Jerusalem marks month since Hamas attack with Western Wall vigil
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Let's cross now to Jerusalem on the program where a special ceremony is being held today at the Western Wall
00:07 to remember the 1,400 people killed in the Hamas attacks 30 days ago.
00:13 In their honour, 1,400 candles are being lit at the Western Wall. Those are the images we're showing you now.
00:21 Families of those killed on October the 7th are attending this event at Judaism's holiest site.
00:28 Well, looking at those images with me, Iris Mackler, our Jerusalem correspondent.
00:33 And Iris, those deaths on October the 7th were a true national tragedy for Israel, weren't they?
00:40 One of the darkest days in Jewish history since the Holocaust.
00:43 So just tell us a bit about sort of what we're seeing today and perhaps why this ceremony is so important as well.
00:50 What we're seeing, I've just heard them saying that they're calling up the relatives.
00:55 So anybody who is related to anyone who died on that day has been called up to light a candle,
01:01 as well as anyone in the audience who wants to pay their respects, anyone who's in attendance at the holy site and wants to do this.
01:09 The 30th day after a soul, after someone dies is a marker in the year of mourning that Jews are meant to perform if they are Orthodox.
01:21 And even if they're not, many people do obey these rules of mourning.
01:25 And it's a marker for the people who are left behind and also for the soul as it rises to heaven.
01:31 This is not uncommon in other religions, too.
01:34 You know, Islam does something similar on the 40th day.
01:37 So it's a marker and people are being the end of the most intense mourning and the beginning of the rest of the year of mourning.
01:45 And I think that's why this is so well attended because of the shock.
01:48 I think Israel still is in over the deaths on that day being described as the worst peacetime or wartime crisis,
01:57 actually, that Israel has known. One day death, its largest, its highest one day death toll.
02:03 That's why I think you see so many people.
02:05 And they also will be making reference, of course, to the hostages who are still still hopefully alive and being held in Gaza.
02:13 As you suggest, Iris, this is a collective trauma for Israelis, isn't it?
02:18 As well as, of course, a profound trauma for the families of those who were killed.
02:24 Would you say that Israelis have begun to sort of process what happened on October the 7th or are they still really living it now?
02:33 I would say people here really are still in shock. You still hear on the broadcast media, you still hear the stories retold,
02:42 news stories people didn't know that are being discovered, acts of heroism, acts of courage, sad deaths,
02:50 but with a focus on the people who did manage to stay alive and can tell you their stories.
02:55 So I think there's definitely a feeling here of shock, still shock, that this could happen.
03:02 The intelligence failure, the military failure. I think the military was in a state of shock on October the 7th.
03:08 But I think the nation is still in shock and still processing. I think collective trauma was a very good word.
03:15 My own feeling watching this and having reported here for many years is that both sides now are experiencing their most primal fears.
03:24 So the Jewish fear is of being surrounded by marauding hordes and killed in your bed with no way to defend yourself.
03:31 And in essence, that's what happened in large swathes of the south of Israel on October the 7th.
03:37 And the Palestinian fear is of being dispossessed of a second Nakba.
03:41 And that's what they feel they're experiencing now in Gaza.
03:44 So both sides are really in a state of suffering.
03:47 And I don't, from what I observe, think that the Jewish, that people in Israel have really begun to process it fully at all.