As the first anniversary of the October 7th Hamas attack approaches a bitter dispute over how to mark the traumatic event has become a reflection of a deeply divided Israel.
Many of the relatives and friends of the 1,200 civilians and soldiers killed that day continue to blame the government of Binyamin Netanyahu for abandoning the Gaza border communities to their fate and for failing to prioritise the return of the more than 100 hostages still in Hamas captivity. Last week the bodies of six more hostages were retrieved by Israeli soldiers from a tunnel in Khan Younis: all six were alive when they were seized and all of them had bullet wounds to their bodies.
The kibbutzim closest to the Gaza border, which bore the brunt of the Hamas attack, have decided to boycott the state memorial ceremony being planned by the government and are arranging alternative commemorations.
Kibbutz Kfar Azza, on the Gaza border, joined the criticism, issuing a statement expressing disappointment at the government’s focus on producing a ceremony while the hostages, including five members of the kibbutz community, are “wasting away” in Hamas captivity.
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“Our soldiers are fighting on the front, and the residents of the north and the Gaza periphery are displaced from their homes. The right thing would be for the government, along with the entire Israeli public, to focus all its efforts, day and night, on saving the hostages, and for it to make do with lowering the flag to half-mast, standing to attention while a siren sounds and not focus on producing grandiose ceremonies.”
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents most of the families of the hostages, joined the boycott, accusing the government of being scared “to look at families of the hostages, the murdered, and displaced persons in the eye and take real responsibility for the abandonment that began on October 7th and that has lasted for more than 300 days.”
The government’s decision to task transport minister Miri Regev with organising the memorial ceremony has not helped matters. Regev, who is known to be very close to Sara Netanyahu, the prime minister’s wife, has micromanaged Israel’s official ceremonies over recent years, notably the annual independence day commemorations, highlighting the Netanyahus to such a level that critics have drawn comparisons to the regime in North Korea.
Regev referred to the criticism of the commemoration she is planning as “background noise”, adding that she will not be deterred from organising a filmed national ceremony, without a live audience, and with a pre-recorded address by the prime minister.
In an effort to defuse the growing rift, president Yitzhak Herzog entered the fray, suggesting his office oversee the ceremony. He suggested in a letter to Netanyahu that the ceremony “be organised by the president’s residence in continuous and attentive dialogue with the relevant parties – national and social-community alike – [and that it be] respectable, unifying and modest, and of course without political symbols”.
He added: “In view of the serious and painful disagreement that has developed in the past week, and to lower the flames of the dispute and prevent unnecessary quarrels...between different parts of the nation, I wish to propose that every community, group, town, kibbutz and city mark the anniversary as they wish.” Herzog proposed that the main state ceremony be held at the president’s residence.
But Regev seems determined to keep control of the narrative, claiming that president Herzog had “picked a side” by issuing his proposal without first consulting with her. “State ceremonies aren’t held at the president’s residence, this cannot be,” she said. “This needs to be held in the south.”
She added: “It would have been possible to sit down and reach understandings. I believe that the president’s intention was good, but as someone who knows me and talks to me, he could have come and talked to me and the prime minister before the letter.”
Idan Amedi, one of Israel’s most popular singers, who was himself seriously injured in the fighting in Gaza, urged Regev to accept Herzog’s compromise and hold a unified state ceremony without political symbols in order to include the communities affected by the Hamas attack who are boycotting the state memorial.
Amedi, who stars in the Israeli TV series Fauda which gained worldwide popularity on Netflix, wrote to Regev that compromise on this issue is not surrender. “On the contrary, we need more compromises between us during this bloody period. Let’s give ourselves the chance, despite the disagreements, to cry together, to find comfort together over our lost loved ones. Maybe we’ll succeed in bringing peace among us during this dark year.”