Israel marked three years since the deadliest day in its history with no hostages left in Gaza. In 20 days, voters deliver their verdict on the man in charge that day.
Published 7 October 2026 · 06:00 GMT
Israelis marked three years on Wednesday since Hamas-led militants attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostage in the deadliest day in the country’s history. A national moment of silence at 6:29 a.m., the hour the assault began, opened a day of more than 400 ceremonies, including a vigil at the Nova music festival site where 348 young people were killed and a commemoration at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv. It is the first anniversary with no hostages held in Gaza: the remains of the last one, Staff Sergeant Major Ran Gvili, 24, were recovered by the army in January. And it comes 20 days before Israel’s first election since the attack, a vote widely seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The choreography of grief was national and intimate at once. Official state memorials were held Monday at Mount Herzl, where Netanyahu said the terrible hours of the Simchat Torah attack remain seared in the nation even three years on, with Israel stronger than ever. Wednesday belonged to the families: the evening national memorial in Tel Aviv, organized by the Kumu movement of bereaved families, was hosted by former hostage Eli Sharabi and actress Shani Cohen. At the Nova site near the Gaza border, where the dawn rave became a killing field, mourners gathered where 348 young people died. The split between state ceremony and family-led mourning is itself a political fact: many bereaved families have refused to let the government own the memory of the day.
A prime minister who cannot convert the most searing national trauma in living memory into a governing majority is a prime minister the country has already half-dismissed.
The vote on October 27 is the election October 7 made. A poll by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 68 percent of Jewish Israelis said the events of that day were a very central or fairly central element in deciding which party to vote for. Netanyahu has rejected blame for the security breach and resisted calls for an independent investigation for three years, frustrating many Israelis, including families of those killed. Between 60 and 80 percent of the population want an independent state commission of inquiry; a politically appointed inquiry bill advanced in July was denounced by victims’ groups as a law meant to bury the truth, not reveal it.
The polls describe a country that cannot decide. The latest KAN survey put the opposition on 52 seats and Netanyahu’s bloc on 51, with neither side able to assemble a coalition; a poll of polls shows the same deadlock. Into that stalemate have stepped the bereaved themselves: at least nine candidates from October 7 families are running, among them Michal Hirsch Negri, whose son Roee died at Be’eri, running with Naftali Bennett’s Together party; former general Noam Tibon, also with Together, who called October 7 the biggest failure in the country’s history; and Talik Gvili, mother of the last recovered hostage, running for Netanyahu’s own Likud, saying she wants a strong leader she can count on. Grief is on every ballot.
The most striking feature of the campaign is who is running. At least nine candidates come from October 7 families, and their reasons for running map the country’s fractured argument with itself. Michal Hirsch Negri, 60, whose son Roee died at Be’eri, is running with Bennett’s Together party; she says her son always analyzed a situation and asked what could be done to fix it, and she is trying to do the same. Noam Tibon, 64, the former general who drove into the fighting that morning, is also with Together; he calls October 7 the biggest failure in the country’s history, seen with his own eyes. Sharon Sharabi, 51, whose brothers Yossi and Eli were seized from Be’eri, is running with Israel Our Home because, she says, she cannot stand aside and let mediocre people keep running the country. Shira Shapiro, 51, whose son Aner was killed shielding a Nova shelter, is running with Yashar to take the pain and give it meaning.
And then there is Talik Gvili, mother of Ran Gvili, the last hostage brought home, running for Netanyahu’s Likud. She says she is continuing the mission her son was on, that he went to defend Israel, and that she wants a strong leader she can count on. The same grief, pointed in opposite directions: this is what a referendum looks like when the question is a person. The bereaved daughter Shir Mathias distilled the accountability camp’s demand to a sentence: everyone who had their hand on the wheel, those in uniforms and suits alike, must go home.
The KAN poll’s seat math shows why the referendum may not resolve. The opposition sits at 52 seats against 51 for Netanyahu’s bloc: Yashar on 23, Likud on 21, Bennett’s Together on 12, the Democrats on 8, Jewish Power on 8, Religious Zionism-Zehut on 6, with the Joint List on 8 and Ra’am on 5 holding the balance neither bloc can easily claim. A poll of polls tells the same story at 53-54-13. Israel has been here before, and the last time the system deadlocked it took five elections in four years to produce a government. The difference now is that the deadlock arrives with a ceasefire to maintain and a reconstruction to fund, and caretaker politics is a poor custodian for either.
Netanyahu, for his part, shows no sign of contrition as his strategy. At Monday’s cabinet meeting he said 4,000 of the 6,000 militants who infiltrated Israel that day have been killed and vowed Israel will reach all of them, the language of unfinished war as campaign platform. At Mount Herzl he cast Israel as stronger than ever. The wager is that voters will choose the promise that October 7 can never happen again over the accounting of why it did. In 20 days the country finds out whether grief votes for security or for answers.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres, in a statement released Monday, called the Hamas assault an abhorrent large-scale terror attack and said nothing can justify these atrocities, recalling the hostages’ torture, sexual violence, and cruel treatment. He also recalled the untold suffering inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza in the hostilities that followed, saying civilians continue to endure intolerable conditions and their suffering too demands an end now.
The numbers from Gaza frame the anniversary’s other half. Health authorities there say 74,016 people have been killed and 175,068 wounded, about half of them women and children, with only 19 of 38 hospitals still functioning. A year-old ceasefire is meant to have ended the war for good, though strikes have continued and the reconstruction has barely begun. At his cabinet meeting on Monday, Netanyahu said 4,000 of the 6,000 militants who infiltrated Israel that day have been killed, adding that Israel will reach all of them. The arithmetic of vengeance and the arithmetic of grief now share the same calendar.
Elections after national trauma rarely turn on policy papers; they turn on the question of who failed and who is believed. Netanyahu’s entire political wager is that security credentials outweigh accountability demands, that voters will choose the leader who promises October 7 can never happen again over the inquiry that would dissect why it did. The polls suggest the wager is not paying: a prime minister who cannot convert the most searing national trauma in living memory into a governing majority is a prime minister the country has already half-dismissed.
For the region, the vote’s outcome decides whether the ceasefire hardens into something durable or frays under a new coalition’s competing promises. For Washington, which has invested enormous capital in the postwar arrangement, an Israeli election that produces no government prolongs every uncertainty. Twenty days from now, Israelis will answer the only question that has mattered for three years: what did October 7 change, and who pays for it.
From the Western diplomatic lens, the anniversary’s most important fact is the empty hostage ledger. For two years, every negotiation, every ceasefire discussion, every American shuttle mission orbited the hostages; with Ran Gvili’s recovery in January, that gravitational center is gone, and what remains is the harder question of what the war was for. Western capitals read the coming election as the moment Israelis finally get to answer it. The Western hope, rarely stated plainly, is for a government with a mandate to convert the ceasefire into something permanent.
There is also a Western reckoning embedded in Guterres’s statement. The UN chief’s dual message, nothing justifies the atrocities and Gaza’s suffering demands an end now, is the closest thing to a Western consensus position, and it satisfies almost no one completely. The Western lens sees this as the honest shape of the tragedy: two peoples’ catastrophes, one calendar date, and an election that will decide whether accountability or security wins the next chapter.
From Moscow and Beijing, the anniversary is read through the cold arithmetic of American power. The Eastern lens notes that three years of war, 74,000 dead in Gaza, and a year-old ceasefire have not produced a political settlement, only an election, and that the United States, having invested enormous capital in the postwar arrangement, now watches its client’s democracy wobble toward deadlock. The Eastern conclusion is unsparing: the war demonstrated the limits of military solutions and the election will demonstrate the limits of the political system that ordered them.
There is a particular Eastern attention on Netanyahu’s survival. A leader who rejected blame for the worst security failure in his country’s history, blocked an independent inquiry, and still commands half the electorate is, in the Eastern reading, not an aberration but the system working as designed: accountability as a campaign slogan, never as an institution. Moscow and Beijing will deal with whoever wins. They have learned not to bet on Israeli elections producing clarity.
From the Global South, October 7 is two anniversaries, not one, and the world’s attention has never been evenly split between them. Southern diplomats note the asymmetry with bitter precision: 1,200 Israeli dead produced global days of mourning and wall-to-wall coverage, while 74,016 Palestinian dead produced statements. The South does not deny the atrocity of the Hamas attack; it denies that grief is a finite resource that must be rationed, and it reads Guterres’s dual message as the bare minimum of honesty.
The Southern read of the election is equally unsentimental. A vote that cannot produce a government, in a country whose military actions reshape the region, is not a domestic affair but a regional risk, and the South will pay for the paralysis in the usual currencies: oil prices, shipping insurance, and refugee flows. The hope in Southern capitals is modest and concrete: whoever wins, let the ceasefire hold, because the last three years have taught that when Israel’s politics deadlock, Gaza’s civilians pay the deadlock’s price.
It is the first October 7 anniversary with no hostages held in Gaza. The remains of the last hostage, Ran Gvili, were recovered in January 2026, closing the hostage chapter that dominated the previous two anniversaries and shifting the national conversation fully to accountability and the coming election.
It is Israel’s first election since the attack, and 68% of Jewish Israelis say October 7 is central to their vote. Netanyahu has rejected blame for the security failure and blocked an independent investigation, so the vote functions as the public’s verdict on his responsibility, whether or not any party frames it that way.
Current polls say no: the opposition and Netanyahu’s bloc are essentially tied around 51-52 seats each, short of the 61 needed. Israel may face prolonged coalition talks or even another election, extending political paralysis at a delicate moment for the ceasefire.
At least nine candidates come from October 7 families, running across the political spectrum: Michal Hirsch Negri and ex-general Noam Tibon with Bennett’s Together, Sharon Sharabi with Israel Our Home, Shira Shapiro with Yashar, and Talik Gvili, mother of the last hostage, with Netanyahu’s Likud.
The UN chief called the Hamas assault an abhorrent large-scale terror attack, said nothing can justify the atrocities including torture and sexual violence against hostages, and added that Gaza’s civilians endure intolerable conditions whose suffering too demands an end now.
