For families in Israel and Gaza, neither the pain nor the memory of children lost has faded
Three years after Hamas launched its attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage, the pain felt by families of some of the youngest victims of the assault and the war it sparked in Gaza has not dulled.
Ofri Bibas Levy said every Oct. 7 brings her family's loss sharply back into focus.
Her brother Yarden, along with his wife Shiri and their sons Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 9 months, was abducted by Hamas militants from Kibbutz Nir Oz exactly three years ago. Yarden Bibas was released in February 2025. Shiri and her boys never came home; they were killed in captivity.
"I'm still living the day, every day, every second," Bibas Levy told CBS News. "Everything else seems pointless."
She said the attack broke something in the country's collective psyche.
"The loss of trust, the loss of security, the feeling that people can come inside my house and kill my family and you're not safe anywhere," she said.
She's still angry, and she said she wants revenge.
"Every member of those organizations, those terror organizations, for me, should be killed," she said.
But she still hopes for a better future, and believes "that conflicts can be solved."
Bibas Levy said she wants to be able to tell her own 7-year-old daughter, who asks if people will come to kidnap her, that she is safe at her home, without feeling like she is lying.
Asked about recent reports that Israel's leaders failed to act on warnings before the attack, she said it was "like a knife in the heart, twisting it every single time, again and again."
"Why didn't they do everything to save my family?" she asked.
Her message three years on: "The world forgot too fast what happened here."
On the other side of the Gaza border, CBS News spoke with Hind Rajab's grandmother.
She said the family still feels the 5-year-old Palestinian girl's presence in every moment.
Hind was trapped inside a car that came under Israeli fire in Gaza City in January 2024. Audio recordings of her desperate pleas for help to Palestinian paramedics were heard around the world. Her body was found 12 days later.
Speaking with CBS News in early October, her grandmother, who has the same name, held up Hind's notebook and the kindergarten graduation gown she wore.
"Hind cannot be forgotten, because what happened to her was very difficult," she said. "She was an innocent child who had a whole life ahead of her, like any other child in Gaza."
She remembered her granddaughter as a little girl who "loved life and had a talent for drawing," and who had dreams of becoming a doctor.
"A person cannot forget their child, someone who is their own flesh and blood," she told CBS News. "Even if an entire lifetime passes, Hind will remain in our memories."
The Israeli military announced in August that it had opened a criminal investigation into Hind's killing, but her grandmother wasn't hopeful.
"We don't expect from this enemy, who deliberately kills our children every day, that justice on their side will be carried out properly or clearly," she said.
