Amid Oct. 7 events, even pro-Palestinian protesters turn on Mamdani

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

Since October 7th, Israel's heroic fallen soldiers and security personnel have left behind over 400 widows and a thousand children. We can imagine their final request, take care of my family. The IDF, Widows and Orphans Organization, is the one official organization standing with every one of these families from the moment of loss and throughout their lives with financial assistance, scholarships, healing camps, and community. Wars end, our responsibility does not. Please give, visit donate.idfwo.org.

SPEAKER_2 (0:39)

You are listening to an Ark Media podcast.

Deborah Pardes (0:48)

It's Thursday, October 8th. This episode was recorded at 7 p.m. New York time on Wednesday. I'm Deborah Pardes and this is Ark News Daily. Three years after the deadliest day in Israel's history, hundreds of memorial events took place across the country.

50,000 people attended the main civil memorial last night at Yalcon Park in Tel Aviv. Organized by the Bereaved Families, the ceremony was also streamed live to millions on most TV channels.

Prominent Israeli singers performed, Shlomar Artzi, Miri Messika and others, while images of those murdered and fallen were projected on the screen. Former hostage Eli Sharabi hosted the ceremony. His wife and two daughters were murdered in their homes in Kibbutz Be'eri. And his brother was taken captive and killed in Gaza. He was given a standing ovation as he closed the ceremony, calling for the country to always remember what happened, to not rewrite history, and to not let history repeat itself. He ended with the words, This is our hope, that after everything, and despite everything, a better life lies ahead. The anniversary was also marked at Kfar Aza, where the community lost 64 people, and the Khal-Oz, where soldiers read the names of the 53 killed on the base, and outside the Stero police station, where 20 officers died defending it. And President Itzach Herzog spoke at a memorial service at the site of the Nova Festival, where 378 people were killed and 44 taken hostage.

SPEAKER_4 (2:58)

We are here to tell their story, and to remember and reflect and reminisce in this solemn day and say to the world, we shall dance again, we shall live again.

Deborah Pardes (3:11)

The same spirit was shared in events around the world. There was a solidarity march in the Druze Mountains of Syria and a memorial gathering and concert in Berlin's Bebelplatz, the same place where books were burned by the Nazis.

In London, the UK's chief rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mervis, led a prayer at a vigil for victims of the October 7th massacre.

SPEAKER_5 (3:46)

Bind the souls of the more than 1,200 innocent women, men and children into the bonds of eternal life.

Deborah Pardes (3:56)

But as expected, the day was also marked with familiar condemnations.

Pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside the Board of Deputies headquarters in London, the umbrella organization representing British Jews. Many wore masks. They waved signs that celebrated the massacre as a liberation, chanting, stop killing babies, and we will see you in the Hague.

SPEAKER_2 (4:27)

We must rededicate ourselves every day to supporting Palestinians in the wake of systematic elimination.

Deborah Pardes (4:34)

At another event at Columbia University in New York, one speaker said she was a Jewish student there and called out school leaders for suppressing student demonstrations.

SPEAKER_2 (4:44)

Discussion about the realities of the ongoing genocide.

Deborah Pardes (4:48)

That juxtaposition between commemoration and condemnation was echoed in a statement by New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani. Like many leaders around the world, he called October 7th profoundly painful and expressed solidarity with the Jewish community. But he dedicated the bulk of his statement to Israel. He wrote, the suffering did not begin nor end that day. Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.

Critics called it exactly the wrong moment to launch an attack on Israel. The president of the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation said, on the anniversary of the massacre, as protesters again invoke resistance, the Jewish people should be afforded this one day to mourn the murdered without having their grief reframed as an indictment of Israel. In city hall, in Johan Mamdani, in Johan Mamdani, have blood on their hands, have blood on their hands. Hours later, pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside city hall to call out Mamdani too for the exact opposite reason. Some waved Palestinian and even Hamas flags. They attacked the mayor for allowing events in the city that promote real estate in the West Bank, policing protests, and for keeping Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch in office. She is Jewish and has tried to address rising anti-Semitism.