Israel marks one year since October 7 as conflict rages on

Former US President and Republican candidate Donald Trump marked the anniversary of the October 7 attacks, the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, with a remembrance event at his Doral golf resort in Miami.

"Today we mourn more than 1,200 innocent victims of the October 7 attacks," Trump said, saying that "the nightmare of that day" could not be forgotten.

He claimed that "the October 7 attack would never have happened if I was president." 

Trump went on to speak about the rising antisemitismin the US, saying it is "almost as shocking as October 7 itself."

"We never thought we’d see it, certainly not in this country, and a lot of it has to do with the leadership of this country."

Trump himself has associated himself with people known to have used antisemitic rhetoric, including Holocaust-denying white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West.

Trump also said he believes election day on November 5 will be "the most important in the history of Israel."

Earlier, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris also marked the anniversary of the attacks.

"What Hamas did that day was pure evil -- it was brutal and sickening," Harris said, adding that she was "heartbroken over the scale of death and destruction in Gaza over the past year."

On the anniversary of Hamas' October 7 attack, DW spoke to acclaimed contemporary Israeli author Etgar Keret, who is also a prominent critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

"Well, I think that a year may have passed, but for people who live in Israel, I think we are still trapped in that day. Very, very much like a Groundhog Day, because in this year a lot of events had happened, a lot of deaths, victories, losses, but fundamentally nothing changed," Keret said. 

"And more than that, we don't have any sense of [the] future, because when we look at Gaza one year after the war, I don't know what Netanyahu is planning," he continued. "He doesn't share this information with us. He doesn't tell us how does he see Gaza the day after the war ends? And he keeps all the cards to his chest. And in that sense, basically it does nothing, freezes the strategic picture, freezes the political picture, freezes all of our future, while incidents keep rolling on." 

Keret also acknowledged that Netanyahu and the Israeli military "had a lot of wonderful successes" in the field in the past year, but said they would be "worth nothing if they are not leveraged to an agreement" on a political level. 

He disputed the existence in this context of "total victory," which Netanyahu says is his government's ultimate goal in the conflict, saying: "The idea is not getting a total victory, but it's creating an existence in which we can all live."

You can watch the full discussion here. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to fight to victory against Hamas a year after it led terror attacks against his nation.

"Together we will continue to fight, and together — with God's grace — we will triumph," he said in a video message from Ofakim, near the Gaza Strip. The video was played in a ceremony commemorating Palestinian militants’ attacks on the community that killed 40 people.

Netanyahu said his country’s resolve would persist for "as long as the enemy threatens the existence and the peace of our country," and until the remaining hostages were returned home.

He called October 7 "a day of indescribable suffering" for Israel. He also said that Israelis had since united around the defense of the country.

"We have set the war objectives and we are achieving them," he said. 

He said these objectives include dismantling Hamas' rule in Gaza, bringing the remaining hostages home and making future attacks from Gaza impossible. They also include a recent addition: ensuring the safe return of Israelis who live near Lebanon’s border.

Netanyahu has faced international criticism, even from Israel’s allies, that achieving those objectives have come at a devastating cost, with nearly 42,000 reported Palestinian deaths in Gaza. Israelis have also mounted regular protests over their government’s failure to agree to a deal for the release of hostages being held in Gaza.

The Israeli military said late on Monday that sirens sounded in central Israel after several projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory. 

It said some of the projectiles were intercepted by the air force, while the rest fell in open areas. 

Shortly after, Hezbollah issued a statement saying it had targeted a military intelligence facility near Tel Aviv.

The Lebanese militant group said its missiles had targeted the Giliot military base in the Tel Aviv suburbs, which is home to an army intelligence unit. It was not clear if the group was referring to the attack reported by the Israeli military.

Hezbollah said its objective was "Unit 8200," an Israeli intelligence unit specializing in signals intelligence, code decryption and cyberwarfare.

Two commemorations of Hamas' October 7 attacks on Israel reveal deep divisions within the country about the government's response.

One, which was held in public and organized by bereaved families,addressed Israel's security failures, as well as the heroism on display that day.

The memorial in Tel Aviv was meant to have tens of thousands in attendance, although it was held in front of a much smaller crowd as gatherings are now limited in size for security reasons.

One of the final speakers was Yonathan Shamriz from kibbutz Kfar Aza, which was among the hardest-hit communities during Hamas' attacks. His brother was taken hostage into Gaza and later killed by Israeli fire as he tried to escape.

"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," the Times of Israel newspaper reported Shamriz as saying.

The other event, a recorded ceremony set up by the government, touched more on remembrance, bravery and hope.

The distinction underlines a fissure in public discourse over the darkest day in the country's 76-year history and how it should be remembered.

"You can say it's a war on the narrative," Shamriz, also an organizer of the public ceremony, told the Reuters news agency.

"This memorial will tell the story of what we've been through on the seventh. That there was no army, but there were soldiers. There was no state, but there were citizens. And I think the government memorial will not mention the mistakes that happened."

"The tape of the government, the other memorial, it does not quite reflect how we want to remember what happened on the seventh," he said.

The private ceremony was organized by cabinet minister Miri Regev, a close supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu, in power for most of the past 15 years, has faced heavy criticism for not taking responsibility for security and intelligence failures that led to the October 7 attacks. 

The state ceremony was filmed in the small city of Ofakim near the Gaza border, which lost more than 40 of its residents in the Hamas assault.

Ofakim was also a bastion for Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party and his conservative allies in the last election. Smaller communities in the area usually vote more liberal.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has said questions have arisen over the direction of Israel's ongoing response to the October 7, 2024, Hamas attacks.

Steinmeier emphasized that it was Germany's responsibility to stand byIsrael when it was attacked. 

But he also said: "This war has already killed too many people, brought too much suffering: for Israelis and Palestinians, and now also for the people of Lebanon." 

The people of Gaza had experienced immeasurable suffering, flight, hunger, and disease for a year, he said, and there was a question about where the limits to Israel's response lay.

"The questions are getting louder, more pressing, and so is the public debate — less about whether Israel has a right to self-defense, but rather about where the limits of any right to self-defense lie," said Steinmeier.

A reality in which Israelis and Palestinians can live peacefully side by side will not be achieved through military means alone, he added. 

Steinmeier, who is Germany's head of state, also warned against the division that the conflict has opened up in Germany itself. 

"Grief, anger, helplessness, fear for relatives and friends on both sides — these are the feelings that are troubling many people in our country," he said. "But however upset we may be, we must not lose our compass."

The Israeli army says it will expand its offensive against Hezbollah to Lebanon's coast south of the Al-Awali river. 

It warned people to stay away from the shore in the area.

The army "will soon operate in the maritime area against Hezbollah's terrorist activities" south of the Al-Awali river, said a statement published in Arabic on social media.

The Israeli military says it struck more than 120 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon within a 60-minute period as part of wider extensive strikes on Monday.

"The IAF [air force] conducted an extensive aerial operation and struck over 120 terror targets in southern Lebanon within an hour," the military said in a statement.

It added the targets belonged to the group's elite Radwan forces and other units.

Lebanon's militant group Hezbollah says it has targeted Israeli troops in two southern Lebanon border villages.

Hezbollah fighters "bombed... a gathering of Israeli forces" in Maroun al-Ras with "a rocket salvo, the group said in a statement. 

The group has reported several clashes in that area in recent days.

It later said its fighters had  "bombed... a gathering of Israeli enemy forces" in the nearby village of Blida "with a barrage of rockets and artillery shells."

The Iran-backed group also said it had fired rockets at areas north of the Israeli city of Haifa for a second time on Monday.

It said it launched a "large rocket salvo" in the afternoon.

Iran-backed Hezbollah is considered a terrorist organization by the US, Germany and several Sunni Arab countries, while the EU lists its armed wing as a terrorist group.

The Israeli military says a surface-to-surface missile fired from Yemen at central Israel has been successfully intercepted.

The projectile set off air raid sirens across large parts of central Israel,  sending residents running for cover.

"Following the sirens that sounded in a number of areas in central Israel, the surface-to-surface missile fired from Yemen was successfully intercepted," the military said in a statement.

It said the Israeli Air Force had carried out the interception. The statement omitted to say who had fired the missile.

However, the Iran-backed Houthi movement which is in control of northern Yemen, has frequently attacked Israel over the past year. 

The group says it is doing so in solidarity with the Palestinians.

On the early morning of October 7, 2023, Yarin Ilovich — stage name Artifex — was behind the turntables at the Supernova festival in Israel, watching the crowd dance.

A year later, he recalls the moment when he abruptly stopped the music.

The Israeli army says it has sent more ground troops from its 91st Division into the south of Lebanon.

The army released a video apparently showing its soldiers on Lebanese territory.

Israel does not provide the exact numbers of its troops in Lebanon, nor of those participating in its ongoing operations in the Gaza Strip.

However, an Israeli army division can comprise several thousand soldiers.

The Israeli army appears to be concentrating on an area near the towns of Udaissa and Kafr Kila in the southeast of Lebanon and around Bint Jubayl in the south.

Further skirmishes have been reported between Hezbollah fighters and Israeli soldiers in these areas. 

Hezbollah said on Monday that it had launched a missile attack on a group of soldiers in the border town of Maroun al-Ras.

 

The Israeli army said its forces were launching a "targeted" strike in a southern Beirut suburb.

"The IDF [Israeli army] is currently conducting a targeted strike in the area of Dahiyeh, a key Hezbollah terrorist stronghold," the army said in a statement.

A Lebanese security source told AFP that an Israeli strike hit near Lebanon's only commerical airport in Beirut, close to Hezbollah'sstronghold in the south of the capital.

"Israel conducted an air strike near the airport," the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Lebanon's official National News Agency had earlier said Israel launched "a series of strikes targeting more than 30 towns and villages in the Tyre district," after earlier saying "series of strikes" hit other south Lebanon locations.

US President Joe Biden said on Monday that the October 7 terror attacks on Israel perpatrated by Hamas was also a "dark day" for Palestinians.

"I believe that history will also remember October 7 as a dark day for the Palestinian people because of the conflict that Hamas unleashed that day," Biden said in a statement.

"Far too many civilians have suffered far too much during this year of conflict," He added.

Biden also said the US remains "fully committed" to Israel's security, and that Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas, Iran and others.

"One year later, Vice President (Kamala) Harris and I remain fully committed to the safety of the Jewish people, the security of Israel, and its right to exist," he added.

For her part, Kamala Harris, who is the current Democratic nominee in this year's presidential election, released her own statement, echoing Biden's sentiment.

"What Hamas did that day was pure evil -- it was brutal and sickening," Harris said. "I am heartbroken over the scale of death and destruction in Gaza over the past year," she added, saying also that it is "far past time for a hostage and ceasefire deal to end the suffering of innocent people."

Pope Francis has acknowledged the anniversary of the war in Gaza by criticizing the "shameful inability" of world powers to end the conflict.

"A year ago, the fuse of hatred was lit; it did not sputter, but exploded in a spiral of violence, in the shameful inability of the international community and the most powerful countries to silence the weapons and put an end to the tragedy of war," he said in an open letter to Catholics in the Middle East.

"Blood is still being shed, as are tears. Anger is growing, along with the desire for revenge, while it seems that few people care about what is most needed and what is most desired: dialogue and peace."

While the pope's letter was meant for Catholics in the region, he also addressed "the men and women of every confession and religion who in the Middle East are suffering from the insanity of war: I am close to you, I am with you".

"I am with you, who have no voice, for despite all the talk of plans and strategies, there is little concern for those who suffer the devastation of war, which the powerful impose on others; yet they will be subject to the inflexible judgment of God," Francis added.