Three years to the minute after the darkest day in Israel’s modern history, a nation paused once more. At 6:29 on the morning of October 7, 2026, the hour Hamas-led gunmen stormed communities along the Gaza border, Israelis observed a national moment of silence. Ceremonies, memorials and protests followed at more than 400 locations across the country.

A day that must not be softened

On that morning in 2023, more than 1,200 people were killed, among them children, women, elderly people and entire families. Young people dancing at a music festival were murdered in the Re’im Forest, where more than 370 died and 44 were taken captive. In all, 251 people were dragged into Gaza. It was the deadliest single day in Israel’s history.

The cruelty of the assault was not incidental. It was the purpose. Deliberately targeting civilians to inflict terror, grief and rupture is terrorism in its plainest form, and it deserves no euphemism.

Condemnation without qualification

Terrorism must be condemned without caveats, without context offered as an excuse, and without a false balance that treats the deliberate killing of civilians as equivalent to anything else. Those who planned the attack, those who carried it out, and those who still celebrate or justify it bear responsibility for the blood spilled that day.

This is a conviction that cuts across faiths. Muslims, Jews, Christians and people of every background have a shared stake in insisting that no grievance, however deeply felt, justifies the slaughter of the innocent. Standing together on that principle is not political theater. It is the foundation of any society that hopes to live in peace.

“Never forget” is not a slogan. It is a moral obligation. “Never again” is not a hope. It is a demand.The FFN Editorial Board

How Israel remembers

The commemorations have been as varied as the grief behind them. On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid a wreath at the official state memorial at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, saying that the terrible hours of the Simchat Torah attack remain “seared” within the nation. At noon, bereaved families and grassroots groups held a national minute of reflection, joined by hospitals, municipalities, universities and businesses. On Wednesday evening, tens of thousands were expected at a national ceremony in Tel Aviv organized by the Kumu movement of survivors and victims’ families, hosted by former hostage Eli Sharabi.

Remembrance in a democracy is also honest and unsparing. Shir Mathias, who lost both parents at Kibbutz Holit, used the anniversary to call for a change in the country’s leadership. Grief that demands accountability is part of how a free people honors its dead, and we respect the families who speak in every register.

Shoulder to shoulder

In his memorial address, the prime minister spoke of Jews, Druze, Christians, Muslims, Bedouin and Circassians defending their home together. He recounted a Druze soldier who spent hours holding a wound closed to save a wounded comrade in Gaza. Whatever one’s politics, that image of shared courage and shared humanity is one worth carrying forward, because it points to the kind of region many people of faith hope for.

Memory with resolve

Memory without resolve is empty. Resolve without memory is blind. The lessons of that morning, including the cost of underestimating an enemy sworn to destruction and the failure of deterrence, must not dissolve into political noise or fatigue. The vow that should echo from every memorial is simple: such an atrocity must never happen again, not to Israel and not to any people.

The candle at Nova, the wreath at Mount Herzl, the silence at 6:29 a.m., the gathering in Tel Aviv: these are acts of defiance against forgetting. They are also an invitation to the rest of us. Stand with those who mourn. Reject the ideology that celebrates murder. And work, through vigilance, justice and moral clarity, so that October 7 remains a warning and never becomes a precedent.

Never forget. Never again.