At 6:29 a.m. on Wednesday, relatives of victims of the Nova music festival stood in silence at the Re'im site, marking the minute the Hamas-led attack began three years ago. Hundreds of kilometers of grief separated them from Gaza’s tents, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians still lived in tents or temporary shelters that same morning. Explosions rolled out of the territory, within earshot of AFP journalists near the border. Hospitals in Gaza said Israeli airstrikes killed three people.
The third anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023, arrived with the war’s accounting unsettled on both sides. The attack killed 1,221 people, according to an AFP tally. Another 251 people were abducted and taken to Gaza, including 44 bodies. More than 360 of the dead were killed at Nova alone. Gaza’s Health Ministry, controlled by Hamas and considered reliable by the United Nations, says more than 74,200 people have been killed.
Voices From the Ground
Katia Zohar told AFP what the minute of silence meant to her. “That was the minute that changed our lives forever,” she said. Her 23-year-old daughter, Bar, died at Nova. Bar first called to ask her mother to come get her because missiles were in the air, Zohar recalled. She called again from the road, screaming that someone was shooting at her. “I remember everything,” Zohar said.
Anna Davitashvili, 53, honored her eldest son, Shaun, who died at 25 alongside his friends, by playing the last techno track partygoers danced to when the attack began. “I miss him,” she said. Bezalel Slavin, 74, whose daughter died, now helps his son-in-law, a survivor, raise their three children. “Life must go on, what else can we do?” he said.
Accountability and the Election Campaign
The commemorations unfolded as parliamentary elections approached on Oct. 27, and politics couldn’t be separated from the mourning. Calls continued for an independent commission of inquiry into the security failures surrounding the attack. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who has criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for failing to prevent it, attended the Nova ceremony. “It was a colossal failure of the State of Israel,” Bennett said.
The left-wing opposition Democrats party launched a website at 6:29 a.m. It broadcasts Israeli news channels’ coverage as it aired on the morning of Oct. 7, 2023. Party leader Yair Golan wrote on X: “We must not allow any entity to reshape our memory. The images of civilians who stood up and acted when the state did not respond.”
Hamas, for its part, called Oct. 7 “a glorious day in the history of our people.” The group is weakened by the war but still controls parts of the Gaza Strip. Bruno Retailleau, a candidate for the French presidential election who also attended the Nova site, said Hamas had “disfigured” the Palestinian cause with the attack. Three years on, Gaza’s civilians remain in tents, living with the consequences of both the attack and the offensive that followed.
The Military’s Ledger
On the same day, the Israeli military published a report tallying its achievements since the attack. It said the IDF had attacked nearly 100,000 targets: around 65,000 in Gaza, 28,000 in Lebanon and Syria, 4,500 in Iran and 80 in Yemen. The report listed ballistic missile launches directed at Israel: 50 from Syria, 1,200 from Iran, 20,000 from Lebanon, 10,200 from Gaza and 90 from Yemen.
A graphic named senior figures killed by the IDF, including Hezbollah’s former Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, and IRGC commanders Ali Hajizadeh and Hossein Salami. The military said 970 soldiers had died since the war began, more than 70% of wounded soldiers had returned to service, and reserves had grown by about 36%. It listed nine new divisions created over three years and said Southern Command had established about 40 new outposts.
The report is a ledger of military capacity. It says nothing about what 65,000 strikes in Gaza meant for the people living there.
West Bank Raids
Overnight, the IDF and Border Police launched several operations across the West Bank to arrest and question dozens of suspects accused of involvement in terrorism and incitement. Haaretz reported that the raids also targeted suspects accused of supporting the Oct. 7 massacre. No further details about the arrests or suspects were available.
Why This Matters: Three years on, Israelis are still demanding answers for a state failure that left civilians to fend for themselves, while Gaza’s civilians remain in tents under a death toll of more than 74,200. The military’s report counts targets struck and divisions built; it doesn’t count the displaced. With elections 20 days away, the campaign is now the arena for arguments over accountability, security and any political path out of the war, but the government hasn’t resolved them. Without that political horizon, the cycle commemorated by the anniversary—attack, offensive, raids and strikes—shows no sign of ending, and civilians on both sides continue to bear its cost.