Echoes of Sorrow: One Year On, The Scars of Reim Remain

The beats of techno music and the tears of the families of the victims, such as Idan Shtivi, who we learned this morning, died as a prisoner like dozens of other hostages in the Gaza Strip: images arriving from Reim, in southern Israel, which commemorates the anniversary of the killings of approximately 1,200 of its citizens. The tribute was paid on the edge of the Negev desert, just six kilometers from the border with the Palestinian region. The commando assault from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, with some fighters even arriving by hang glider, had taken attendees at the Supernova festival by surprise after a night of music. More than 350 victims, the vast majority of them young. There were also many people kidnapped: in Reim and in various Israeli kibbutzim on the border with the Strip more than 250, many of whom were later killed, with perhaps just one hundred prisoners in Gaza still alive.

The commemoration ceremony opened with the last piece of music played on the morning of October 7, 2023, just before the shooting began. President Isaac Herzog also remembered those moments. «The world», argued the head of state, «must understand that to change the course of history and bring peace and a better future for the region it must support Israel in its fight against its enemies». The reference is first of all to Hamas, an organization born in the 1980s as a form of “resistance” to Tel Aviv’s military occupation of both Gaza and the West Bank, territories at the heart of a hypothetical Palestinian state. Then there is Hezbollah, a formation based in Lebanon, which also grew up in the name of the fight against the Israeli invasion, at the time of the civil war fought between 1975 and 1990.

The commando attacks on 7 October 2023 reignited the conflict in the Middle East, triggering the reaction of Tel Aviv: over 40 thousand victims of raids and bombings in Gaza according to the local administration, many hundreds in Lebanon without counting more than one million and 200 thousand displaced, just in a few days of the Israeli offensive, which began last week. In a climate of tension, with the unknown of Tel Aviv retaliating against Iran, accused of supporting both Hamas and Hezbollah, the news of Shtivi’s death arrived this morning. This was announced by the Hostages’ Families Forum. “His body is still in Gaza,” we read in a statement. He was 28 years old.