From the moment we arrived in Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, it was clear that Israel is still a nation in mourning. The faces of the hostages lined the walk to passport control. Each poster bore a name and a story, a life frozen in the moment they were taken on October 7th, 2023. Some were taken from the Supernova Music Festival; many from their homes in Sderot, Nir Am, Nahal Oz, Kfar Aza, Be’eri, and other settlements near the Gaza border. Yellow ribbons hung throughout the terminal, the symbol adopted by the families of the hostages, campaigning for their release. I was struck by the distance we walked before reaching the last image. Fifty-eight hostages remained in Gaza, with around 20 of them believed to still be alive.
As we waited for our passports to be checked, we noticed the nearby signs for the shelter. It had only been a few weeks since a rocket fired from Yemen landed within the airport grounds. The sirens had gone off on numerous occasions in recent weeks due to ballistic missiles fired by the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
We drove north to the Sea of Galilee, where we stayed for two nights. Here the conflict is far away, but reminders of war are still there—the same yellow ribbons we saw in the airport tied to almost every signpost in almost every village, along with posters of the hostages.
Our accommodation host told us how, since the dismantling of Hezbollah late last year, sirens were rare and this area was relatively safe. He told us that due to the drop in tourism very few of his cabins were occupied; business was very difficult, initially with the Covid pandemic and then with the war stopping tourism yet again.
Heading back to Tel Aviv, we visited Hostages Square—an open space now lined with tents, tributes, and the ever present yellow ribbons. The evening before, Yuval Raphael, having recently returned from being booed by the crowds at the Eurovision Song Contest, performed her song “New Day Will Rise.” She survived the massacre at the Nova Music Festival by hiding under the dead bodies of her friends for eight hours. While temporarily in storage due to a recent storm, the families of the hostages created a Shabbat table surrounded by the actual chairs of their loved ones from their homes, symbolising the empty places at each family’s table each Sabbath. A digital display has been set up counting the days, minutes and seconds since the hostages were taken captive. A mock up Hamas tunnel had been built in the square, to highlight to visitors the conditions the hostages were in. A number of the communities attacked by Hamas had set up tents, with members of the community in each tent to tell their story. We spoke to the members from Kibbutz Nahal Oz. The community was attacked by 180 Hamas fighters in multiple waves. While terrorists managed to enter the kibbutz, kill civilians and take hostages, the security forces had managed to prevent the kibbutz being completely overrun and burnt as in the cases of Be’eri, Nir Oz, and many others. We were told some of their members are still hostages in Gaza. One member told me how her father-in-law had been a founding member of the kibbutz, and that they were determined to return and continue their lives there.
From there, we drove down to Sderot, a town near Gaza whose 33,000 residents have lived under rocket fire for years. Here, residents only have 15 seconds to reach shelter when rockets are fired from Gaza—something which has happened tens of thousands of times since 2005
From there, we drove down to Sderot, a town near Gaza whose 33,000 residents have lived under rocket fire for years. Here, residents only have 15 seconds to reach shelter when rockets are fired from Gaza—something which has happened tens of thousands of times since 2005. In the early hours of October 7th, Hamas terrorists entered the city and were seen on social media roaming the streets in pickup trucks killing anyone they found. We visited the memorial to the police station destroyed in the initial invasion. Hamas fighters barricaded themselves within the fortress-like structure for 24 hours, and it took the IDF demolishing the police station to clear Hamas out. At the memorial, signs bore the names and stories of each local resident killed in the war—the first signs were from October 7th, but the later signs detailed IDF soldiers killed in recent conflicts. Stories included that of a man killed while out cycling, another on his way back from night shift, and another of a grandfather, taking his grandchildren to Ashdod, who was killed while refueling his car.
Etched into the marble of the memorial are the words of Numbers 23:24, “Behold, the people rise up like a young lion; they rouse themselves like a lion…”—a verse that would later give the name to Israel’s strike on Iran: Operation Rising Lion.
As you drive between the communities in the Gaza envelope, scattered along the roads near bus stops, there are shelters, each with a memorial. On the morning of October 7th, these were filled with young people fleeing from the Nova Music Festival, sheltering from rocket fire. The organisers had not provided any shelters at the site at all. The body cams of Hamas fighters show them throwing grenades into the shelters, with those inside desperately trying to throw them back out before they had time to detonate. Eventually, most people within the shelters were killed.
We climbed to a viewpoint overlooking Gaza in Sderot. Below us, Beit Hanoun lay in rubble with the remains of Gaza city in the distance.
We climbed to a viewpoint overlooking Gaza in Sderot. Below us, Beit Hanoun lay in rubble with the remains of Gaza city in the distance. Hardly a building could be seen that was undamaged. Columns of smoke rose from various locations within the city, the acrid smell of explosives could be smelt distinctly on the wind, and the crack of gunfire heard in the distance.
A few miles down the road at the site of the Nova Music Festival, where over 360 young people were massacred, signs have been placed where the dance floor had been. Each bore a name, a photograph, and their story written by the victim’s families.
We walked among the signs in silence—the silence occasionally broken by the sound of another loud explosion from across the border in Gaza. The contrast was shattering: the silence of remembrance interrupted by the striking sounds of war. A symbolic reminder that despite October 7th being past, its consequences are only too real and still unfolding.
Further south we visited Eilat, Israel’s Red Sea port. Rocket attacks are less frequent there now; more recently, the Houthis seem to prefer targeting Tel Aviv and central Israel. Here, the war is felt in other ways. The docks, once busy with cargo and new cars offloaded from ships, were empty. Houthi attacks on shipping in the Gulf of Aden has brought commerce through the Red Sea to a halt.
Eilat is also a holiday city—coral reefs, fish, and windsurfing providing Israelis with escape. But even here, yellow ribbons fluttered from the signs, reminding the holiday-makers of the hostages in the Gaza tunnels.
As we drove back up north past the Dead Sea, our phones buzzed with an alert from Israel’s Home Front Command: a ballistic missile had just been launched from Yemen. We had ten minutes before arrival. We pulled over, walked into a ravine, and waited with a hill to our south shielding us.
In the distance, we heard the crackle of Israel’s air defenses intercepting the missile. Later, we learned that the interception happened over the South Hebron Hills—around 15 miles away.
Jerusalem, when we arrived, felt in many ways unchanged. Although few tourists were around, the streets were full as a large number of young religious Zionists had come in from the settlements for Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), which was the next day. It would be the 58th anniversary of the city’s reunification in the Six-Day War of 1967. As you passed groups in the streets, you could hear their songs—Yibaneh HaMikdash (may the temple be built), Im Eshkachech Yerushalayim (“If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem,” Psalm 137), and other songs about Jerusalem and the future temple.
On our flight home, I sat next to a British Religious Jewish woman returning from a visit with her children and nine grandchildren in Beit Shemesh, 30 miles from the Gaza strip. She had been visiting on October 7th when the attacks occurred. She told me how October 7th was not just Sabbath, it was also Simchat Torah, one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar. Early in the morning, they heard the sirens and went to the shelters, but this had happened before. She realized something serious was happening when they started to hear the cars on the road outside. Their neighbourhood was very religious, and so no one would drive on Sabbath, and certainly not on Simchat Torah. She described looking out of the house and seeing their neighbours leaving in their IDF uniforms, taken from their family get-togethers and celebrations. Hours later, members of her own family would do the same.
Her words reminded me of stories I knew well from the initial hours of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, when reservists were called up straight from their synagogues, with only moments to say goodbye to their families before rushing to the front—into a war none of them had anticipated just hours earlier. The parallels with the Yom Kippur War do not end there. The Hamas assault came just one day after the 50th anniversary of October 6th 1973, and both events shared notable parallels: a surprise attack on a Sabbath that was also a major Jewish Holiday (1973 – Yom Kippur; 2023 – Simchat Torah); assaults from both the south and the north (1973 – Egypt and Syria; 2023 – Gaza and Hezbollah); and a catastrophic failure of Israeli intelligence, marked by complacency and incompetence that shocked and humbled Israel. Each war followed years of low-level simmering conflict—Egypt’s War of Attrition before 1973, and repeated Gaza flare-ups before 2023—which in both cases Israel falsely believed they could contain. In 1973 the images of Israeli soldiers shown on Arab TV as prisoners of war shook many in Israel in a similar way to the footage of hostages being taken into Gaza on motorbikes and pickup trucks on October 7th. The effect on the nation of Israel in 1973 was the humbling of Israel and a new sense of vulnerability, this led to a turn to religion, a trend that still continues today. On the Arab side, neither of these nations launched an all out war on Israel again. Even with such successful opening days of the war, it still ended in failure and there has been a cold peace ever since. Perhaps we will see similar outcomes today.
Israel experienced a profound national trauma on October 7th. In the communities overrun by Hamas terrorists, homes were desecrated, women were violated, and many were taken hostage into Gaza. Yet, soberingly, the Scriptures foretell that this anguish will be echoed on an even greater scale in the future. The prophet Zechariah warns that “the city (Jerusalem) shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished, and half of the city shall go forth into captivity.”
In light of such suffering, it is no surprise that the divine command will go forth:
“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people... cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of Yahweh’s hand double for all her sins” (Isa. 40:1-2).
The events we are witnessing today affirm that the Almighty continues to work with his people just as He promised. As foretold by the prophet Zechariah, He will “refine them as silver is refined” and “try them as gold is tried.” In their distress, they will call upon His name—and in that moment, God will declare, “It is my people.” And they will respond with the words we long to hear from Israel: “Yahweh is my God” (Ch. 13:9).
“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee.”—Psalm 122:6