Israel one year after the Hamas massacre: an insight

Even before the sun has risen, artillery and machine gun fire hammers from the nearby Gaza Strip. Apache attack helicopters buzz in the sky. Then the song that was played exactly a year ago in this place in the Negev desert blares from the speakers on the stage, before the Hamas terrorists launched their attack at 6:29 a.m. and slaughtered over 360 young people at the Nova Festival.

Exactly one year later, the relatives of the murdered and a crowd of journalists gathered at dawn in Reim, where the party was taking place. It is one of dozens of commemorative events taking place across Israel on this day.

After the loud techno has faded away, there will be a minute’s silence – that’s the plan. After a few seconds, a woman with short, dark hair and a black T-shirt lets out a shrill scream, her shaking hands in front of her face: the mother of a victim can no longer hold back her pain. Just three minutes later, the Israeli alarm app sounds a warning beep – a year after its massacre, Hamas is again firing rockets into Israel’s south.

The Israeli army says it has thwarted a major Hamas rocket attack that was supposed to begin at 6:30 a.m. Later in the morning, Palestinian Islamists fired five rockets towards Tel Aviv. On Monday, Israel also ordered most of the remaining residents in the northern Gaza Strip to leave the area. It is the most extensive evacuation order in the north since the Israeli ground offensive began at the end of October 2023.

Relatives cannot complete the closure

Although all that remains of Gaza is ruins, Hamas remains indomitable. Israel’s President Yitzhak Herzog walks through the crowd – but he can’t do more than hug his relatives and furrow his brow to ease their suffering. One year after the catastrophe, there is no end in sight.

Ifat Genut still feels like she can get some closure today. “As far as a family can come to terms with when their own daughter is dead,” says the 43-year-old with long, brown hair that falls out of her headscarf. Her 22-year-old daughter Aviya was murdered at the festival. “She just came back from South America and had been living at home for two months,” she says.

 

On the afternoon of October 7, 2023, Genut and her husband drove to the festival site to look for their daughter. It was only on site that she realized the extent of the attack. “We saw a lot of dead terrorists on the side of the road – and then realized that the army was still fighting against them.” It was only after a long week of uncertainty that Genut learned from the army that Aviya had been murdered by Hamas. Today there are no more bodies on the site, but instead hundreds of small memorials with photos of the victims.

“They killed my little brother”

Bar Arbib also only found out after five days that the terrorists had killed her little brother Offek. He was only 21 years old. The 25-year-old sits on the festival site next to a large flag that shows the picture of her brother in uniform. “It’s still October 7th for us,” she says. Her older brother sits next to her, sobbing behind his sunglasses and repeatedly puffing on his e-cigarette.

 

The detonations from the nearby Gaza Strip don’t bother them. “It’s good that we hear the explosions,” she says. «That’s what Offek heard. This makes me feel closer to him.”

Arbib doesn’t think about what the year-long bombardment of the Gaza Strip is doing to the people on the other side of the wall, just five kilometers away. Israel has suffered thousands of civilian casualties in its war against Hamas.

“At this moment I don’t care about my enemies at all,” she says of the people in Gaza. “It was these people who killed my little brother.” Arbib apparently does not make a distinction between Hamas and the civilian population in Gaza.

October 7th remains an open wound

About ten kilometers from the Nova Festival site is Nir Oz. It is one of the kibbutzim hit hardest on October 7th. Here alone, 46 people were murdered and Hamas took 71 hostages.

Behind the entrance to the kibbutz stands a destroyed house that is still charred. In the cemetery there are over a hundred plastic chairs set up in front of a large Israeli flag. On a stage, two residents read out the names of those killed and abducted in trembling voices, speeches are made and songs are sung.

 

Rotem Cooper also no longer believes in a clear distinction between civilians in Gaza and Hamas. “We stuck with it for a long time,” says Cooper in the shade of a large tree. “Today it is clear that Hamas’ actions were strongly supported by the population in Gaza.”

 

Cooper’s parents were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7th. He himself grew up in Nir Oz and lived on the kibbutz until he was 24 years old. He found out about his parents’ kidnapping in his new home in California. His mother Nurit was released by Hamas in October, but his father Amiram was murdered in Gaza – his body is still there.

Like many residents of the kibbutzim near the Gaza Strip, the people of Nir Oz believed in peace with the Palestinians and advocated understanding rather than violence. This idealism has now been shattered.

Cooper is nevertheless disappointed with the right-wing, religious Israeli government. Not only did the government allow the massacre in the first place and missed many opportunities for a hostage agreement. They are also holding back the money needed to rebuild the kibbutz. “The government has few supporters here – there is no other explanation for the behavior.”

Israel cannot heal as long as the hostages and the remains of those abducted are still in the Gaza Strip, Cooper adds. “We will most likely never get all the hostages back,” says the 58-year-old with sad eyes. At the moment, Israel and Hamas are not even negotiating an agreement. “That’s why October 7th will remain an open wound for Israel – for at least two generations.”