More than a thousand people gathered in Chicago’s north suburbs Monday evening to mourn, pray and commemorate a year since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Hamas’ attack killed about 1,200 Israelis in the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust and left roughly another 250 people hostage in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. It began a war and accompanying humanitarian crisis that has decimated Gaza and killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, the Associated Press reports.
As the fighting enters its second year and spreads to Lebanon, 101 hostages are estimated to remain in Gaza, per the U.S. State Department.
Those 101 hostages were a focal point of Monday’s event, whose location was not publicized out of security concerns. Some people attending carried small Israeli flags or draped flags around their shoulders; others wore shirts or sweaters affirming their support for Israel or demanding “bring them home now.” About 1,400 people attended live and another 2,000 watched the event online, according to event organizers with the Jewish United Fund.
Outside the ballroom, Shahar Gabay fielded one interview after another. Gabay, 24, survived Hamas’ attack on the Tribe of Nova music festival in the Negev desert on Oct. 7.
Gabay said he’s spent much of the last year trying to get back to normal life and is finishing up his last year as a university student, majoring in biotechnology. But on Monday morning, he said he’d woken up wondering to himself how he was going to describe “the most crazy thing of my life.”
A year later, what he remembered the most clearly was being on the phone with his father as the attack unfolded. He had to hang up at one point so he and the friend he was with could be as quiet as possible, he said.
When they called Gabay’s father back, he was crying. His father thought something might have happened to them.
“I can’t really explain what the reality is like in Israel right now,” Gabay said.
He tried anyway: “You live under a constant threat. You have to be ready all the time.”
As the war expands its grip on the Middle East, Gabay said he was praying for Israel’s strength and the return of the remaining hostages. Local rabbis and local leaders led a series of prayers throughout the event for the return of the hostages, the Israel Defense Force, for elected officials and for peace among nations.
State Rep. Bob Morgan, a Democrat from Highland Park, Chicago Ald. Debra Silverstein, 50th, and U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider were among the elected officials to crowd the stage for a prayer and dispersed to a standing ovation from the crowd.
Two family members of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American Israeli who was taken hostage at the Nova music festival and died in August, recounted the roller coaster of emotions they had experienced, beginning when Goldberg-Polin was captured, through attempts at negotiations and the news of his death.
Goldberg-Polin was one of a handful of hostages with ties to the Chicago area, along with Judith Raanan of Evanston and her teenage daughter Natalie. The pair had been visiting family at Nahal Oz kibbutz on Oct. 7 and was released in late October.
Abby Polin, Goldberg-Polin’s aunt, encouraged those in attendance to keep contacting their elected representatives to demand the release of the hostages.
“Don’t belittle the power of your daily call or email,” she said.
Early in the program, Israeli consul general to the Midwest, Yinam Cohen, asked people to rise with posters of the remaining hostages. Cohen, sporting a yellow pin to commemorate those still captive, sought to draw a tight link between Jews in Israel and in the U.S.
“A strong Israel is essential not just for Israelis but for Jews worldwide,” he said. “So many of you shared the feeling that as American Jews, Israel is not just a second homeland. It is a crucial reference point in defining your religious identity. “
Other American officials led prayers or reaffirmed U.S. support for Israel and its war effort.
Though leaders who spoke at the memorial event Monday night unequivocally supported U.S. military aid to Israel, American support for the war effort has also drawn nationwide protests. Those protests have included major demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention and a wave of pro-Palestinian campus actions.
Both anti-semitism and Islamophobia have spiked nationwide in the year since, in some cases leading to violence like the stabbing death of 6-year-old Palestinian American Wadee Alfayoumi in Plainfield. Police have called the slaying a hate crime.
Pro-Palestinian activists ran a wave of demonstrations over Sunday and Monday, including marches and campus walkouts. Others held events to memorialize the more than 41,000 Palestinians who have died in the fighting and accompanying humanitarian crisis since the war began.
Jewish United Fund President Lonnie Nasatir said he found it “troubling and quite frankly offensive” that those events were taking place on the anniversary of the Hamas attack.
“You would think that they’d give the Jewish community this day to just mourn the innocents that were taken on that day,” he said.
Later, addressing the crowd, Nasatir remembered mourning with family members of other people who had been taken hostage or killed at the Nova music festival and said Jews had shown strength and unity over the preceding year.
He nodded to the Israeli national anthem Hatikvah, which had opened the program. Hatikvah is “the hope” in Hebrew, he said, “but also a pledge to endure” in the face of tragedy: “We are a people who have said Kaddish too many times.”
