Eurasia Press & News
Rockets from Gaza target border region and Tel Aviv in heaviest attack in months, as 1st anniversary of earthshaking assault is marked amid widening war and continuing hostage crisis
One year after Hamas-led terrorists embarked on a brutal rampage that shook Israel to its core, a deeply scarred nation stopped on Monday to mark the unfathomable tragedy, still buffeted by violent forces unleashed that dark day.
Prohibited by the military from using Memorial Day sirens to mark the anniversary of the deadliest attack in the country’s history, thousands nonetheless stood silently at 6:29 a.m.
The time marked the minute that Hamas terrorists had begun launching massive volleys of rockets at Israel, providing air cover for thousands of terrorists speeding across the suddenly pregnable border by land, air and sea and kicking off the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
A year later, the terror group, decimated by war and based in an enclave largely reduced to rubble, managed to fire a handful of rockets into Israel, even as it continues to hold approximately 100 hostages it has used as bargaining chips for a ceasefire, a full IDF withdrawal and the mass release of Palestinian security prisoners.
The rockets, fired at Israeli communities near the border and at the Tel Aviv area, were a small fraction of the firepower Hamas once possessed, with the IDF claiming to have carried out airstrikes around dawn to thwart a larger attack.
Triggering blaring alarm klaxons rather than the plaintive wail of the remembrance siren, Hamas marked the anniversary at 6:30 a.m. with a volley of four rockets at communities adjacent to the southern Gaza Strip. Three of the rockets were shot down by the army, while the fourth fell in open land, the Israel Defense Forces said.
The IDF said that moments before Monday morning’s rocket attack, warplanes struck sites in the Strip where Hamas operatives were preparing to launch a major attack at Israel.
Hours later, sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and several suburbs as the crowded metro region was targeted by a volley of five rockets, according to the IDF. At least two rockets managed to breach Israel’s air defenses, impacting in Holon and Kfar Habad east of the city.
Two women were lightly wounded by shrapnel, the Magen David Adom rescue service said.
The rocket fire came a day after the IDF warned Hamas would likely try to carry out attacks on the first anniversary of the October 7 massacre, and as thousands of Israelis traveled to the Gaza border region for ceremonies to mark a year since the worst attack in the nation’s history, visiting communities still in ruins a year after terrorists turned them into warzones.
Both attacks were claimed by Hamas’s armed wing, which also published a missive marking the anniversary of what it said was the terror group’s successful penetration of Israeli communities and the killings of soldiers and “settlers,” a word it uses for all Israeli civilians.
Some 1,200 people were killed last year when approximately 3,000 heavily armed Hamas-led fighters invaded communities near the border in an unparalleled outbreak of violence that has come to be known simply as October 7. Aside from the murders, terrorists carried out brutal atrocities such as torture and rape and abducted 251 people. Israel says 97 of them remain captive, along with four others held in Gaza for around a decade. The tally includes the bodies of dozens killed on October 7 or while in captivity.
Though there was no national memorial siren to mark a moment of silence Monday, as on Holocaust Remembrance Day and Memorial Day, many stood silent at 6:29 and some radio and TV stations observed the moment as well.
On Jerusalem’s Azza Street, relatives of the hostages and hundreds of supporters stood down the road from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence and sounded a two-minute siren at 6:29 a.m. Some stood stoically as the klaxon wailed, while others wept quietly.
At least 20 family members of hostages still held in Gaza were present during the early-morning gathering.
“It’s been a nightmare of a year,” said Eli Albag, whose daughter Liri Albag is one of five surveillance soldiers kidnapped from the Nahal Oz base.
“We won’t remember the [military] operations,” he said. “What we’ll remember forever are the captives.”
Shai Wenkert, whose son Omer Wenkert was abducted from the Nova festival outside Kibbutz Re’im, recalled hearing Omer move around the house at 3 a.m. on October 7 a year ago, getting his things together to leave for the doomed rave.
“A year hasn’t passed for me,” said the father. “There is no recovery until the hostages are home. Who wants to live in a country where they don’t protect you?”
At the site of the festival, which has been transformed into a massive memorial for the more than 360 slain partygoers, relatives, friends and others held a moment of silence alongside President Isaac Herzog.
Minutes earlier, those in attendance heard the final song played at the rave before partygoers were forced to flee, a thumping drum and bass track since released as a tribute to festival victims.
Organizers said they were prevented from playing an actual siren by Home Front Command directives.
At the Knesset and most official buildings, flags were lowered to half-staff at 6:29.
The Knesset said it would hold committee meetings on issues surrounding the massacre throughout the day. At night, the parliament building will be lit by a yellow light to honor the hostages.
