Day: October 5, 2026

Israel held its state memorial ceremony Monday for those killed in the war and all who have fallen since October 7, 2023. The ceremony took place in the Plot of the Nation’s Greats (a special burial section for the country’s leaders and honorees) at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

Bereaved family members opened the ceremony. “Three years have passed since the attack on Israel on October 7,” they said. “Three years in which the lives of many families changed.” They added that 1,318 members of the security forces have fallen since that day, sacrificing their lives “so that we could live here.” All of them, they said, defended Israel’s home and country, and deserve to be remembered, “all of them, men and women alike.”

President Isaac Herzog used his remarks to pay tribute to the young female lookouts stationed at the Nahal Oz outpost, just 800 meters (2,625 feet) from the Gaza border. “They were ‘the watcher,'” Herzog said. “They were the eyes of the IDF and of the state. They watched and they warned.” While the rest of the country slept, he said, their eyes remained open around the clock, “always alert, sharp, watchful, on the screens and in contact.” They knew the sector intimately, Herzog explained, and could tell the moment something changed.

In the months before the attack, Herzog said, those lookouts sensed that something was brewing. “They saw, reported and flagged it. But no one pieced it into a full picture.” He revealed that months before the disaster, the young women had scrawled inscriptions on the wall of their fortified position, one of which reads, in hindsight, as eerily prophetic. “Look how calmly it’s going,” the inscription read in bright pink paint, “as if Gaza isn’t right next door.”

Herzog then described the morning of the attack itself. “At six twenty-nine that terrible morning, they identified the terrorists approaching the fence and sounded the alarm,” he said. “They saw them cross it, they watched and they warned.” In a voice that remained steady, he said, they declared the military code word for a terrorist infiltration into Israel, “Turkish horseman” (a military alert code word for an infiltration), even as the danger closed in on them. “They kept reporting, calmly and bravely,” Herzog said, noting that 53 soldiers from different units died defending the Nahal Oz outpost that day, among hundreds more who fell at other sites. “They are all heroes, every one of them,” he said.

Turning to Israel’s ongoing election campaign, Herzog cautioned that the public must stay alert to internal threats as well as external ones. “We must watch for the blazing warning lights, the ones signaling division and dangerous rifts,” he said. “We are allowed to disagree, and we are even obligated to argue, but we must remember, whoever disagrees with you today will still live alongside you here tomorrow.”

Herzog reflected on the past three years as a period defined by both devastating loss and extraordinary resilience. Israel has seen families grapple with grief, injury, unanswered hopes and lingering uncertainty, he said, along with communities uprooted from their homes and a nation forced to confront an unfamiliar reality. But alongside the pain, he said, the country also witnessed its people rising to help one another, rebuilding what was lost and ultimately bringing its hostages home.

“We have sadly lost so many, the best of our daughters and sons,” Herzog said, describing the dead as coming “from every community in Israel, from every corner of the country, from every position, religion, faith, camp and way of life.” He called for their stories to be told and remembered permanently.

Returning to his warning about the election season, Herzog urged Israelis to remember their shared future even amid sharp disagreement. “Their children will grow up in the same country as your children,” he said. “Together, they will need to protect it, and together, to build its future.”

Herzog closed by returning to the Nahal Oz female field observers, revealing that alongside their haunting premonition, the young women had also written a smaller, hopeful message on the same wall: “Everything will be okay. We will still rise.” He urged Israelis to carry that same forward-looking hope with them. “We can and must carry with us that forward-looking gaze, that hope, that watchful eye,” he said, “and take on the responsibility to do everything in our power so that this hope can continue to exist here in our beloved country. We will still rise.”

Netanyahu, addressing the bereaved families directly, said, “Together with the entire nation, we bow our heads in memory of our sons and daughters. We embrace every single family in their pain.” He acknowledged that there was no true remedy for such loss. “What was will not return, and whoever is gone will not come back,” he said. “We mourn not only for what was, we also mourn for what will never be.” He vowed that the fallen would remain part of the nation’s path forward, saying Israel would “protect our home from the predators surrounding us” together.

Turning to the broader state of the war, Netanyahu argued that the October 7 massacre had exposed the difference between Israel and its enemies. “Even three years after the war broke out, with the State of Israel stronger than ever, this massacre exposed the monstrous evil of our enemies. We were never like our tormentors, and we never will be, he said, noting the way Israel cherishes life. “We invested relentless effort until we brought back all of our hostages, down to the very last one. We did this understanding that this unprecedented massacre was only the opening shot. The camp of evil tried to kill us in a triple ring of fire. Through our combined strength, we shattered their plan step by step. We acted with initiative and offense, and we pushed our enemies many miles back from our territory. Thanks to our fighters’ courage, we turned the tables completely,” he said.

Looking ahead, Netanyahu struck a defiant tone on the challenges still facing Israel. “We have achieved tremendous accomplishments, but there are still tasks before us,” he said, “and there will be no Hamas rule whatsoever in Gaza.” He warned that anyone involved in the war against Israel “is living on borrowed time,” vowing Israel would reach them “just as we reached the others.” He said Israel would keep striking Hezbollah in Lebanon and would not allow Iran “to threaten our existence.” Netanyahu closed with a direct message to Israel’s critics, “Our soldiers’ morality has no equal, and to those who lecture us, we defend you too.”

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