October 7, 2023
October 7, 2023
It began at twenty past six in the morning with rocket fire and a coordinated crossing of the perimeter at some thirty points.
At the Nova music festival near Re'im, three hundred and sixty-four people were killed. Most were in their twenties. They had been dancing since before dawn and had nowhere to go across open ground.
In the kibbutzim and villages along the fence - Be'eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Nahal Oz, Holit and others - families were killed in their houses and their shelters. Be'eri lost about a tenth of its people.
About twelve hundred were killed in all, the large majority of them civilians, and two hundred and fifty-one people were taken into Gaza.
Among the dead were the volunteers and off-duty people who drove toward it without orders. Rachel Edri of Ofakim kept the men who held her and her husband talking for twenty hours, feeding them biscuits and coffee, until a rescue reached the house.
It was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, and Israel stopped.