire echoed from nearby Gaza as families lit candles at a memorial service in southern Israel to mark the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attacks.
The reverberations from the ongoing fighting served as an immediate and painful reminder of the wars sparked by the Hamas onslaught that left 1,205 dead on the Israeli side, with most being civilians.
Hamas militants overran swathes of southern Israel, targeting civilians across kibbutzim, small communities, and a music festival. Some 251 people were captured and taken as hostages to the Gaza Strip by militants, with 97 still held captive in the coastal territory, including 34 that the Israeli military says are dead.
At the Nova rave site, President Isaac Herzog began the day with a moment of silence at 06:29 a.m., marking the minute the attack began with thousands of rockets fired from Gaza to provide air cover for militants storming across the border a year ago.
“October 7, 2023, is a day that should be remembered in infamy. Thousands of cruel terrorists broke into our homes, violated our families, burned, chopped, raped, and hijacked our citizens, our brothers and sisters,” said the president. “This is a scar on humanity.”
In the fields at Kibbutz Reim, at least 370 people were killed when Hamas fighters attacked festival-goers en masse and abducted several others, making it the single deadliest site on October 7.
Families, wearing T-shirts with the faces of the missing, embraced each other and took pictures as the trance song that played at the rave during the moment of the attack echoed in homage to the music festival.
“The feelings for all the people of Israel are very difficult. We hope that from this difficult decline we have reached, from now on there will only be an ascension,” said Israel Livman, whose nephew was killed during the attack on the festival.