‘We will rise from the ruins’: A bereaved audience pays homage on Oct. 7 anniversary
Tearful and singing softly, 2,000 bereaved family members and hostage relatives attend alternative ceremony that brother of slain captive helped organize ‘so it wouldn’t be political’
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
As dusk fell on October 7, the first anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attack, guests entered Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park, where the Bereaved Families Memorial Ceremony was being held as an alternative event to the official state ceremony.
It was an event partly organized by Jonathan Shamriz, the bereaved older brother of Alon Shimriz, who was taken hostage from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, and then accidentally killed by IDF troops on December 15, when he and two other hostages, Yotam Haim and Samer Talalka, were trying to be rescued.
“We heard Miri Regev was going to run the [main anniversary] ceremony and we wanted the families to do it, so that it wouldn’t be political,” said Shamriz to The Times of Israel, referring to the transportation minister, adding that he initially thought it could be held somewhere smaller and more intimate.
It was clear that this commemoration — organized by Shamriz and other bereaved and affected families, including Shirel Hogeg, CEO of convenience stores AM:PM, whose sister Elai was badly hurt when Hamas terrorists set her Kibbutz Kfar Aza home on fire — was the main event for many Israelis, broadcast on Israeli television stations and with screenings hosted in dozens of cities in Israel and around the world.
Families of hostages and other victims of October 7 had fumed at the government’s decision in August to charge Regev, a close Likud ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with organizing the state event.
In the end, the families’ event was held in Yarkon Park, Tel Aviv’s largest outdoor venue, where tens of thousands often gather for headlining performers — from Bruno Mars performing three days before October 7, 2023, Imagine Dragons (August 2023) and Guns N’ Roses (June 2023), to Maroon 5, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Bon Jovi in recent years.
Monday’s sad, emotional ceremony starkly contrasted with the usual raucous concerts, with each of the 2,000 guests seated in rows of chairs, rather than sprawled across the lawn.
While the initial 40,000 free tickets had been reserved within some eight hours of being offered, the gathering was ordered narrowed to just bereaved family members and press, after the IDF Home Front Command on Saturday imposed restrictions that prevent large gatherings amid the escalated fighting with Hezbollah.
About 30 minutes before the event was due to begin, indeed, sirens sounded throughout central Israel, sending all attendees flat on the ground, including the members of the press and television anchors setting up for the ceremony: A missile had been fired by the Houthis from Yemen; it was intercepted before it reached Israel, with no injuries or damage.
But the event began on time, leading with a moment of silence for those killed on October 7 and in the ongoing war. A raw, emotional, two-hour ceremony followed, emceed by entertainers Hanoch Daum and Rotem Sela, that included live and recorded accounts from bereaved family members interspersed with achingly familiar tunes performed by many of Israel’s best-known performers.
Gali Atari and Corinne Allal sang “I Have No Other Land” with Allal on guitar, followed by Rita, singing, “One day, it will happen, without us noticing, something will change, something will ease up inside us.”
On the whole, audience members didn’t sing along loundly, but accompanied the performers softly, often weeping, with the giant screens frequently showing family members who had just recounted a story of a fallen or abducted loved one.
The father of Hadar Miriam Cohen, a surveillance officer killed on October 7, spoke for the 16 female surveillance officers killed, demanding that the state take responsibility for the gross negligence that caused their deaths.
As he finished speaking, 16 white balloons were released into the dark night sky, and as five female surveillance soldiers still held hostage were named, their pictures flashed on the screens behind him.
Cohen’s words were echoed by another bereaved parent, Rafi Ben Shitrit, whose son, Alroy Ben Shitrit, was killed defending the Nahal Oz base.
“My son and his fellow soldiers took responsibility for their tasks out of love for this country, not out of politics,” said Ben Shitrit, who called for a full state investigation into what happened that day, and asked that Israelis stay united and together.
There were stories of bravery and of loss, stories from the kibbutz communities and towns in the south, of single mothers and solo fathers killed, of children young and old whose parents will never see what they become, of one of the 55 police officers killed, this one known as the angel from Nova.
Yuval Trabelsi mourned her newlywed husband, Mor Trabelsi, killed at the Nova desert rave, telling in a video how she and her friends wiped his blood on them so that the terrorists would think they were dead as well. Clutching a pearl necklace featuring her husband’s name, she spoke about hearing the screams of a woman being raped.
Trabelsi then joined singer Ivri Lider, as he sang one of the couple’s favorite songs. Lider wore a shirt scrawled with the message, “Let their memories be a revolution,” the saying coined by the parents of murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
There was little applause heard at the ceremony, and when people did clap, it was to encourage those onstage, like Arin Habka and Ashira Greenberg, the wives of two commanding officers, friends and comrades killed within one month of each other while fighting in Gaza.
They clapped again when Nitza Korngold, mother of hostage Tal Shoham, said there can be no rehabilitation in Israel without the return of the 101 hostages.
When performers like Aviv Geffen, Shalom Hanoch, and Yehuda Poliker stood onstage, singing old favorites that audience members knew well, the crowd sang softly or silently, tears running down faces.
Finally, Shamriz, wearing a t-shirt printed with the name of his kibbutz, Kfar Aza, appeared on stage to speak about his beloved younger brother Alon, with a picture of the two brothers at a party years ago magnified behind him.
Shamriz recalled being in the shelter with his own young family, holding the door closed against the terrorists with a kitchen knife in his hand, and receiving updates on his phone about the massacre taking place.
“It was a day without an army, without a state – a day where all we had was ourselves, the citizens. This is what abandonment looks like,” said Shamriz.
A year later, he went on, “instead of standing here as multitudes of the people of Israel, united, we stand here waiting for the next siren. Instead of a state inquiry commission being established to investigate this colossal failure, we ask the questions ourselves without getting any answers.”
“There is no personal example, no vision, no leadership, no accountability,” he said, to applause.
Shamriz spoke about Alon, held for 65 days in Gaza with Yotam Haim and Samir Talalka, navigating for five days on their own in a bombarded neighborhood in Gaza after escaping their captors, desperately seeking to be rescued by the IDF.
They wrote a single word on a white sheet: “Help,” said Shamriz. “But it did not save them.”
He swallowed hard, trying to get the words out without crying, as the audience applauded him, encouraging him to continue.
“I believe that from the ruins and destruction, from the hell we went through, a new generation is rising,” said Shamriz. “A generation that believes in us, in a reformed and united Israeli society, a generation that believes in the Israeli spirit. A generation that will rebuild the ruins and create a better, more moral country – a country where truth is pursued, sanctified, and never let go.”
“We are the generation that will rise from the ruins, from the Holocaust, from the inferno, and fulfill the new Zionist vision,” he pledged.
“When that happens, I will know that Alon’s path has become reality.”
“Rise up! The people of Israel live!”
With a final song by troubadour Shlomo Artzi, joined onstage by released teenage hostage Yagil Yaakov, and the singing of Hativkah, the ceremony was over.
As audience members filed out, walking over the hilly lawns to the parking lots, they were silently met by locals, who couldn’t attend the restricted event but wanted to show their loyalty and support, with flags and flowers.
