GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images
Memorial ceremonies were held across Israel to mark the one-year anniversary of the October 7 Hamas massacre in which they murdered over 1200 Israelis, the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
At the site of the Nova festival, where roughly 360 of the victims of the massacre were murdered, Israeli President Isaac Herzog declared on Monday morning, “We will remember this day forever, and we will always remember who kidnapped, who raped and who slaughtered.”
Outside of the Hangar 11 event hall in Tel Aviv on Sunday, an area was set apart for relatives of the murdered to light candles in their memory.
“Time flies. I don’t believe it’s been a year. It’s like a dream I want to wake up from,” Ofri Rahum, whose sister, four months pregnant, was murdered, as well as her sister’s fiancé and her uncle. “It’s as if they went on a trip, and we are waiting for them to come back,” she added, The Times of Israel reported.
Orin Zach-Gantz, whose daughter Eden Zacharia was murdered, said, “I can’t digest that my beloved daughter was shot on her way home, while in her car. She had left the house to go to a beautiful festival, of music and peace.”
“I am a bereaved mother, but I don’t accept that word,” she continued. “They ask me how it feels after a year, but I am still stuck in the seventh of October. The world goes on, but for me, time stands still.”
“No doubt they murdered my daughter,” she said. “I swear to you Eden… they won’t win the war.”
Nir Schlesinger, whose father Asaf was murdered on October 7, said, “There are no words in this world that can encompass what we went through and are still going through,” saying to his deceased father, “You won’t be at my wedding… We won’t laugh together anymore about silly things, you won’t remind me to take care of my car, and we won’t talk enough.”
The event ended with “Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem.
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