Ex-hostages criticize Israel’s plan for Hamas attack commemoration

JERUSALEM: Dozens of former hostages and relatives of those killed during Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel announced Wednesday they were opposed to a government-planned ceremony marking its one-year anniversary.
In an open letter addressed to right-wing Transportation Minister Miri Regev, who is organizing the ceremony, the signatories pleaded for the government to bring back remaining hostages before holding such an event.
They also rejected “any use of photos of our loved ones, dead or alive, of details concerning them or the mention of their names” during the ceremony.
Israeli media have estimated that the ceremony will cost more than one million US dollars.
Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
The Palestinian militants also abducted 251 people, 103 of whom are still captive in Gaza including 33 the military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 40,534 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry.
The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.
The location of the planned ceremony is a major point of contention, with kibbutzim decimated by Hamas militants refusing to host it.
Regev has announced it would take place in Ofakim, where more than 40 police officers, soldiers and civilians were killed on October 7.
The mayor of the town is a member of Likud, the right-wing party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In an attempt to defuse tensions related to the ceremony, Israeli President Isaac Herzog offered to host it at his residence, but Regev has rejected this proposal, dismissing the controversy as “background noise.”
Several popular singers, including some considered to be right-wing, have refused to sing at the ceremony.
And families of those killed have announced an alternative ceremony in a Tel Aviv park, drawing support from artists and other public figures spanning the political spectrum.
Comedian and journalist Hanoch Daum has issued a call on Facebook for the organizers of the official ceremony to time it so it does not conflict with the alternative ceremony.
“Tens of thousands of people will be able to sit, remember and cry together... without politicians, to dialogue between Israelis from the right and the left,” he said.