Middle East Crisis: Israel Observes a Solemn Memorial Day

The national day of mourning officially began at sundown on Sunday. At around 8 p.m., a minute-long siren sounded across the country, bringing pedestrians to a standstill in the streets and traffic to a halt.

Memorial ceremonies will be held through Monday afternoon in schools, hospitals and local communities. Bereaved families traditionally take the day to visit their loved ones’ graves.

Even in a normal year, the Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorist attacks is sacrosanct in Israel, a small country where many know someone killed or wounded as a result of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But this year’s commemorations are taking place as the country is struggling to recover from the trauma of the Hamas-led assault on Oct. 7, the deadliest day in Israel’s history, and facing increasing international isolation brought on by the war it launched in response.

Roughly 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage on Oct. 7, according to the Israeli authorities. According to the Israeli military, 272 soldiers have been killed and 1,660 wounded since Israel launched the ground invasion against Hamas in Gaza.

In a ceremony at the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the army’s chief of staff, said he bore responsibility for the army’s failures of that day. He also thanked the families of the soldiers who have died in the seven months of fighting since.

“I stand humbly before your courage to endure pain, to gather the strength each day despite heavy loss, and fill the void with meaning,” he said.

The international community’s attention is now fixed on the Israeli military’s conduct in Gaza, where more than 34,000 people have been killed, according to the local health authorities. But the gaze of many Israelis is still mostly focused inward, with the attack’s victims and those taken hostage at the center of the national conversation.

Eyal Brandeis, who is from Kibbutz Sufa near the Gaza border, said he planned on Monday to visit the graves of two friends killed in the Oct. 7 attack. His community was evacuated to Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv, after the attack, and has yet to return home seven months later.

“This year, it’s so much closer for everyone. We lost close friends,” said Mr. Brandeis, 60. “Memorial Day is always special in Israel, but this year will be even more intense.”

For Israelis whose loved ones are still in Gaza, the day is particularly painful. Hamas and other armed groups are still holding more than 130 living and dead hostages, according to the Israeli authorities — and negotiations to secure their release have stalled.

Bar Goren’s father, Avner, 56, was killed during the Hamas-led attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz. His mother, Maya, is presumed dead, her body still among those held in Gaza.

“We don’t have our mother’s grave to visit and grieve. And for me, I can’t bear emotionally to go to my father’s tomb in Nir Oz as long as there’s an empty plot next to him, where she should be,” said Mr. Goren, 23.

On Monday evening, the Memorial Day observances will end and Israel will shift to celebrating the country’s 76th Independence Day.

But Renana Gome, who is also from Nir Oz, said she would sit out the festivities this year. Her two children, Yagil and Or, were taken hostage on Oct. 7 and held in Gaza for weeks. They were freed during a weeklong truce at the end of November, but the body of Ms. Gome’s ex-husband, Yair, is still being held by Palestinian militants in the enclave, according to the Israeli authorities.

“We cannot celebrate our independence as long as there are more than 132 living and dead hostages in captivity,” Ms. Gome said. “Leave the flag at half-mast.”

Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.

This year the ceremony, which has been held annually since 2006, was pre-recorded to avoid the possibility of disruption by protesters. In previous years it attracted sharp criticism and a legal challenge in Israel, and on Sunday organizers said just before the ceremony was set to be broadcast that its website had been hacked. As a result, the organizers said it was not possible to watch it on YouTube as planned, and viewers instead watched on Facebook.

The ceremony, an annual focus for peace activists in Israel, featured speeches, songs, a poem about peace and a video that showed children in Israel and the West Bank talking about the impact of war. One child wished “for everyone who died to come back to life.” Palestinians in the West Bank did not participate in person, given that Israel stopped allowing many Palestinians to work in Israel after the Oct. 7 attacks led by Hamas, in which around 1,200 people were killed. There were also no direct contributions by speakers in Gaza.

“For many Israelis it seems provocative,” Yuval Rahamim said of the ceremony in an interview by telephone from Tel Aviv. Mr. Rahamim, co-director of the Parents Circle — Families Forum, an Israeli-Palestinian organization of families who have lost immediate relatives in the conflict, said that his father had been killed in the 1967 Arab–Israeli War. He acknowledged that many Israelis would find the event jarring, given the scale of suffering on Oct. 7, but he said that also gave it more significance.

“Many people have woken up to the reality that this conflict cannot go on,” he said, referring to the decades of violence. “People are willing to stand up.”

His sentiment was echoed by Magen Inon, 41, whose parents were killed on Oct. 7 and who spoke in person at the start of the screening in London, which was held at a Jewish community center. He said that he did not want what had happened to his family to be used as an argument for further war. “We felt as if our personal pain is being hijacked by the national cause,” said Mr. Inon, who now works as a peace activist.

Many Israelis have argued the country is still bound by a sense of national shock and loss over Oct. 7. and are stunned by international criticism of the war in Gaza, which they mostly see as justified.

More than 34,000 people have been killed in Gaza during Israeli’s military campaign to defeat Hamas, and almost everyone there has been displaced from their homes amid a hunger crisis that aid workers say has been largely caused by Israeli restrictions on aid deliveries to the enclave.

But the ceremony, which was screened at more than 200 venues in Israel, spoke to the diversity and complexity of opinion within Israeli society about the issue. Several speakers discussed their hope for an end to generations of bloodshed, and for peace.

Among the most stark contributions came from Palestinian speakers who described conditions in Gaza.

Ghadir Hani read a contribution from a woman in Gaza, whose name was given only as Najla, describing how she had lost 20 family members in the war, including her brother, a father of two, who she said had been killed while going to look for food for his parents.

“They killed him while walking in the street though posing no threat whatsoever,” Ms. Hani read. “The death machine is still ready to kill,” she added. “But I know that on the other side there are many people who believe in peace.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has repeatedly said that Israel’s war is with Hamas, rather than the people of Gaza, and that his government regrets civilian casualties.

Another contributor, Ahmed Helou, a member of Combatants for Peace, which gathers people who have fought either for Israel or for Palestinian groups, suggested that the ferocity of Israel’s campaign had forced him to reassess the personal cost of his commitment to peace.

“The Israeli army is still killing shamelessly. Everyone in Gaza is a terrorist in their eyes,” said Mr. Helou, as he recounted a litany of death his family had endured in Gaza. “Does causing unsurmountable pain promise peace for the Israelis?”

Israel’s Memorial Day began at sundown on Sunday and ceremonies will be held through Monday afternoon.

Last week, the White House imposed a delay on the delivery of 3,500 bombs out of concern over the potential harm to civilians in Rafah, where many Gazans have sought shelter since the start of the fighting seven months ago. Mr. Blinken said those are the only weapons that the United States has held back “at present.”

Two days after the State Department sent a report to Congress raising “substantial questions” regarding Israel’s efforts to protect civilians in Gaza, Mr. Blinken was circumspect in his criticism of Israel’s response to the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7.

The report raised the prospect that Israel may have violated international laws, but avoided conclusions about any specific episodes. Mr. Blinken reiterated that point on Sunday, and told “Face the Nation” that Israel has institutions in place to investigate, evaluate and “self-correct.”

In an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Blinken echoed the findings of the report, and underscored Hamas’s responsibility for starting the conflict and the battlefield challenges its tactics pose to protecting civilians.

“Based on the totality of the harm that’s been done, to children, to women, to men who are caught in this crossfire Hamas is making, it’s reasonable to conclude that there are instances where Israel has acted in ways that are not consistent with international humanitarian law,” he said.

He added that Israeli forces were operating in a “complex military environment,” with “an enemy that intentionally embeds itself with civilians hiding under and within schools, mosques, apartment buildings.”

The American officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence assessments.

Hamas’s vast tunnel network is deepest under Khan Younis, going down as many as 15 stories in some places. Mr. Sinwar is also protected by a group of Israeli hostages he uses as human shields to dissuade Israeli forces from raiding or bombing his location, U.S. and Israeli officials have said.

American officials believe that Israeli intelligence agencies have as good, or better, information on Mr. Sinwar’s location but insisted that the United States shares with Israel everything it knows.

U.S. officials have been trying to cajole Israel into curbing its military operation in and around Rafah, worried about the civilian casualties that could be caused by a large-scale attack on the city, where both Palestinian civilians and Hamas fighters have taken refuge.

More than a million Gazans had sought shelter in Rafah since the war began more than seven months ago, but U.N. officials said on Sunday that about 300,000 have fled in the past week amid expanded evacuation orders and growing fears that Israel could broaden a military operation that already seized control of the border there with Egypt.

Since the beginning of the conflict, the United States has been providing Israel with intelligence on Hamas officials, including Mr. Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, the leader of its military wing. American officials believe that if Israel were able to kill either of those top leaders, the government in Jerusalem would be able to claim it as a key victory, and use it as a reason to throttle back military operations.

U.S. and Israeli officials do not believe Mr. Sinwar, seen as an architect of the Oct. 7 assault on Israel, or other top Hamas leaders were ever hiding in Rafah, the American officials said. The Biden administration has told the Israelis that going after Mr. Sinwar should not be used as a justification for an offensive into Rafah, they said.

Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, told the Israeli public broadcaster Kan on Saturday that Israel would “eliminate” Mr. Sinwar because “that’s what needs to happen after what he did.”

Asked whether the Hamas leader in Gaza was surrounded by hostages, Mr. Hanegbi said he had no information on the matter.

The United States already put one arms shipment on hold over concerns that the heavy bombs could be used on Rafah, the most dramatic pressure the White House has put on Israel since the start of the conflict.

While the U.S. has long made clear that it would not stop shipments of defensive weapons, like air defense munitions, Mr. Biden has warned of additional pauses of weapons deliveries if Israel conducts a major assault on Rafah.

Adam Rasgon contributed reporting.