Israelis gathered on Monday to mourn those killed or abducted on the deadliest day in the country’s history.
It was a day of vigils.
Israelis gathered on Monday to mourn the anniversary of the deadliest day in the country’s history, the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre that set off the longest war that Israel has known, one that was still raging in Gaza and Lebanon amid the solemnity of Israel’s commemorations.
“That Saturday, we awoke to a different country, one which we had never known before,” Gali Idan, whose husband, Tzachi, is still held hostage in Gaza, told mourners at a ceremony for bereaved families in Tel Aviv. “It’s the same flag, the same people — but it’s not where we used to live.”
As dawn broke over the Re’im forest in southern Israel, the site of a music festival where hundreds were killed and many kidnapped during the attacks last October, a bereaved mother’s cries broke a minute of silence for the victims. Explosions a short distance away were audible as the Israeli military carried out airstrikes across the border in Gaza.
The backdrop to the vigils was the numbing numbers of lives lost over the past year: about 1,200 killed in Israel in the Oct. 7 attacks. More than 40,000 Palestinians killed during Israel’s counterattack in Gaza. The war counts as the deadliest in a century of conflict between Arabs and Jews, 12 months of profound loss and trauma for both Israelis and Palestinians.
Among those mourning in Re’im were Michael and Lisa Marlowe, who are from Britain and whose son, Jake Aaron Marlowe, 26, had moved to Israel and was working with an unarmed security team at the music festival when he was killed.
He was shot nine times, his father said. Now, Mr. Marlowe said, “I grieve constantly.”
