People stand near the Dizengoff Fountain, filled with red dye, in the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv, on October 7, 2026, to mark the third anniversary of the Hamas October 7 attack. (Credit: Jack Guez/AFP)
Israel commemorated Wednesday the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack, the deadliest day in the country’s history, with this year’s anniversary taking place amid a turbulent political climate ahead of the Oct. 27 parliamentary elections and renewed Israeli strikes on Gaza, AFP reported.
In Re’im, at the site of the Nova music festival, which was attacked by Hamas-led gunmen during the assault, relatives of victims observed a minute of silence at 6:29 a.m. (3:29 a.m. GMT), the exact time the attack began. More than 360 people were killed at the festival.
“That was the minute that changed our lives forever,” Katia Zohar, whose 23-year-old daughter Bar was killed at Nova, told AFP. “I remember everything,” she said, recalling the moment her daughter called asking her to come get her because missiles were in the air, before calling again from the road, screaming that she was being shot at.
This year’s commemorations are taking place amid an election campaign ahead of the Oct. 27 parliamentary elections. They are the first since the Hamas attack and since a fragile ceasefire in Gaza came into effect last October. Gaza, devastated by the war Israel launched following the attack, continues to come under Israeli airstrikes.
Ceremonies were planned throughout the day at several locations across Israel to commemorate the victims of the attack, which killed 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally. Another 251 people were abducted and taken to Gaza, including 44 bodies.
Calls for inquiry
Three years later, calls continue in Israel for an independent commission of inquiry into the security failures surrounding the attack. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who has criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to prevent the attack, joined the commemorations at Nova. “It was a colossal failure of the State of Israel,” Bennett said. At 6:29 a.m., the left-wing opposition Democrats party launched a website broadcasting Israeli news channels’ coverage as it aired on the morning of Oct. 7, 2023.
“We must not allow any entity to reshape our memory. The images of civilians who stood up and acted when the state did not respond,” party leader Yair Golan wrote on X.
Amid portraits of victims, 53-year-old Anna Davitashvili paid tribute to her eldest son, Shaun, who was killed at age 25 at Nova alongside his friends, by playing the last techno track partygoers were dancing to during the attack.
“I miss him,” she said, with tears in her eyes. Bezalel Slavin, 74, lost his daughter in the attack. He now helps his son-in-law, a survivor, raise their three children. “Life must go on, what else can we do?” he said.
Also present at the site, Bruno Retailleau, a candidate for the French presidential election, said Hamas had “disfigured” the Palestinian cause with the attack, which has deeply divided public opinion around the world.
Hamas calls Oct. 7 ‘a glorious day’
Hamas, although weakened by the war, still controls parts of the Gaza Strip. On Wednesday, the Palestinian group described Oct. 7 as “a glorious day in the history of our people.”
Israel launched a major offensive in Gaza in retaliation for the attack, killing more than 74,200 people, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.
AFP journalists in Re’im, near the Gaza border, heard loud explosions coming from the territory on Wednesday. Three people were killed in Israeli airstrikes, according to hospitals in Gaza. The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains dire, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still living in tents or temporary shelters.
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