Israel marked three years since Hamas’s October 7 assault with sombre ceremonies on Wednesday as it approaches a vote that will deliver the first electoral verdict on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since the catastrophic attack.
Early on Wednesday morning, activists laid out white silhouettes on a Tel Aviv beach representing the victims, while others stopped traffic at the time when Hamas launched its incursion into southern Israel three years earlier.
The attack killed more than 1,200 people with 250 more taken to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli figures, making it the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust. It triggered a series of wars that have since ravaged large areas of the Middle East.
“There’s still a very active sense of immense loss everywhere in this country. It doesn’t feel like post-trauma yet,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a pollster and political analyst. “It’s all too recent and too alive, and you still have new stories and materials that loved ones are only now releasing.”
Video description
Mourners gather at the Nova festival site in Reim on the third anniversary of the Hamas attacks
Netanyahu said he had lit a memorial candle in memory of the October 7 victims and added: “The nation unites on this day in longing for our loved ones.
“We will complete the mission — we have settled the score, and will continue to settle the score with all the murderers.”
Netanyahu was in office at the time of the attack and subsequently launched an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities.
On the campaign trail, ahead of closely fought parliamentary elections set for October 27, Netanyahu has been on the defensive over accusations he failed to prevent the October 7 attack.
Opponents have accused him of ignoring warnings, and more broadly of pursuing a failed containment strategy towards Hamas for years before the disaster. Netanyahu in turn has sought to portray himself as Israel’s defender against existential threats, and a leader who has “changed the face of the Middle East”.
This week Netanyahu made speeches honouring the fallen and extolling the successes of what he has sought to rebrand as Israel’s “war of redemption” — a reference to the country’s conflicts since October 7 in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran and other fronts, which the premier has pledged to “finish” if re-elected.
Speaking at the Mount Herzl national cemetery in Jerusalem on Monday — the anniversary of the attack under the Hebrew calendar — Netanyahu told the story of Karin Journo, murdered aged 24 at the Nova music festival on October 7.
Netanyahu said her father had told him: “Three teeth are all that remained of my Karin. The terrorists burned her. That is what I have left,” before adding: “Prime Minister, complete the mission. Complete the mission in the Gaza Strip.”
Netanyahu’s rivals also commemorated victims, while nodding to the magnitude of the Israeli state’s failure to prevent the attack.
On Wednesday the prime minister’s main challenger, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, travelled to hard-hit communities in Israel’s south, including a roadside shelter where dozens of young people fleeing from the Nova festival took cover on October 7.
Most were killed by Hamas gunmen, and a handful of others taken into Gaza as hostages, but not before Aner Shapira, 22, threw back at least seven grenades rolled into the shelter by his attackers. A final grenade killed him.
Standing beside Shapira’s mother inside what later came to be known as the “shelter of death”, Eisenkot — who lost his son and two nephews during the ensuing war — said her son exhibited immense bravery and leadership.
“Leadership is taking responsibility and [setting] a personal example . . . these are values that need to be emphasised for generations,” Eisenkot added, in pointed remarks that did not mention the country’s current political leaders by name.
Netanyahu has refused to take individual responsibility for his role in the lead-up to the surprise assault, despite leading the country for much of the past two decades.
All of the security chiefs in charge during the assault have either been fired or resigned, but the premier has scuttled efforts to form an independent state commission of inquiry.
Writing in the Maariv daily on Wednesday, prominent columnist Ben Caspit said Netanyahu had repeatedly asserted that the country was “on the verge of annihilation on October 7”.
But “if Israel was truly facing the danger of annihilation . . . Netanyahu is to blame for that”, Caspit wrote.
Hadas Ragolsky, a politician affiliated to the leftwing Democrats party, said that bereaved father Yoram Shpirer — who lost his son Tomer on October 7 — had said to her, with reference to the election date: “There has not been a sunrise for three years already, and there won’t be until October 27.”
On Wednesday, as memorial ceremonies continued across Israel, a crowdfunded commemorative event was taking place during the evening in Tel Aviv featuring popular musicians along with former Israeli hostages and other survivors.
On Israel’s commercial television stations, live coverage of the evening event capped a week of coverage that has included testimonials of bravery on October 7 and in the regional wars that followed, remembrances by family and friends of those slain, and streams of videos and images of the gruesome Hamas assault itself.
With less than three weeks until parliamentary elections, most polls still show Netanyahu’s far-right coalition behind the opposition, although the gap has narrowed in recent weeks and both blocs remain short of a clear majority.
Scheindlin said she was rethinking an earlier belief that the time elapsed since the October 7 attack would reduce its direct impact on the election race. A poll commissioned by Israel’s Channel 16 this week showed that 68 per cent of the public said the events of that day would affect the way they voted.
“It’s now back on the public agenda, so fresh and so prominent,” Scheindlin said. “October 7 is a permanent stain on [Netanyahu’s] legacy, it’ll always be there. He can’t wipe it out.”