Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, planted a pomegranate tree on the grounds of the vice president's residence at Number One Observatory Circle on Monday, to commemorate the first anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks in Israel.
"We dedicate this tree to the 1,200 innocent souls, in an act of pure evil on October 7, 2023, who were massacred by Hamas terrorists," Harris said.
Harris noted 46 Americans were among those killed in the attacks.
Israelis marked on Oct. 7 the first anniversary of the deadly attack by the Hamas terrorist group that plunged their nation into war.
Ceremonies across the country began with a moment of silence at 6:29 a.m.—the exact moment a year earlier when Hamas launched a rocket barrage from Gaza providing cover for 3,000 terrorists who stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 and abducting more than 200.
At the order of Israel’s Home Front Command, the moment was not marked by sirens. Air-raid sirens are still heard daily in Israel. National memorial sirens are traditionally reserved in Israel for Holocaust Remembrance Day and Memorial Day.
President Joe Biden spoke with Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday, as Israel marked the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
According to a White House readout of the call, Biden offered his condolences for the approximately 1,200 people killed on Oct. 7, 2023, including 46 Americans.
Biden and Herzog discussed the multi-faceted regional conflict that has arisen over the past year, in which Israel has had to contend with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Houthi rebel movement in Yemen.
The U.S. Treasury Department on Oct. 7 announced new sanctions targeting three individuals and a "sham charity" suspected of sending money to Hamas.
The Treasury Department identified the sanctioned individuals as Mohammad Hannoun, Majed al-Zeer, and Adel Doughman.
According to the Treasury Department, Hannoun is a Hamas member based in Italy, who established the Charity Association of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, which the department deemed a "sham charity" that claims to raise funds for humanitarian purposes but actually "helps bankroll Hamas’s military wing."
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris joined the people of Israel in mourning on the first anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack against the nation.
"Today marks one year of mourning for the more than 1,200 innocent people of all ages, including 46 Americans, massacred in southern Israel by the terrorist group Hamas," Biden said on Monday. "One year since Hamas committed horrific acts of sexual violence. One year since more than 250 innocents were taken hostage, including 12 Americans. One year for the survivors carrying wounds, seen and unseen, who will never be the same. And one year of a devastating war."
Biden said he and Harris "remain fully committed to the safety of the Jewish people, the security of Israel, and its right to exist."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country was fighting a “war of revival,” as the Jewish state marked the first anniversary of Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack against the country.
“This is the war of our existence—the 'War of Revival'. This is what I would like to officially call the war,” Netanyahu said during a Cabinet meeting on Monday.
Earlier, he said Israel would keep fighting until the “living and dead” hostages were returned, Hamas was overthrown in Gaza, and residents of the country’s north and south could go back to their homes.
The Hezbollah terrorist group fired rockets at Israel’s third largest city, Haifa, early on Oct. 7 as Israeli forces looked poised to expand ground incursions into southern Lebanon on the first anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel by Hamas.
Iran-backed Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, stated that it targeted a military base south of Haifa with “Fadi 1” missiles and launched another strike on Tiberias, 40 miles away, and areas north of Haifa with missiles in a second assault later on Oct. 7.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stated that the Israeli Air Force was carrying out extensive bombings of Hezbollah targets in south Lebanon.
An attendee of the Nova Music Festival, previously thought to be alive in Hamas captivity, has been confirmed dead by the Israeli military on the first anniversary of the massacre.
Idan Shtivi, 28, was killed while attempting to escape from the music festival site near Kibbutz Re'im in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. On the morning of that day, Hamas-led terrorists launched heavy rocket volleys from Gaza as cover while they swarmed into Israel using pickup trucks, motorbikes, speed boats, and motorized paragliders, unleashing a spree of killing and kidnapping of Israeli soldiers and civilians.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which initially identified Shtivi as a hostage in Gaza, said on Monday that they had informed his family of his death.
Israel cannot confirm whether Hashem Safieddine, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's potential successor as Hezbollah leader, is alive or dead, a government spokesperson said on Monday, following reports he had been targeted in an Israeli air strike last week.
Asked whether Israel could confirm the death of Safieddine, government spokesperson David Mencer told an online briefing: "We don't have that confirmation yet. When it is confirmed, as and when, it will be on the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] website."
Reports of Safieddine's demise have been circulating since Thursday, but the situation remains unclear.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) warned people in more than a dozen towns and villages in southern Lebanon to evacuate on Monday.
Evacuation warnings in recent days have expanded, as IDF troops continue their ground incursion and airstrikes persist.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission, known as UNIFIL, headquartered in Naqoura, not far from the coastal city of Tyre, is in the area where people are being warned to evacuate.
Members of Kibbutz Be’eri gathered amid the ruins of their homes to call for the return of the hostages during a commemoration of the Hamas attack a year ago on Monday.
The community saw 101 people killed and 30 taken as hostages on Oct. 7, 2023.
Some of the women and children from the kibbutz were released in a cease-fire deal in November, but 10 hostages from Be’eri remain in captivity, most of whom, Israeli intelligence no longer believe to be alive.
The families and friends of people massacred at the Nova music festival gathered at the site of the attack on Monday.
One year ago today, nearly 400 festival-goers were gunned down during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, assault.
Photographs of those who died were arranged in a semicircle around what was the DJ stage.
Air strikes pounded southern Beirut on Sunday in the most intense bombardment of the Lebanese capital since Israel escalated its campaign against Hezbollah.
The Jewish state's military said fighter jets hit targets belonging to the terror group's intelligence headquarters, as well as its weapons storage facilities.
Strikes were also launched against Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the Beqaa area.
A year to the day on from the Hamas attack which sparked the current violence in the Middle East, Israel remains in mourning and at war.
Israel continued the bombardment of its foes to the north and to the south overnight as Israelis prepared to mark the anniversary of the deadliest day in their history.
Late on Sunday, further airstrikes were launched against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
Ireland has refused to remove its U.N. peacekeeping troops from Lebanon, as Israel intensified its aerial bombardment of Hezbollah.
The Irish president, Michael D Higgins, claimed in a statement the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were making “outrageous” threats against the peacekeepers and were seeking "to have them evacuate the villages that they are defending.”
Dublin has 347 peacekeeping troops stationed in southern Lebanon as part of a joint battalion with Poland.