TEL AVIV – Some 50,000 Israelis filled Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park on Wednesday night to mark three years since the Oct. 7 attacks, at a bereaved families’ memorial ceremony that for the first time took place with no hostages remaining in Gaza.

The ceremony, organized for the third year by the Kumu movement, an initiative set up by families affected by Oct. 7, came more than eight months after the body of Ran Gvili, the last hostage held in Gaza, was recovered and returned to Israel. The last 20 living hostages had returned in October 2025. A year ago, 48 yellow chairs hung above the same stage to represent those still in Gaza.

This year, with the hostage campaign that dominated Israeli public life for more than two years no longer hanging over the anniversary, the emphasis shifted toward remembrance and another unresolved demand of many bereaved families: an investigation into the failures that allowed the attack to happen.

Former hostage Eli Sharabi, who was held in Gaza for 491 days, hosted the ceremony alongside actress Shani Cohen. Sharabi was abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7; his wife Lianne and daughters Noiya and Yahel were killed in the attack, and his brother Yossi was killed in captivity. 

“Remember what happened. Investigate how it happened. Don’t cut corners. Don’t let time blur the truth, don’t rewrite history, and don’t let history repeat itself,” Sharabi said from the stage. 

Omri Shifroni, a founder of the Kumu movement whose relatives Liel and Yanai Hetzroni and Avia and Ayala Hetzroni were murdered in Kibbutz Be’eri, also demanded a full investigation.

“That morning, the systems collapsed and the state failed to function,” he said. “But mutual responsibility alone is not enough. To rebuild trust, we also need the truth. We must know what happened. Without investigating the truth, we cannot fix things, and we cannot make sure it never happens again.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has resisted establishing a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding Oct. 7 and instead backed legislation for a politically appointed probe.

Wednesday’s ceremony was launched ahead of the first anniversary of the attack as an alternative to the official state event after many bereaved and hostage families said they would shun it. 

Netanyahu instead attended the official state commemoration at Mount Herzl on Monday, the Hebrew-calendar date designated by the government for marking the attack. 

For Eliot Young, whose brother Nathanel, a British-Israeli soldier, was killed fighting Hamas on Oct. 7, the ceremony has become an annual form of support. He was there with his wife, Rena, and their infant son, who was named after Nathanel. 

“These days are very hard, but the fact that these people are here is a huge source of strength for me,” he told The Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Some of them lost lots of family members, but they’re still here, smiling, having a conversation. It’s an inspiration for anyone who has been through loss.”

Young recalled Nathanel talking about joining the Israeli military from the age of 10, even though he was living in the UK at the time, and said that by 15, Nathanel was going to the gym with the goal of getting into the best unit he could.

“He taught us, and continues to teach us, about persevering with your dreams,” Young said.

Nathanel, a soldier in the Golani Brigade’s 13th Battalion, was killed fighting at the Yiftach military base near Zikim in the Gaza envelope in southern Israel, where he and other soldiers held off Hamas attackers, saving soldiers at the base and preventing an infiltration into the nearby kibbutz. 

His sister, Gaby Young Shalev, said that three years on, Nathanel’s memory has become woven into the family’s daily life.

“There’s not one day that goes by where someone in my family isn’t doing something in memory of Nathanel,” she told JTA.

Among the projects is a professional music and DJ studio for at-risk youth at a WIZO school in Jerusalem — Nathanel himself was a DJ — funded with tens of thousands of shekels raised by Young Shalev in his memory. A wine and a cold brew have also been made in Nathanel’s memory.

“We’re trying to live our lives the way that Nathanel would want us to. He definitely wouldn’t want us to sit around moping,” Young Shalev said.

Other memorials were held throughout the day across Israel, including in communities attacked on Oct. 7. At the Nova festival site near Re’im, survivors and bereaved families gathered for a memorial at 6:29 p.m., deliberately matching 6:29 a.m., the time the Oct. 7 attack began and the music stopped.

Eyal Golan, whose sister Shirel survived the Nova massacre and later died by suicide, returned to the Re’im area for the first time in five years. He said he had not been back since developing PTSD during reserve duty in the 2021 Gaza conflict, and had not even driven through the area since.

During the ceremony, Golan chose to remain beside a memorial placard bearing Shirel’s photograph. “I wanted to babysit my little sister,” he said. 

He spent much of the day speaking about Shirel and handing out sensory balls designed to help ground people during anxiety and PTSD episodes, part of a project he founded in her memory. It was a marked change from a year earlier, when Golan told JTA he could not bring himself to attend a memorial and had spent the anniversary struggling with a feeling of “emptiness” and his own PTSD. 

“For the first time in years, I felt like I had completed a missing piece of the puzzle of my life,” he said after Wednesday’s ceremony. “I felt much more whole.”

Their mother, Yaffa Golan, said being among others “in pain, tearing up, crying” reflected how raw the loss remains.

“You know, for us, every day is October 7. Still now,” she said.

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