Israel marks the anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks with tears and anger

Tel Aviv, Israel
CNN
—

It was 6:29 a.m. when the blaring music stopped without warning. The brief silence that followed was broken by the screams of a woman somewhere in the crowd in this remote location in the Negev Desert.

The woman and hundreds of others relived the moment in real time as terrorists stormed the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel, marking the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks in which Hamas and other militant groups killed 1,200 people and more than 250 They kidnapped others back to Gaza.

The brutality of the attack on the festival shocked the world. While the revelers danced and celebrated in the desert, numerous Hamas terrorists stormed the area, blocked escape routes and began a killing spree. They attacked groups trying to hide and murdered people as they fled. They shot victims at close range in their cars and indiscriminately fired machine guns and anti-tank weapons at those trying to escape on foot.

Last year, the site of the massacre – a remote location just a few kilometers from the Gaza Strip – was turned into a memorial.

In place of the vast open space, there are now hundreds of nearly identical cenotaphs, each bearing the name and picture of a victim.

The picture commemorating Amit Itzhak David shows a young man with a broad smile. On the anniversary of his death, his family crowded around the memorial on Monday, hugging each other and David's picture.

The 23-year-old was killed here last year shortly after returning from a trip to South America, where he was celebrating the end of his military service.

David's cousin Inbar Parnassa told CNN that the family is not often there. “It’s too difficult to be here and see all this,” she said. Parnassa and other family members all wore matching T-shirts embroidered with David's name and the sign of the horns, his favorite gesture.

Not far away, Anat Magnezi, Amit Magnezi's mother, knelt on the ground sobbing next to his photo. Amit, a music lover and former junior wrestler, was also murdered at this place.

The Nova Music Festival massacre was by far the deadliest of the October 7 attacks, claiming nearly a third of the victims. There were so many dead and kidnapped that it took Israeli authorities months to determine how many people were killed there.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Sunday that 347 people, most of them young, died at the site and about 40 others were kidnapped.

Gabriel Barel's mother, three brothers and an army best friend all appeared in matching tops with his photo. Barel's brother Yeoda said the family initially believed he had survived the attack and been taken to Gaza.

But a few weeks later their hopes were dashed when Barel's body was found. After shooting Barel, his attackers set his car on fire. His remains were so badly burned that it took many weeks before he was identified.

Witnesses to the massacre say other victims were raped and subjected to sexual violence by Hamas. Hamas has denied the allegations, but the evidence of sexual violence comes from various sources – survivors who witnessed the events, first responders, medical and forensic experts. The United Nations and the International Criminal Court have presented evidence that Hamas attackers committed sexual crimes.

Monday marked the one-year anniversary of Hamas' terror attacks and a year since Israel began its war against the militant group in the Gaza Strip.

Since then, more than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza. The war has unleashed a major humanitarian disaster, displacing nearly all of the Strip's 2.2 million residents.

As people gathered across Israel, reminders kept coming that the war in Gaza is still raging. Loud bursts of fire echoed across southern Israel throughout the morning as the IDF hit targets in the Gaza Strip.

Israel has said its goal in Gaza is to eliminate Hamas and return the remaining hostages, but neither has been achieved. In fact, at the start of the anniversary events, several rockets were fired from Gaza into Israel, injuring two people.

Although increasingly rare, rocket launches like this show that militants in Gaza are still capable of attacking Israel even after a year of intense war.

During a memorial ceremony at Kibbutz Nir Oz, the plume of smoke from rockets fired from Gaza was clearly visible in the sky. The agricultural community of 400 residents was another target of the October 7 attacks. One in four residents was murdered or kidnapped.

Daniel Lifshitz lit a candle at the grave of his friend Dolev Yehud and told CNN that all members of the close-knit community were affected by the attack.

Yehud was a volunteer medic in Nir Oz and when he realized that the kibbutz was under attack and there were wounded people there, he rushed to provide aid. He was killed, but his remains were not found and identified until June. Yehud's pregnant wife Sigal and three children survived the massacre. His fourth child was born just nine days later.

Yehud's sister Arbel was kidnapped and taken to Gaza along with her boyfriend Ariel Cunio, Cunio's brother David, David's wife Sharon Alony Cunio and their three-year-old twin daughters.

Alony Cunio and the two girls were released under a ceasefire deal agreed in November, but the rest of the group remains captive.

“Dolev’s sister is still in Gaza. She is one of four or five civilian women who still live there. The most important thing now is to bring her and the others back,” he said.

Lifshitz grew up on the kibbutz and although he left the kibbutz when he was 16, he still has close ties there. His grandparents Oded and Yocheved were abducted from their kibbutz homes during the attack.

Yocheved Lifshitz, who was 85 at the time of his abduction, spent more than two weeks in captivity. She was released along with her neighbor and friend Nurit Cooper, 79, but both she and Cooper's husbands were held in Gaza.

Nurit Cooper and her family were told in June that Amiram Cooper, her 84-year-old husband and one of the kibbutz's founders, was no longer alive. His body still lies in Gaza.

“We cannot continue as long as there are still people from the kibbutz there. Time stopped here,” Amat Moshe, whose grandparents were residents of the kibbutz, told CNN at the Nir Oz cemetery.

Last October, Moshe's grandmother, Adina Moshe, watched as Hamas militants stormed her home and murdered her husband, David, before kidnapping her and taking her to Gaza. She was released under a ceasefire agreement in November last year.

During Monday's memorial ceremony, Adina sat at David's grave and sobbed, her body slumping as if crushed by the horrors of the past year. Her daughter Maya Shoshani Moshe rushed to her side and tried to comfort her before she burst into tears herself.

Moshe has previously spoken publicly about their ordeal in Gaza and in the past made emotional appeals directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to repatriate the remaining hostages.

“I ask you again, Mr. Netanyahu, everything is in your hands, you are the one who can do it, and I am very afraid that if you continue on this path, there will be no way forward.” Hostages must be released ” she said in February after Netanyahu rejected Hamas's proposed terms of a ceasefire and hostage-taking agreement.

She expressed the views of many Israelis who are angry with Netanyahu. Mass protests against the prime minister and his government are again the order of the day across the country, and anger erupted into the public several times at Monday's commemorations.

Earlier in the day, family members of the hostages marched to Netanyahu's Jerusalem residence and sounded a siren for two minutes at his front door.

Netanyahu did not appear at the event or at any gatherings other than a small ceremony in Jerusalem.

As hundreds of people gathered in Tel Aviv on Monday evening to remember the victims of the attacks, politics should be taboo. But it quickly became clear that for many of the family members who spoke at the event, politics is too tied to the fate of their loved ones.

Jonathan Shimriz, the brother of Alon Shimriz, who was taken hostage and later killed in a failed rescue operation in Gaza, called for a government investigation into the handling of the hostage crisis.

“There is no personal example, no vision, no leadership, no responsibility,” he told the crowd.