"A hundred days of hell, a hundred days of nightmare" since the Hamas massacre on October 7

On October 7, Hamas terrorists unexpectedly circumvented Israel's security measures. More than 1,000 crossed from the Gaza Strip, governed by the jihadist group, into Israeli territory. Black Saturday began.

"And it seemed like a normal morning, like almost always, until the bombings started and my older cousin, Pablo, wrote to my aunt Ofelia to take cover in the shelter of the house just in case," Hernán Feler, Argentine reporter, would later say. Ofelia Roitman, 77, disappeared that day.

In their wake, the terrorists left more than 1,100 dead. Some of the bodies have not yet been identified - several have been so lacerated that forensic doctors recognize the difficulty of the task - but analysis of the remains and images revealed what Pablo Nachman, a forensic doctor in Israel, describes as "demonic" and "war crimes against innocents": bodies of civilians tied up, incinerated, shot at point-blank range. Sexual assaults and rapes. "In this massacre there was no respect for anything that has to do with humanity."

"One of the terrorists called his parents happy, proud and ecstatic. He told them: 'Dad, you don't know where I am. I just killed 10 Jews with my bare hands and I'm talking from one of the woman's cell phone. A Jewish woman that I just killed," the Uruguayan-Israeli journalist Jana Beris would later say after seeing evidence from terrorists' body cameras.

Other consequences of October 7 show that it has not yet gone down in history: about 132 hostages remain in the hands of Hamas - Ofelia Roitman is not part of this number, she was released in November - and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continue fighting Hamas in Gaza, and against its allies sponsored by Iran.

"A hundred days of hell"

Marches from Tel Aviv - 24 hours and broadcast live - to New York, passing through London and Berlin, have been called this weekend for the hundred days of October 7, to demand the release of the hundreds of hostages still in captivity. To give voice to their "a hundred days of hell, a hundred days of nightmare, a hundred days of anxiety, a hundred days of abuse." "A hundred days of cruelty, a hundred days of crimes against humanity."

As time passes, concern for the hostages increases. "We feel that we have to rewrite the textbooks of post-trauma," said Tel Aviv Medical Center spokeswoman Dr. Renana Eitan. The doctor described a situation of hunger, beatings, sexual abuse and inhuman sanitary conditions.

So far, hundreds of hostages have been released, while others - the number is unknown - are believed to have died. Among the latter are Americans Gadi Haggai and Judith Weinstein, husband and wife aged 73 and 70, respectively.

"We are operating by all means, most of them covertly, in order to return them," said IDF Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, alluding to the one hundred days of captivity. "I know that every minute has critical significance and we are not indifferent to this."

Halevi also insisted that military operations in Gaza are a fundamental part of these efforts.

War rages on

The IDF chief also explained that the offensive in the northern Gaza Strip has not yet ended, even though most of Hamas' military structure has been destroyed. The focus of operations is now in the center and south of the territory governed by the terrorist group.

"We are operating everywhere," Halevi said; although, he detailed, with different strategies and intensity. This includes various activities, such as arrests and the prevention of terrorist attacks, in the West Bank and airstrikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon. "We are operating freely in Lebanese airspace and strike any threat we identify."

Regarding the security errors that led to October 7, Halevi acknowledged that an analysis is necessary to understand what went wrong. However, he insisted that for the moment the priority must be different: free the hostages, win the war.

"Nobody will stop us"

"We are continuing the war until the end – until total victory, until we achieve all of our goals: Eliminating Hamas, returning all of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza will never again constitute a threat to Israel," said the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this Sunday. To these goals he added another: preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

"Nobody will stop us – not The Hague, not the axis of evil and not anybody else," he also promised in relation to the charges of genocide against the Jewish State presented by South Africa before the International Court of Justice.

"Citizens of Israel, we are at a national moment of truth," he said later: "We are fighting not only to restore our security now, we are fighting to ensure our security for generations."

He also promised the hostages' relatives: "I will not give up on anyone. We are obligated to returning them all home."