Three years after 7 October: Israeli survivors grapple with trauma between rebuilding and remembrance

Keith Siegel spent 484 days in Hamas captivity methodically cataloging his own suffering. He memorized the locations where he was held, the dates he was moved between them, each indignity inflicted or witnessed. The purpose was practical: he wanted to preserve intelligence that might help free other hostages, to anchor himself to time as the days blurred together, to have something to tell his family when—if—he got out. His body made it back. His mind has not left Gaza.

"I'm living a kind of dual life," he said in Tel Aviv. "I'm here for some of the time, and I'm in Gaza some of the time. It's very challenging to convey in words what it was like." He and his wife Aviva were among 251 people dragged across the border on October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants breached Israel's defenses and launched coordinated attacks on kibbutzim, border towns, military bases, and a music festival. By the time Israeli forces regained control, 1,209 people lay dead—mostly civilians, including 36 children. The deadliest day in Israel's history.

At Nir Oz, a kibbutz that bore the assault with particular ferocity, the cemetery holds two neat rows of fresh headstones, all dated the same. One shared plot contains a family of five—mother, father, three young children—now a garden with space reserved for grandparents still living. Shlomo Margalit, the caretaker, is 89 and points to graves of three founding members he arrived with from Haifa in the 1950s. "This is my life project, as well as my home," he said. He is waiting for a new house but sleeps in the former home of Gadi Moses, 82, who survived 482 days as a hostage himself.

The attack on Nir Oz was a catastrophe of abandonment. Five volunteer defenders held Hamas at bay for two hours before being shot down. Then the kibbutz was overrun—homes burned, families slaughtered or taken. Before the first Israeli soldier arrived, the attackers and looters withdrew. The army had forgotten Nir Oz entirely. Forty-seven residents were killed. Seventy-six were kidnapped to Gaza, among them Shiri Bibas and her two young children, Kfir and Ariel, who were murdered there. More than a quarter of the community, gone or dead. Margalit still gives interviews because, he says simply, "I want people to know what really happened here."

Three years later, Nir Oz faces an almost irreconcilable tension. The kibbutz has chosen to rebuild—new houses already occupy several rows near the entrance, families moving in, construction echoing through the cemetery. But on the other side of the compound, blackened ruins remain standing, paths threading between them and memorials to the dead. Some bereaved families want these burned homes preserved as permanent monuments. Others cannot imagine children growing up surrounded by charred reminders of loss. "There are families that can't live here, but want a memorial place to come to visit," Margalit said. "On the other hand, can you build a new kibbutz where children grow up running around between burnt houses? Is there right or wrong here? No. We are dealing with that, trying to find an answer." Two years on, the remembrance committee has reached no decision. A memorial garden on the kibbutz border may be a compromise. For now, there are plaques and a memorial house.

Margalit and his wife chose to return and rebuild. His only concession to trauma was requesting a new home that does not face Gaza. "I've found myself building this place for the second time," he said. "I know when I'm gone, I will have done something with my life."

The Siegels made a different choice. They will not return to Kfar Aza, another devastated kibbutz. Aviva was 62 when kidnapped; Keith was 64. They are focused on recovery—mental and physical. "What happened to me in Gaza, what happened with Keith in Gaza, it's there all the time," Aviva said. She has allowed herself to feel again after months of suppressing emotion through the urgency of campaigning for hostage releases. As the anniversary approached, the wounds reopened. "Getting ready has been very very painful," she said. "The last couple of weeks all I want to do is cry. Now I'm feeling things I didn't feel before. When I hear my grandson say he is afraid of being kidnapped in the middle of the night, it breaks my heart."

She has written a book, *Survived to Tell*, which she describes as both therapy and an act of celebration—for her grandchildren to read, for hostages who cannot tell their own stories, for a broader audience in Israel and beyond. Keith's focus has turned to accountability. He wants an independent inquiry into how the security failure occurred, to prevent other families from enduring what his has. "There needs to be an investigation to understand how this happened, in order to do everything possible that it won't happen again," he said. "So many people were killed, injured, traumatised."

Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, has fiercely opposed such an inquiry. Critics say he fears it would expose his own failings. For years he had championed a security doctrine premised on Hamas being "contained" in Gaza behind impenetrable fortifications. The security officials commanding that day have all resigned. Netanyahu remains in power. At the official commemoration this year, a bereaved father, Yaakov Godo, interrupted Netanyahu's speech. "You did not protect my son on 7 October, you did not protect 1,200 people murdered in one day. Shame!" he shouted before being removed.

The political terrain is treacherous for survivors. Both U.S. and Israeli officials have said Netanyahu rejected ceasefire deals that could have halted the war and brought hostages home sooner. But criticizing the prime minister means entering a vicious political debate where age and loss offer no protection. Yocheved Lifshitz, 88, was taken from Nir Oz with her husband Oded, whose cactus garden still blooms at the kibbutz's heart. He died in Gaza. She survived and has become a vocal Netanyahu critic. A Likud candidate, Itzik Bonzel, said last month he wished he could return her to Hamas captivity—later apologizing, blaming grief over his son killed in the war, but Lifshitz called it a proxy attack orchestrated by the prime minister.

The war Israel launched in response to October 7 has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, the majority civilians, including roughly 20,000 children. Netanyahu is pushing to intensify attacks and his coalition partners are calling for ethnic cleansing and annexation. He is also waging a years-long campaign to dismantle democratic institutions within Israel's 1967 borders. Many Israelis consider this election the most critical since 1948.

Nir Oz, rooted in the leftwing Zionist movement, has split. Some were pushed rightward by the brutality of October 7. Others saw their pain as proof that war alone cannot provide long-term security. Margalit belongs to the latter group. "I don't believe we can ignore the fact that Palestinians live here," he said. "We have to find a way we can live here with them and be secure. I don't have an answer, I just know we are here to stay and they are here to stay. Maybe we need someone from the outside." The third anniversary falls weeks before elections. Survivors and the bereaved are still grappling with trauma, still struggling to rebuild something like normality, still waiting for answers that may never come.