Relatives of hostages being held in Gaza and some communities on Israel’s southern border that were targeted in the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7 say they will not participate in an Israeli government memorial ceremony for the first anniversary of the attacks, leaving officials scrambling to propose alternatives.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group representing the relatives of the abducted, said in a post on social media on Wednesday that its members would boycott an official Oct. 7 ceremony. The group says a ceremony is premature because the Israeli government has not secured the return of everyone held captive.
The group joined several southern border communities — Be’eri, Nir Oz, Kfar Aza, Yad Mordechai and Nirim — that said this week that they intended to boycott the ceremony being planned by Miri Regev, Israel’s transportation minister and a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. Many Israelis blame the government for failing to prevent the Oct. 7 attack.
Jonathan Dekel-Chen — the father of Sagui Dekel-Chen, a hostage in Gaza and a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz — said on Thursday that members of his kibbutz were “appalled by the idea of this government creating a ceremony that would distract from their culpability.”
He accused the government of paying “lip service” to the demands of hostage families for a cease-fire deal to bring their relatives home, and he noted that 30 members of his community remained in captivity and that four others were among the six bodies of hostages the Israeli military said it had recovered this week.
Of the roughly 250 people the Israeli authorities say were taken hostage on Oct. 7, more than 100 remain in Gaza. Roughly a third of the remaining captives are believed to be dead.
Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a few miles east of Gaza, said in a statement on Tuesday that the Israeli government should focus on rescuing the hostages, rather than organizing events. The kibbutz said it would commemorate Oct. 7 privately.
Michal Paikin, a spokeswoman for Kibbutz Be’eri, said in a statement shared with The New York Times that her community opposed “the Israeli government’s preoccupation with producing a national memorial ceremony.” The statement called for an independent state commission to investigate the Oct. 7 attack and what it described as the government’s failure to prevent it.
Ms. Regev, the minister charged with planning the ceremony, dismissed criticism at a news conference on Thursday and said the memorial ceremony would be filmed in advance without an audience. She posted video clips on social media showing her chiding reporters at the briefing, lamenting the criticism she had faced in recent days, and explaining that she was attempting to maintain national unity.
In response, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum posted a statement to social media, accusing Ms. Regev and the government of planning a ceremony without an audience because they were afraid of looking them and other victims of the Oct. 7 attack in the eye.
Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, in a letter to Mr. Netanyahu reported by Israeli news media on Friday, offered to host a governmental ceremony with no political symbols as an alternative to Ms. Regev’s event and in an effort to quell the backlash. Mr. Herzog’s role is mostly symbolic, serving as a national unifier in a fractious parliamentary democracy where the prime minister wields the most power. Mr. Netanyahu’s office declined to comment on the proposal.
Read More: Some Oct. 7 Victims Say They Won’t Participate in Government Memorial
