In Remembrance
By ROPES Community
As we mark three years since October 7th, 2023, we asked members of our community to share their thoughts, feelings, and what this day meant to them. Here is what they told us…
October 7th irrevocably changed every single one of us. There isn't a day that passes where I don't think about what happened, the lives affected, and what all of this means for our future.
I remember those first few hours with a strange mix of blurriness and sharp clarity; the days that followed were pure chaos, and throughout those initial months, I found myself constantly searching for small fragments of hope.
The human toll of this conflict is simply immeasurable. Our children can no longer just be children, forced to process realities that even adults struggle to comprehend, while the rest of us live with an underlying, continuous fear in a place where standard routine no longer exists. Yet, despite the weight of it all, what keeps me going and gives me hope is meeting people who refuse to give up—those who continue to work tirelessly to envision and build a different reality for our future.
– Sharon Bengio, Israeli
October 7th means first the death and losing my most beloved parents, Bilha and Yakovi, and my life completely changed, and also the beginning of the three most horrible years in the last century of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.
I don't wish, I act. I act so more people will know that the question is not if, but when. That the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will end sooner or later, and it's up to us to make it sooner.
Hope is not something that can be given, lost, or found. Hope is an action that we do together with others by envisioning a better future and act on a daily basis to make this vision into a reality. And there are so many individuals and organizations that are creating hope nowadays, if it's in the West Bank, if it's in Israel, if it's in Gaza, and around the world. So we must create a coalition of hope-makers and agents of hope, and to create the reality we all deserve to live within.
– Maoz Inon, Israeli
For me, as a woman from Gaza who lived through the war for one hundred days before being given the opportunity to survive and leave Gaza, leaving everything behind, October 7 has become a memory inseparably connected to everything I lost in a single moment. I lost my home, I lost my job, and I lost the sense that I had a clear future that I could plan for. My home was not simply four walls; it was the place where I felt safe, where I created my memories and built my dreams. Losing my job was not simply losing a source of income; it was also losing a part of the stability and independence that I had worked so hard to hold on to.
All of these losses have left a deep mark on me. I experienced trauma, grief, and depression, and there were many moments when I felt that I was simply trying to comprehend how an entire life could change so quickly. I am still trying to heal and find a way to rebuild what was destroyed.
What hurts me most is knowing that, as painful as my experience has been, it is only a small part of the much greater suffering experienced by so many women and children in Gaza. Children who did not choose this conflict, and women who were not looking for war, but simply wanted very ordinary things: a safe home, a family that was well, a job, an education, and a future they could dream about. Sometimes we forget that behind every image, every number, and every news story is a human being with a heart, dreams, and a life they wanted to live.
I believe what I most wish people understood is that the cost of war does not end when the bombing stops. There are things that are not easily seen: the fear that remains inside a person, the trauma, the grief, the loss of security, and the feeling that the future you had been planning for suddenly disappeared. These wounds take a very long time to heal, and some of them may stay with us forever.
And yet, I still hold on to hope. My hope is that one day, the children of Gaza and all the children of the region will be able to grow up without knowing the fear that we knew; that mothers will be able to sleep peacefully, knowing their children are safe; and that people will be able to work, dream, and rebuild their lives.
My experience has taught me something very important: a homeland alone is not enough. What is the value of a homeland if it does not offer safety, peace, and a dignified life? To me, a true homeland is a place where you can live without fear, love, work, dream, and plan for your children’s future while feeling that tomorrow exists.
All I hope for is that we can all have the opportunity to truly live, not merely survive- a life with safety, dignity, peace, and hope for a better future.
– Anonymous, Gazan
On a very personal level, October 7 marked the brutal end of a beautiful chapter in my life. I had spent six wonderful months in Jerusalem, from February to August 2023, during what I think of as the honeymoon period between Morocco and Israel. At the time, I was also considering an exciting research project, co-funded by my home university in France and a research institute in Israel. As many partnerships with Israel were cancelled in the aftermath of the war, that project was cancelled as well. So were many other promising ideas for Moroccan-Israeli cooperation that I had hoped might come to fruition.
Many of my friends back in Jerusalem were directly or indirectly affected by the war, and I have noticed, understandably, a great deal of tribalist resentment among them.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to ignore the extreme polarization that the events of the past three years have produced, not only on the Palestinian and Israeli sides, but also in Morocco and France, when it comes to people's views on the October 7 attacks, Israel's response, Moroccan-Israeli normalization, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more broadly.
For years, the conflict had often been described as a "frozen conflict" or a "low-intensity conflict." Yet this latest tragic episode reminded us all that the conflict is still very much alive, and that it remains unresolved. Perhaps the conversations surrounding it have become even more blunt, and at times more brutal. But at least we are being forced to confront and discuss more honestly some of the most painful aspects of the conflict's reality, including Palestinian extremism and Israeli expansionism.
As painful and uncomfortable as it may be to speak openly about these issues, perhaps every profound change and transition has to go through such a difficult stage of reckoning. If so, maybe this painful period can ultimately pave the way for solutions that are both more just and more realistic.
- Othmane Tabit, Moroccan
Long before October 7, I had grown accustomed, as a peace activist, to having my values and convictions questioned by fellow Israelis.
Again and again, I was asked: After everything we have been through—all the violence, the killings, the terror attacks, the failed negotiations—how can you still believe in peace?
My answer was simple: I believe in it, and I choose to invest my time, energy, and resources in pursuing it, because it is the right thing to do.
After October 7, the question remained essentially the same, but its weight changed. It was no longer asked with skepticism alone, but with grief, anger, and a new sense of finality:
Surely NOW you understand that peace is impossible. Surely now you see that working for peace is futile.
On the contrary.
If anything, October 7 has only deepened my conviction. Not because it made peace seem easier, or closer, or more inevitable. Quite the opposite. It revealed, with devastating clarity, the consequences of continuing down the path we are already on.
October 7 did not convince me that peace is impossible. It convinced me that the alternative is unbearable.
And so my conviction today is stronger, not weaker: peace is not a naïve aspiration we can afford to abandon when reality becomes too brutal. It is precisely when reality becomes this brutal that the pursuit of peace becomes most urgent.
Peace is still—unequivocally—the only way forward.
– Danielle Cumpton, American Israeli
As we mark three years, we want to honor and remember the lives lost in this terrible conflict. Words do not do it justice, but we are filled with a deep commitment - now more than ever - to bring peace to this region that we hold so dear.
In solemn remembrance,
ROPES
