Two ceremonies showcase Israel’s conflicting narratives from October 7th

By Rami Amichay and Ari Rabinovitch

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – A commemoration of the October 7 attack on southern Israel will be a live public ceremony held at a major venue in Tel Aviv. The other, on Monday, will be a pre-recorded, televised tribute that leaves little to chance.

The first is organized by grieving families who have lost loved ones. The plan is to delve deep into the failures and heroism on display that day.

The other is being launched by the government, which says the recorded ceremony will touch on memory, bravery and hope.

The difference in tone is at the heart of a public discourse about how to remember the darkest day in the country’s 76-year history.

“You could say it’s a war against the narrative,” said Jonathan Shimriz, one of the organizers of the public ceremony.

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

Shimriz comes from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, which was hit hard by the Hamas attack. His brother was taken hostage to Gaza and later killed by mistaken Israeli fire while trying to escape.

“The government’s tape, the other memorial, doesn’t fully reflect how we want to remember what happened on the seventh,” he said.

A government that has not taken responsibility for its failures is disconnected from the people, he said.

Cabinet Minister Miri Regev, a close supporter of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will lead the state ceremony.

Netanyahu, in power for much of the past 15 years, has been heavily criticized for failing to take responsibility for the intelligence and military failures that led to the Oct. 7 attack that killed about 1,200 people and left 250 more dead Hostages were taken, according to Israeli figures, and that sparked the devastating war in Gaza.

He says that everything will be investigated after the war ends. Opinion polls now show that his popularity, which slumped after October 7, is slowly recovering.

Regev announced her plans a month ago, saying: “I am aware of the ongoing discourse in various parts of the public.”

The state ceremony will be broadcast after the base ceremony to avoid conflict, she said. The film was shot in the small town of Ofakim near the Gaza border, which lost more than 40 of its residents in the Hamas attack.

“There is no house in Israel that will not be touched by the ceremony,” Regev said.

Ofakim was also a stronghold for Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party and his conservative allies in recent elections, in contrast to smaller communities in the area that typically vote more liberal.

This raised questions among many in Israel, who saw it as an attempt to control the narrative.

When some of the bereaved families heard about the Ofakim ceremony, they sponsored a competing ceremony in Tel Aviv’s Central Park. Within hours of the IPO, over 40,000 tickets were reserved.

However, the crowd is expected to be limited to 1,000 people as the military is still limiting the size of public gatherings in much of the country over fears of rocket fire due to an escalating conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Shirel Hogeg is from Ofakim and is extremely suspicious of the government’s decision to have her tribute filmed there. His sister comes from a nearby kibbutz and was seriously injured when her house was set on fire by Hamas attackers.

He helps organize the live ceremony in Tel Aviv.

“As you know, politicians will do everything to make the narrative clear for them,” Hogeg said. “We don’t need a synthetic TikTok film.”

(Editing by Alexandra Hudson)