Those divisions were visible in New York, where a crowd gathered for an evening remembrance ceremony in Central Park even as pro-Hamas protesters converged on a corner of the park less than a mile away.
“The unfathomable horrors I experienced that morning have transformed me, along with every single Israeli and every single Jew,” Natalie Sanandaji, a survivor from the music festival in southern part of Israel where the Hamas terrorists carried out their brutal massacre.
In New York, anti-Israel protesters spread a large Palestinian flag on a street near the New York Stock Exchange early Monday afternoon, while a smaller group of counterprotesters held an Israeli flag. The pro-Hamas group grew to a blocks-long column as it marched through Manhattan streets, at one point holding a banner that read “war begets war” on the steps of the New York Public Library.
While the protesters paused to conduct a Muslim evening prayer at the southwestern corner of Central Park, the parents of American-Israeli hostage Omer Neutra shared their anguish from the park's SummerStage venue.
“We would never have imagined we would still be standing here a whole year later, with no news of him," his mother, Orna Neutra, told hundreds of people at an event that drew New York’s governor, mayor, U.S. senators and other elected officials. Her son, a New York-born Israeli soldier, turns 23 next week.
At Philadelphia's Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, a New Jersey high school group viewed an exhibition about the Tribe of Nova music festival in Re’im, Israel, where over 360 people were killed.
“I feel like that really could have been me there,” said student Ellie Solomon. Many festivalgoers were close to her age, she noted.
“It’s important for us to remember them and honor them because they didn’t deserve anything that happened to them," she added.
