The Battle over the October 7 Narrative Is Here
Hostage Square. Photo by Oren Rozen, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Dina Kraft — October 27, 2025
Views and positions expressed here are those of the writer, and do not necessarily represent NJN's views and policy positions.
It’s been exactly two weeks since I stood on a bench in the middle of Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square amid a sea of people touching euphoria as we watched, one by one, twenty young Israeli men step out of two years of captivity in Gaza into the sweet light of homecoming.
A square that showcased Israel’s fierce solidarity with one another, but until that day was laden with despair and fury, found its release in communal roars of joy and strangers hugging one another. A frenzied peak came when the helicopter ferrying Gali and Ziv Berman (jovial twin brothers known for doing everything together who were taken hostage by Hamas at the same time, but separated once they were brought into Gaza) flew over the square. The crowd waved as one. People wiped away tears of joy. Strangers hugged.
Since then, the cease-fire remains fragile. There are occasional deadly strikes in Gaza. Hamas members are now back in uniform, taking control of streets and exacting vengeance on internal foes. Among Israelis there is ongoing protest and demand for the final 13 deceased hostages to be returned.
People still keep count of the days of war: now up to 752.
Despite concerns the truce could unravel, especially as Hamas fills the power vacuum, the sense is that the two years of war as experienced until now are over.
But what has just begun is the battle over it’s narrative, starting with a Cabinet meeting less than a week after the scenes of hostages reunited with their families played on repeat across Israeli screens. The Cabinet approved a new name for the war: The War of Redemption. The name change is the brainchild of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Immediately a chorus of voices rose up against this new name, marketed by Netanyahu as Israel meeting the moment to rise again. To critics, though, it’s a brazen attempt by Netanyahu to avoid responsibility for Hamas’ assault on Israel’s southern border on October 7, 2023 – the biggest intelligence and operational failure, let alone the bloodiest day, in the country’s history.
Yair Lapid, the opposition leader, wrote in a tweet, “This is not the ‘War of Redemption;’ if anything, it is the ‘War of Blame,’ in the name of all those who tried to escape their blame and failed.”
“It was, and remains, the October 7 War, and the October 7 Government, and the Disaster of October 7,” he continued. “All the attempts to erase what happened there won’t succeed, because it is a real story inscribed in blood.”
The renaming was quickly followed by coalition partners in a Knesset committee voting against the establishment of a state commission of inquiry. Such a commission was set up after the Yom Kippur War for example, with no pushback from the government. The idea is to for its findings to help current and future generations learn from the failures of October 7.
During the war, those demanding such an investigation, among them relatives of victims of the day’s massacre and mass hostage taking, were told by some government members they had to hold on until after the fighting ended. (Later the delay tactics included claims that the Supreme Court president who appoints a judge to head a state commission could not be trusted to act impartially).
A group of over 200 bereaved families said quashing a state commission of inquiry was evidence the government was “burying the truth.”
“The Knesset members who voted today against establishing a state commission of inquiry see us — the bereaved families, the residents of the south, the victims of October 7 — as enemies. Instead of joining our fight for the truth, they repeatedly choose to fight against us and the State of Israel,” a statement from the October Forum read.
On Monday a new poll was released that found Israelis finally agreeing on one thing: 95 percent of them think U.S. President Donald Trump was the most significant factor in reaching the ceasefire.
Reflecting a festering divide in outlook in the country, there was a divide among those choosing the reason for the “next-most” significant factor that led to the truce, according to the poll by the Israel Democracy Institute poll. Coming in first place for that was 78 percent who said military pressure followed by 61.5 percent who credited hostage family pressure.
The question of what was more important, military pressure or hostage family pressure (buoyed by nearly two straight years of weekly and sometimes daily mass street protests) as the best route to free the hostages and end the war, has been a festering wound in Israeli society.
Einav Zangauker, a single mother whose son Matan, 24 at the time, was taken captive from Kibbutz Nir Oz, became the symbol of the struggle to bring the hostages homes. She’s known as the “mother lioness” for her ferocity and determination.
Rail thin, with jet-black hair, the former Netanyahu voter who said he had betrayed her in his handling of the war was known for upping the ante to keep the public’s eye on the languishing hostages. She’d give speeches like one from a cage dangled off the bridge next to the Defense Ministry during the summer of 2024: “I am calling on the entire government,” she said from the cage. “You are sitting there disconnected from us. It’s time to put politics aside and make the brave decisions that leaders are supposed to, and return the hostages home to us.”
She and some other high-profile hostage family members critical of the government have spoken out about the attacks they received from Netanyahu loyalists in the media and online. These attacks happen even now, after their loved ones returned home.
“Their goal is clear: They want to rewrite history by smearing the heroic struggle we led together with millions of Israelis,” Zangauker wrote on X. “That same struggle that prompted President Trump to act and force Netanyahu and Hamas into the agreement to end the war and bring the hostages home,” she says. “The method is always the same — campaigns full of lies, slander, and defamation against us, the families. I will not accept this violence — and I will not be intimidated by the organized smear campaign.”
She charged that it was a “coordinated, funded political campaign meant to deter me from continuing the fight for the hostages and the fallen, and to deter all the families of October 7 from demanding the truth about the failures through a state commission of inquiry.”
One of the oft-repeated lines in these last two years has been that until all the hostages return Israel cannot fully heal and rebuild. Granted, Israelis are still waiting for the final 13 deceased hostages final return home – and the pressure is on Hamas to deliver them.
But who will rebuild — who will hold accountable the leadership that failed Israel on Oct. 7 (and Israelis and Palestinians in the two years since)? It seems clear it won’t come from Israel’s current leaders. But the people who banded together to organize and volunteer swiftly and with deep conviction are still here. They still want answers. And they still have the passion and power to get them.
Photo by Oren Rozen, CC BY-SA 4.0.
