Israelis mark the second anniversary of the Hamas-led October 7th attacks
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 October 2025
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The attacks saw over 1,200 people killed and 251 others taken back to Gaza as hostages. It was the single deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Israel responded by launching a military offensive in Gaza which has killed more than 67,000 people, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry. Its figures are seen as reliable by the UN and other international bodies. We'll hear from Eli Sharabi, an Israeli hostage held for almost five hundred days in the tunnels of Gaza, and ask how the last two years have re-shaped the region.
Also on the programme: how the victims of the Mynanmar military junta are suing a Norwegian telecoms firm; and the newly-crowned Nobel Prize winner, Fred Ramsdell, recalls how his digital detox was interrupted by the news of his win.
(Photo: People attend a ceremony in Tel Aviv to mark the two-year anniversary of the Hams-led October 7th attacks on Israel. Credit: REUTERS/Shir Torem)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.1 | Hello and welcome to Newsare. |
| 0:11.4 | It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in central London. |
| 0:15.4 | I'm Tim Franks. |
| 0:17.1 | We're starting with an anniversary, an anniversary of a cataclysm which two years to the day after the horror began now promises the possibility, the slim possibility, that that horror may come to an end. |
| 0:32.2 | I'm talking about this day, October the 7th, 2023, the day that Hamas led a rampage into southern Israel. The militants |
| 0:40.3 | killed about 1,200 people. They took 250 hostage, 48 of whom remain in captivity, about 20 of whom |
| 0:48.5 | are believed still to be alive. The Israeli response has left Gaza devastated, more than 67,000 dead, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, |
| 0:57.6 | and famine gripping parts of the enclave, according to a UN-backed monitoring group. |
| 1:02.6 | It's been the single, worst spasm of violence in the 100-year-old conflict between Palestinians and Jews on this small patch of land. |
| 1:11.1 | The slim possibility of a new direction, a way out of the chasm, |
| 1:15.2 | rests with the indirect talks now taking place in Egypt |
| 1:18.9 | on the US-led peace plan for Gaza. |
| 1:23.3 | First, from one of the many memorial services |
| 1:26.4 | that were held in Israel and across the world today, |
| 1:29.0 | we have this report from our Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson. |
| 1:32.9 | She spent the day at the Nova Festival site where 348 young people were killed and many others were kidnapped. |
| 1:49.3 | At the Nova Festival site today, they tried to ignore the sounds of war across the border. On the 7th of October, Rami Davidien saved many young people from Hamas attackers, |
| 1:57.1 | but the ghosts of those he couldn't save still linger. |
| 2:04.4 | I feel a lot of pain because I saw what happened here. |
| 2:08.5 | The ground we are standing on held bodies and body's parts. |
| 2:11.4 | For me, every tree has a meaning. |
... |
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