After losing mother and daughter on Oct. 7, Galit Dan says she does not seek revenge, but healing

By Jessica Steinberg

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7 October 2025, 11:09 pm

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Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center

Bereaved mother Galit Dan speaks at the Bereaved Families Memorial Ceremony marking two years since the October 7, 2023, massacre, in Tel Aviv's Yarkon Park, on October 7, 2025. (Benny Rutloy/Hostages and Missing Families Forum)

Galit Dan, whose 13-year-old daughter, Noya Dan, was killed alongside her grandmother, Galit’s mother, Carmela Dan, in the Hamas invasion of Kibbutz Nir Oz, speaks at Israel’s national memorial ceremony in Tel Aviv marking two years since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught.

Dan says she is praying that there will be no more bereaved mothers, no more death.

“We do not seek revenge, we seek healing,” says Dan, to cheers from the 30,000-strong crowd. “We want to defeat fear and find hope. To overcome hatred and reconnect to our humanity. To overcome rage and reconnect to compassion. To awaken once more the values that my grandparents came here for.”