A Photo and Video Memorial: October 7th, Two Years Later

Click on any of the photos below to expand them and begin an optional slideshow.

May the souls of all the victims of October 7 be elevated by our small efforts to remember the tragic events of that day.

The first videos and photos are of the site of the Nova Music Festival, where 378 people were massacred, and a further 44 were taken hostage, including Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

It's hard to remember when faced with such numbers, but every single one of those human beings was a complete Universe unto themselves.

One of the most powerful sites testifying to the scale and barbarism of the October 7th invasion is the Burnt Vehicles Compound, home to 1,560 burnt vehicles that were destroyed by the terrorists on their murderous rampage.

Netiva HaAsara is a small moshav with a long history of peace activism and hosting co-existence events. As you can read here, on October 7th, three heavily armed Hamas commandos paraglided into the moshav with the mission of murdering as many people as possible.

They killed 17 people, including Chavik Segal, a 78 year old great grandmother. Chavik was hiding, unarmed, in a shelter when one of the Hamas terrosts entered and shot her nine times. The photo below is the exact spot where she was murdered. The marks on the wall were made by some of the bullets that passed through her body.

Kibbutz Be'eri was one of the worst-hit sites of the invasion. 132 people were murdered - 10% of the entire community - and 32 people were taken hostage. Among those murdered were many long-time peace activists, including Vivian Silver, and many families who were forced to witness each other's torture and execution.

As with the entire area affected by the invasion, an overwhelming majority of surviving residents have already returned to the kibbutz, and they are being joined by many others who want to live in these places.

The bottom two photos show the plan for Be'eri's new neighborhood, and the site where building has already started on new homes.

Of course, human creativity and the will to life is irrepressible. Ron Horvitz is a local artist and glassblower who uses pieces of Hamas rockets and Iron Dome interceptors to make works of art and Judaica.

His work symbolizes our endless quest to create meaning, beauty and tikkun (repair and healing) from everything we have experienced.