At 6.29am on October 7, 2026, three years after Hamas launched its surprise attack from Gaza, families of those killed at the Nova music festival gathered at the site where their relatives died. The open ground near Kibbutz Re’im has since become a memorial, marked by posts honouring the victims and photographs of young people whose lives ended there. Techno music played at the site to recreate, in altered form, the festival that became the deadliest location attacked that day.
The gathering marked the third anniversary of October 7, 2023, when Palestinian militants crossed from Gaza into Israel as part of the attack known as the Al-Aqsa Flood. About 4,000 young Israelis had been dancing at the festival, roughly five kilometres from the Gaza border, unaware of what was unfolding. After hours of music and dancing, many were reluctant to seek shelter when the first waves of rockets arrived. The rockets served as a diversion for the ground invasion that followed. Militants opened fire and positioned themselves on roads, turning traffic congestion into a deadly trap. The festival became the epicentre of the killings, with 378 people reported dead, including 344 civilians, more than at any other location attacked that day. About 1,200 people were killed in the attacks overall.
The account of the anniversary and the families’ experiences was reported by El País. This year’s ceremony began without the warning sirens that had sounded during the original attack. Hundreds of relatives, soldiers, people undergoing military preparation and other Israelis gathered as the sun rose. It was also the first anniversary since there were no remaining hostages in nearby Gaza, although explosions could still be heard from the area. The report says the Israeli army was carrying out strikes to destroy the limited structures still standing in areas under its control. It also places the human cost of the subsequent war at 74,000 deaths, including more than 1,400 during the year of ceasefire, with thousands of bodies remaining beneath rubble and proceedings concerning genocide before the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
For families of the Nova victims, however, the anniversary remains deeply personal. Katy Zohar, 56, lost her daughter Bar at the festival. Bar was wounded when militants opened fire on her car but continued driving towards a checkpoint to raise the alarm. She eventually died from blood loss in an area where, that morning, soldiers, police officers and ambulances were absent. Three years later, Zohar says she still speaks to her daughter in her imagination, trying to obtain answers and sometimes feeling her presence at home. “I always try not to forget her voice. I am afraid of forgetting her voice,” she said.
Zohar describes the loss as a permanent rupture in family life. “When you lose a child, you can no longer do anything you used to do before. Nothing at all,” she said. Family gatherings that once involved barbecues, drinks, music and singing have disappeared because, she said, the family no longer has its former happiness. Her memories of Bar are divided between photographs and videos of her smiling and enjoying Shabbat dinners with relatives, and footage from the attack that circulated on social media showing her crying and asking to be killed. “Sometimes I try to hear her voice in another way, but one thing mixes with the other and the screams always come back,” Zohar said.
Another bereaved father, Eduard Tkach, described a grief he rarely expresses publicly. His son Lior was 26 when he was killed. Tkach said sadness accumulates until it suddenly spills over, even years later, when an ordinary memory brings tears. The floor of Lior’s former room has become a storage area because nobody in the family wants to confront the task of sorting through his belongings. Tkach also said he lacked the strength to look at old photographs on his phone. Lior had been a good student and chess player and was due to begin a master’s degree. Friends later organised a chess tournament in his memory.
The anniversary also unfolded during Israel’s election campaign. Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister and candidate in the election scheduled for October 27, was at Nova at 6.29am, where he embraced and listened to bereaved families. One was Yelena, whose son Yevgeni Postel, 25, was killed after attending the festival with friends including Noa Argamani, who was taken hostage and rescued by Israeli forces in 2024. Yelena told Bennett that she returns to the site every Saturday and recalled the last WhatsApp message she received from her son: “There is a big traffic jam.”
Former military chief Gadi Eizenkot, leader of Yashar, also attended a commemoration, meeting the parents of Sergeant Aner Shapira, who died throwing back grenades that militants had thrown into a shelter where people fleeing Nova were hiding. The Democrats, combining the historic Labour movement with the pacifist Meretz party, used the anniversary to protest outside Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence with an alarm clock, referring to their accusation that security officials chose not to wake the prime minister because they feared the response he would order.
Netanyahu did not attend the Nova commemoration. According to El País, many families of those killed and of the hostages remain angry with him over his refusal to accept political responsibility for October 7 and over the length of negotiations that eventually produced the ceasefire and return of the remaining hostages. The issue has become central to the election campaign, with roadside posters near Gaza carrying the message: “We do not forget, we change the government.”
For some relatives, grief has also become entangled with unresolved uncertainty. Bezalel Slavin, 74, says authorities have concealed information about the death of his daughter, Shiran Sabina Ganon Slavin, whose body he says he never saw intact. “Nobody knows what happened to her,” he said. “Maybe she was raped? We don’t know anything.” Recalling her funeral, he said: “When I hugged her at the funeral, I felt it wasn’t a body. It was cardboard or plywood.”
