By Ashton Hancock
NO PARTY AFFILIATION
In the early hours of Saturday, 7 October 2023, thousands of young people were dancing in the desert of southern Israel.
They had gathered for the Nova music festival in an open area near Kibbutz Re’im, only a few miles from the Gaza Strip. It was the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. The party had continued through the night, and as dawn arrived, around 3,000 people were still at the festival.
Shortly after 6 a.m., the music was still playing. Then came the rockets.
At around 6:20–6:30 a.m., warning sirens sounded as a huge barrage was launched from Gaza towards Israel. The music stopped. Festival organisers and police told people to leave.
At almost the same time, something far larger was unfolding.
Under cover of the rocket barrage, Hamas-led armed groups breached the barrier separating Gaza from Israel at multiple locations. Terrorists entered Israeli territory by land and other means and began attacking military positions and civilian communities across southern Israel.
For the people at Nova, what initially appeared to be a rocket attack rapidly became something much more terrifying.
Thousands tried to escape in their cars. The roads became clogged. Others abandoned their vehicles and ran across the surrounding fields. Some hid wherever they could - in bushes, cars, rubbish containers and roadside bomb shelters.
Armed attackers reached the roads around the festival and then the festival area itself.
People fleeing along Route 232 were shot. Shelters in which festival-goers had crowded for protection were attacked with gunfire and grenades. Survivors would later describe hiding for hours among the murdered while waiting for rescue.
At least 364 festival attendees were murdered and around 40 were kidnapped from the Nova festival and surrounding area. People were savagely slaughtered while running through fields, hiding in cars and sheltering beside the road.
Nova was only one part of what was happening on that horrific morning.
Across southern Israel, Hamas attacked communities including Be’eri, Nir Oz and Kfar Aza, as well as military installations. Civilians were deliberately killed. Homes were attacked and burned. Families hid for hours in safe rooms while gunmen moved through their communities.
Men, women, children and elderly people were seized and taken into Gaza.
Civilians were intentionally targeted and that the assault had been planned and coordinated. Members of Hamas deliberately killed and injured civilians, mistreated people and took hostages. Acts of sexual violence were committed at several locations on October 7, including the Nova festival.
By the time the scale of what had happened became clear, approximately 1,200 people had been murdered in the Hamas-led attacks and 251 people had been taken hostage.
It was an act of barbarity.
Three years later, I believe it is important to use that word without qualification.
I have seen some of the footage filmed by Hamas and the attackers themselves on October 7. I will never forget the barbarity I saw.
There is something particularly haunting about knowing that some of these atrocities were recorded by the people carrying them out. They are images that have stayed with me, and I suspect they always will.
Nothing can justify the deliberate murder, kidnapping and brutalisation of civilians. October 7 should be remembered for what it was, and its victims should never be forgotten.
But remembering the victims of October 7 does not require us to close our eyes to everything that has happened since.
The war that followed has brought catastrophic suffering to Gaza. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, enormous numbers of people have been displaced, families have been destroyed and much of Gaza has been left devastated. Three years on, reported Palestinian deaths have exceeded 74,000.
I feel profound sorrow for those lives too.
A Palestinian child killed in this conflict is no less human than an Israeli child killed on October 7. A Palestinian parent grieving for a son or daughter experiences the same terrible absence that an Israeli parent does.
We should be capable of holding these truths together.
We can condemn without reservation the barbaric atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7.
We can remember the people murdered at Nova, in their homes and in their communities.
We can remember those dragged across the border as hostages and the suffering endured by them and their families.
And we can also grieve for the innocent Palestinians who have been killed in the war that followed.
Those positions are not contradictory. They come from the same belief: that innocent human life has value regardless of nationality, ethnicity or religion.
Three years after October 7, Israelis and Palestinians have experienced an extraordinary amount of death, fear and grief. Nothing can undo what has happened. No political agreement can bring back a murdered child or return a parent to a family that has buried them.
But there has to be a future beyond this cycle.
I continue to support a peaceful political solution in which Israelis can live in security, without the fear of terrorism or another October 7, and Palestinians can live with freedom, dignity, security and the ability to determine their own future.
That future may feel painfully distant after everything that has happened.
But the alternative - generation after generation inheriting the grief, hatred and wars of those who came before them - cannot be accepted as inevitable.
So today, three years on, I remember October 7.
I remember the people who went to a music festival and never came home. The families attacked in their homes. The people taken hostage. The survivors who will carry what they witnessed for the rest of their lives.
I remember the barbarity I have seen in the footage from that day, and I will never forget it.
And I also remember the enormous number of innocent people who have died since.
The best way to honour innocent lives should not be to resign ourselves to more innocent deaths.
It should be to keep working towards the extraordinarily difficult but necessary goal of a future in which Israelis and Palestinians can finally live alongside one another in peace, security and dignity.