Israel marks 1 year since the October 7th Hamas attack
Eyewitness News reporter Josh Einiger reports from Israel on the anniversary of the Hamas attack
ISRAEL (WABC) -- In the place now and forever known as Hostage Square, commemorations for the anniversary of October 7th are taking on an especially muted tone.
Large gatherings are curtailed because of the threat of attack from Iran.
But one year after the Hamas massacre, after 1,200 people were slaughtered, a hundred people are still in captivity in Gaza. Seven of them are American.
A somber memorial ceremony was held at the site of the Nova Music Festival -- the location with the greatest loss of life on that day.
Nearly 400 people were trapped and slaughtered when terrorists overran the field. Many victims never stood a chance.
Survivors gathered alongside family members and loved ones of the victims for a special tribute at 6:29 -- the very moment the music stopped at the festival. Noam Ben-David survived the attack by hiding in a trash-filled dumpster with more than a dozen people.
A Hamas terrorist found the group and strafed the crowd. She survived but her boyfriend did not.
"I heard David, my boyfriend's last breath. And that's it. I realized David was murdered next to me," Ben-David said.
Trauma consumes Ben-David's entire life now after her boyfriend was among the hundreds murdered one year ago.
"They were hunted down. These were literally killing fields we're sitting on and you look at the beauty of this place, it's hard stuff," said Eric Goldstein, CEO of the UJA Federation, which is helping survivors and families.
Yoran Yehudi lost his 24-year-old son Ron at the festival. He and others, with no place to run, dove into the dumpster. Of that group, nine people were killed and four were wounded.
The grieving father bought the dumpster and repurposed it into a memorial. It's complete with the garbage where his son lay dying, with a group of strangers.
"On one hand it's like a year but it's more like Groundhog Day that you wake up each day and it's a continuous day over and over and over and over again," Ruby Chen, father of hostage, said.
Chen's son Itay is among the missing. The IDF believes the 19-year-old dual national, a soldier on the border, was killed when Hamas fighters poured across. His body was carried back into Gaza.
Itay's dad, and other families, had a crucial message when they met with U.S. Ambassador Jack Lew on Sunday.
"At some point, you need to say there are different ways to get to the objective of all the hostages but specifically the US hostages. This administration has an obligation to get them out and we urge them to do anything possible to get them out," Chen said.
But it's no easy task as the region inches more and more down the path to all-out war.
Over the weekend, Israel pummeled Beirut's southern suburbs in its ongoing campaign to destroy Hezbollah as the region braces for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's response to Tuesday's onslaught of ballistic missiles, fired by Iran into Israel's densely populated center.
"You can take your position about the conflict in the Middle East and have your position about what is right and wrong and good and bad, I think the primary narrative here is what happened here was evil, it was incomprehensibly brutal," Goldstein said.
You can watch more of Josh Einiger's reporting from Israel HERE:
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