Three coalition members back celebrities’ compromises in Oct. 7 memorial fracas
As tensions over dueling ceremonies continue to rise, MKs Illouz, Sukkot back move to stagger memorials, while lawmaker Saada favors replacing Regev with three bereaved women
Three coalition members on Wednesday expressed support for a pair of celebrity-backed compromises to a bitter dispute over the first annual memorial marking the October 7 Hamas onslaught.
Likud MK Dan Illouz and Religious Zionism MK Zvi Sukkot called on the government to accept author and TV personality Hanoch Daum’s proposal to hold two ceremonies — a state-sponsored memorial and an alternative ceremony by some hostage families angry at the government — at different times. Opposition members, including Labor MK Naama Lazimi and National Unity MKs Benny Gantz and Chili Tropper, also expressed support for Daum’s offer.
Meanwhile, MK Moshe Saada of Likud tweeted his support for singer Idan Amedi’s proposal, to place three bereaved women in charge of the state memorial, instead of Transportation Minister Miri Regev, whom some families have accused of attempting to whitewash the government’s failures leading up to October 7.
The dispute over the memorials has emerged as highly divisive in recent weeks, with most Gaza border towns and hostage families refusing to cooperate with the ceremony organized by a government they accuse of significant failures before, on, and since the Hamas onslaught. The state ceremony is slated to be pre-recorded and have no live audience, another issue that has irked the alternative ceremony’s planners.
Presenting a “proposal for calming the spirits” on his popular Facebook page on Wednesday, Daum — who has been tapped to emcee the families’ memorial — said the state’s pre-recorded program should be held before the alternative event, so “there will be no clash, God forbid, of ceremony with ceremony.”
Meanwhile, the Ynet news site reported that Amedi, a well-known actor and singer who was seriously wounded in January while fighting in Gaza, proposed to Regev that she recuse herself in favor of the trio of Iris Haim, whose son Yotam Haim was accidentally killed by the IDF in Gaza in December when escaping Hamas captivity; Maya Ohana Moreno, the widow of commando Emmanuel Moreno, who was killed in Lebanon during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict; and Galit Waldman, the mother of Maj. Ariel Ben Moshe, a commando who was killed fighting Hamas terrorists in Israel on October 7.
It was unclear when Amedi made the offer. On Sunday, he called on Regev to accept President Isaac Herzog’s offer to lead the ceremony — which the minister rejected — and slammed her for characterizing criticism of the state memorial as “noise.”
Saada, writing in support of “hero of Israel” Amedi’s proposal, said, “I call on the prime minister: Announce today that the [state] ceremony will be held in accordance with the plan Amedi proposed, in the unifying fashion the citizens of Israel deserve, and bring an end to this unnecessary argument.”
He added that, in his opinion, it was a mistake to hold any kind of ceremony “during a war, while our troops are risking their lives.” However, he added, “now that the train has left the station, it’s imperative to do everything to lower the flames.”
Meanwhile, Illouz threw his support behind the “joint way forward” presented by Daum’s initiative, “without giving up on the state ceremony, but with the proper sensitivity.” Sukkot, meanwhile, asserted that while “privatizing memorial days is the disintegration of stateliness,” holding two ceremonies could help “calm spirits” at the time of a deep sense of national bereavement.
According to the Kan public broadcaster, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been privately bashing Regev — who like Saada and Illouz is a member of his Likud party — with some of his associates believing he should intervene and change at least some parts of the planned ceremony.
“I have no control over her,” the unsourced report quoted Netanyahu as claiming in a recent closed-door meeting. “I also think she is making a mistake regarding this whole issue. But there is no one to talk to; she does what she wants.”
Netanyahu has avoided commenting publicly on the matter, even as the split memorials have reignited intense divisions within Israeli society. His office later released a statement denying he made the comments attributed to him while also voicing support for Regev, saying he “admires her work.”
Regev, who has led several Independence Day ceremonies, has refused calls to step back from overseeing the event. She said that others are welcome to hold their own tributes, but compared the idea to the annual Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day ceremony, which the right-wing regularly demonizes as traitorous.
The state memorial is slated to be pre-recorded in Ofakim, one of the southern towns infiltrated on October 7 by Hamas terrorists, killing dozens of people there. The alternative ceremony is scheduled to be held at Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park and is expected to draw tens of thousands of people.
Also Wednesday, Channel 13 news reported that families of victims slain at the Supernova music festival on October 7 are planning their own memorial.
The network reported the Supernova ceremony will kick off at the rave site near Re’im at 6:29 a.m. on October 7, exactly a year after the beginning of the largest terror attack in the state’s history.
Some 1,200 were murdered that day, including 364 at the dance party, and 251 were taken hostage to Gaza.
The ceremony “will honor the memory of the victims, without politics and politicking,” said the organizer, who is the father of rave victim Ron Yehudai, according to Channel 13, which added that several unnamed artists have confirmed their participation.
