Thousands of Jewish and Israeli-Americans gathered in prayer Monday, Oct. 7, one year after Hamas terrorists invaded Southern Israel, killing an estimated 1,200 people and taking hundreds more hostage.
The bloody invasion ultimately ignited the ongoing Israel-Gaza war, which has left upwards of 30,000 Palestinians civilians dead and leveled much of the coastal region.
Inside Saban Theater, various city and community leaders lit candles for the fallen soldiers, the victims of sexual assault and the thousands murdered in what was the deadliest terror attack in Jewish history.
One attendee, Miriam Bluman, a local schoolteacher, said she was asked by a student if she was sad that today was Oct. 7.
“And I’m like, ‘Yes, but I’ve been sad every day since last Oct. 7,’” she explained.
In Beverly Hills, elected officials, actors and other influencers marked the occasion at exactly 6:29 a.m., the moment that the perpetrators began firing rockets into the Jewish state before besieging a music festival and targeting men, women and children in their homes.
“October 7 was the most murderous day in Jewish history since the Holocaust,” CEO of the Jewish Federation of L.A. Rabbi Noah Farkas told KTLA. “But we have come together to support each other, to help each other, to grow in strength, to support victims of terror.”
There was also moving testimony from survivors of the terrible day, from relatives of people murdered during the attack and from first responders who were among the first on the scene.
In downtown Los Angeles at an IfNotNow rally, lives on both sides of the Middle East conflict were memorialized.
For Steve Frankel, the evening was about remembering a family friend, Or Moses, who was killed while defending her base.
“We met her in April 2023 along with about 20 other soldiers,” he said. “She was killed six months later. We’ve become friends with her family since, out of the grief that we have all gone through.”
Sheilah Miller shared with KTLA’s Rachel Menitoff her personal and familiar mantra on a day like Oct. 7.
“My father, a very wise rabbi, once told me if there is a substitute for love, it is memory,” she said. “Tonight, we all remember.”
