Israel Marks Third Anniversary of October 7 Attack as Elections Loom and Gaza Strikes Continue

Israel on Wednesday observed the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, holding somber commemorations at the sites of the worst violence while new airstrikes sounded across the Gaza border and political campaigning for upcoming elections intensified.

The anniversary fell at a charged moment for the country, with the memory of the deadliest single day in its history colliding with an active election campaign in which the government's handling of the war and its aftermath has become a central dividing line.

At the Nova music festival site, where militants arriving in trucks and paragliders opened fire around dawn three years earlier, relatives of the victims stood with bowed heads in a silent tribute. The attack there began at 6:29 am, and the timing has become a painful marker for many families.

Katia Zohar, whose daughter Bar was killed at the age of 23, described that minute as the one "that changed our lives forever." She said she recalls every detail, including the first call from her daughter asking to be picked up because missiles were in the air, followed by a second call from the road in which Bar screamed that people were shooting at her.

Not all of the tributes were silent. Anna Davitashvili, 53, honored her eldest son Shaun, who was killed at 25 alongside friends at the festival, by playing the final techno track that partygoers had been dancing to when the assault began. Speaking through tears, she said she felt his presence and expressed deep sorrow that she could not save him or help him escape the massacre.

Grief was also visible at Kfar Aza, another kibbutz that suffered mass killings on October 7, where families gathered to remember those lost. At both the festival site and the kibbutz, AFP correspondents reported hearing loud explosions from across the border in Gaza as Israel conducted fresh strikes, despite a ceasefire that has officially been in place for the past year.

Gaza officials said five people were killed in the strikes. Much of the territory has been reduced to rubble over the course of the war, which Israel launched in retaliation for the October 7 attack.

In Tel Aviv on Wednesday evening, survivors and bereaved families organized a memorial ceremony in a park featuring songs, tributes and video presentations. The event, carried live across Israel's main television channels, drew a crowd of several thousand people.

The ceremony was co-hosted by Eli Sharabi, a former hostage who lost his wife and two daughters in the attack and whose brother was killed while held captive in Gaza. He told the crowd that the evening was an embrace of the memory of those murdered and those who fell in battle, as well as of the wounded who continue to bear scars.

Israel's leading opposition figures attended the Tel Aviv event, including Gadi Eisenkot, the principal rival to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Their presence underscored how the anniversary has become intertwined with an election campaign in which the October 7 failures remain a searing issue.

At the Nova site, former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who is seeking to unseat Netanyahu, told reporters that the attack represented "a colossal failure of the state of Israel," a state he said was established to defend Jews in their land. The center-left Democrats Party published online footage of the attack without commentary, while its leader, Yair Golan, argued that a government which has not destroyed Hamas's rule in three years is a danger to Israel.

Netanyahu marked the day privately, lighting a memorial candle at his office in Jerusalem. In a statement, he said the nation was united in remembrance and longing for those it has lost, and vowed that Israel would complete its mission and hold all the perpetrators to account.

US President Donald Trump said he had spoken with Netanyahu and described October 7 as "a horrible tragedy." Speaking to reporters as he left the White House, Trump added that the other side is paying a very big price for what it did on that day.

Hamas, for its part, struck a defiant tone on the third anniversary. In a statement, the group called October 7 "a glorious day of our people's history" and described it as a natural response to, and the culmination of, decades of bitter suffering.

According to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, the October 7 attack killed 1,221 people. Militants also dragged 251 hostages into Gaza, 44 of whom were already dead at the time of their capture.

The subsequent Israeli military offensive has displaced nearly the entire population of Gaza and killed more than 74,200 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, whose figures are regarded as reliable by the United Nations. The scale of the destruction and the toll on civilians have drawn sustained international scrutiny, even as Israel maintains that its campaign is a necessary response to the October 7 assault.

Three years on, the anniversary has laid bare how unresolved the war's central questions remain. The ceasefire that took effect a year ago has not ended violence in Gaza, hostages and their families continue to press for answers, and the political class that governed on October 7 is now asking voters for another mandate. For the families gathered at Nova, Kfar Aza and Tel Aviv, the day was above all a private reckoning with loss, set against a national debate over who should lead Israel next and how the country should define the war that October 7 began.