On 7 October, Tel Aviv is seething with grief. The road out of trauma

Tel Aviv, from our correspondent. Three years have passed and Israel seems frozen in time, stuck on 7 October, gripped by a reliving of the trauma, almost as if what was not done three years ago to stop the Hamas terrorists who invaded the country to kill, torture and kidnap Israeli families could now be soothed by holding back all the suffering this country has endured since that day. Tel Aviv is seething with grief. It is not merely the memory that Israel has commemorated during the many events organised across the country; it is the disbelief in the face of Hamas’s pogrom, the loneliness in the face of the security wound, the loss of the certainty of living in a country surrounded by enemies on all sides, yet always ready to defend itself. Three years ago, it was not ready; the country bled. 1,200 Israelis were killed, 251 were left to rot in the tunnels of Gaza, and those who remain still wonder how it could have happened. Tel Aviv commemorates. The gatherings, the rallies, the protests – all are driven by the imperative to remember. Everything speaks in the past tense; everything is frozen in time at 7 October. Hostages’ Square – an open space that, before the tragedy, was simply an area in front of the Art Museum – still has the mock tunnel at its centre, installed there in 2024 to raise awareness and show people what it might have meant to be dragged into Hamas’s underground city. The installation had little impact then and little now, but the tunnel was a sign of just how much Tel Aviv wanted – and needed – to keep thinking about the Israelis swallowed up by Hamas in Gaza. The photos of the hostages still hang on the walls of some buildings; they are the faces of those who returned alive and of those who were returned in coffins containing unrecognisable human remains.

Some of the images have now faded with time; others have been chipped away, perhaps by the occasional rain or perhaps by relatives and friends who could no longer bear the weight of those eyes that stared at passers-by in various corners of the city and revealed nothing but the emptiness of a person who had disappeared, about whom there was only one certainty: they suffered terribly.

Piazza degli Ostaggi has filled up once more; photographs of the faces of the kidnapped victims who were killed have been distributed amongst the demonstrators – enormous faces captured in a moment of life from a distant past, in the world before 7 October, and which now speak of a void. “It’s a spontaneous initiative. We’re here to remember and also to say that this government must go,” says a woman holding a white placard bearing the words ‘7 October’. She is reluctant to speak, saying that the foreign press has done a terrible job, going out of its way to ensure that Hamas’s acts of torture were quickly forgotten. “Do they remember 7 October in your country?” she asks without waiting for an answer – and it’s just as well. She is a lady in her sixties, displaying a polite anger towards the rest of the world, which has forgotten what Israel has endured. “But do they know in Italy what happened?”, she asks again without waiting for an answer. And, once again, it’s just as well. A gentleman beside her chimes in: “You know, there’s nothing organised here; we knew something would happen in this square and we’re here to remember. It’s been like this for three years; we’ve come here without any fixed plans – it was all spontaneous. Perhaps one day they’ll understand abroad too.” Israel feels like an island and knows it hasn’t always been so; it’s a new situation, and the reasons for it lie in these past three years. The men talk of their hopes for change in the 27 October elections; it seems they attribute a healing mission to the vote, almost as if the defeat of Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition – which they so fervently hope for – could truly help the country move on from 7 October.

Around this time last year, Israel was awaiting news of an agreement for the release of the hostages – both living and dead – and the end of the war in Gaza. The public rejoiced at seeing the last of the young men return on their own two feet, wept at the return of the coffins, and many repeated that until ‘they have all returned, there will be no return to normality in the country’. They have all returned, yet the abnormality has remained; it has become constant, it has become political, more and more so. The country has not emerged from the trauma; it has remained stuck in it, as if it had lost the thread of the future that had always characterised a hard-working and resourceful people, driven towards building, innovation and the realisation of salvation. Normalisation efforts in the Middle East have ground to a halt; domestic projects and reforms have stalled. People have stopped discussing anything not connected to grief. Israel is gasping for breath but cannot find it, and this is evident on every street, where the words ‘7 October, let us not forget’ appear everywhere in red on a black background; it can be seen on election campaign posters; it can be seen in Dizengoff Square, where the fountain, which has been dyed blood-red, remains adorned with the memories of those who were killed; it seems that the people walking around it, still casting a glance at the faces of those tormented Israelis, keep repeating to themselves: it really did happen, it really did happen. Yes, 7 October really did happen and, as the Israelis say, it has never ended. The journalist Amit Segal wrote in his newsletter that on that day Israel “was forcibly expelled from the new Middle East of normalisation and globalisation and sent back to the old one, where it has once again become an isolated villa in the jungle. To adapt to its old role, Israel has reflexively rejuvenated itself, shifting from a pragmatic and diplomatic middle age to the impulsive and uncompromising age of compulsory military service. Three years on, it is still 18 years old.’ In Tel Aviv, it seems no one can look any further ahead; the vote is awaited as a cathartic event. The real political challenge will be to pull the country out of its grief, to help it grow up again, and to restore its sense of purpose. But those vying for victory are still saying very little about this.