Israelis mark one-year anniversary of Hamas attack

Israelis were holding vigils and sombre ceremonies on Monday to mark a year since the October 7 Hamas attack which sparked the war in Gaza.

The surprise cross-border attack, which caught Israel unprepared on a major Jewish holiday, shattered Israelis’ sense of security and shook their faith in their leaders and their military.

Its aftershocks still ripple one year later.

The war in Gaza rages on, Israel is fighting a new war against Hezbollah, which began attacking Israel on October 8, and an escalating conflict with Iran — which backs both Hamas and Hezbollah — threatens to drag the region into a far more dangerous conflagration.

In Gaza, which is still buckling under the weight of the ongoing war, no formal commemorative event is planned.

The massive destruction and displacement are a constant reminder of the retaliatory Israeli assault on the territory, which has no end in sight.

Israelis were expected to flock to ceremonies, cemeteries and memorial sites around the country, remembering the hundreds of victims, the dozens of hostages still in captivity and the soldiers wounded or killed trying to save them.

At 6.30am — the exact hour Hamas launched its attack — the families of those killed at the Nova music festival, joined by Israeli president Isaac Herzog, gathered at the site where almost 400 revellers were gunned down and from where many others were taken hostage.

After briefly playing the same trance music that was blared during the festival, hundreds of family members and friends of the victims stood for a moment of silence. One woman’s piercing wail broke the silence as booms echoed from the fighting in Gaza, just a few kilometres away.

“When we are here, we are near our loved ones, this is the time they danced and fled,” said Sigal Bar-On, whose niece Yuval Bar-On, 25, and her fiancee Moshe Shuva, 34, were supposed to get married in December 2023.

At 6.31am, four projectiles were launched from Gaza toward the Israeli communities that came under fierce assault last year, the Israeli military said.

The ceremony was not disrupted.

At that same time, the families of hostages still held in Gaza — about 100, a third of whom are said to be dead — gathered near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence and stood during a two-minute siren, replicating a custom from the most solemn dates on the Israeli calendar, Holocaust Remembrance and Memorial Day.

“We are here to remind (the hostages) that we haven’t forgotten them,” said Shiri Albag, whose daughter Liri is among the captives.

“We won’t let you (Netanyahu) rest until all of them are back, every last one of them,” she told the crowd, which hoisted the faces of the hostages.

An official state ceremony focusing on acts of bravery and hope is set to be aired on Monday evening.

The ceremony was pre-recorded without an audience — apparently to avoid potential disruptions — in the southern city of Ofakim, where more than two dozen Israelis were killed.

But anger at the government’s failure to prevent the attack and enduring frustration that it has not returned the remaining hostages prompted the families of those killed and taken captive to hold a separate event in Tel Aviv.

That event had been set to draw tens of thousands of people but was scaled back drastically over prohibitions on large gatherings due to the threat of missile attacks from Iran and Hezbollah.

Hamas’ attack, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and dragged some 250 into Gaza as hostages, continues to cast a shadow over daily life in Israel.

Dozens of hostages remain in captivity, with no end in sight to their struggle. Border communities have been upended and tens of thousands were displaced. Soldiers are being killed in Gaza and Lebanon.

Israel faces ongoing international criticism over its wartime conduct, with two world courts examining its actions.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, displaced most of the territory’s 2.3 million population and sparked a humanitarian crisis that has led to widespread hunger.

It has also left the tiny coastal enclave ravaged beyond recognition as US-led ceasefire efforts have repeatedly sputtered.