WNY reflects on one-year anniversary of Hamas' attack on Israel

NORTH TONAWANDA, N.Y. (WIVB) -- Events held over the weekend and Monday in Western New York remembered the lives lost in the Israel-Hamas conflict on its one-year anniversary and called for the hostages to be released.

State and county leaders, as well as pastors and rabbis, spoke at a remembrance event Monday night at city hall in North Tonawanda, which was led by Father Arthur Ward Jr. of St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church.

WIVB News 4 heard from various leaders in the Jewish Community Monday. Jewish Voice for Peace in Buffalo said it has been a year of despair and sadness since Hamas launched the attack against Israel.

Leaders on both sides of the conflict have repeatedly called for a ceasefire. Jewish Voice for Peace said they're appalled at the amount of financial support to the U.S. has given to Israel to fund this war.

"We're horrified to be here a year later and see the war widening," said Derek Seidman of Jewish Voice for Peace in Buffalo. "Right now, we feel at the core of this conflict is the Israeli dispossession and occupation of millions of Palestinians, who are living under an apartheid system."

News 4 also heard from Marc Cohen, a Rochester native who escaped Israel with his family after the Oct. 7 attacks. CBS News reports that 101 hostages are still being held and Cohen wants them to be released.

"We have to change our mindset, we have to get to a point where we realize that human beings are being used by Hamas and Hezbollah and terror organizations as human shields," Cohen said. "Innocent children and innocent women and men are being used by their so-called governing bodies as human shields."

Meredith Dragon, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester, said it has been a very difficult year for the Jewish community.

She noted the rise in anti-Semitism over the past year and said many places in the Rochester area are commemorating the one-year mark of the attacks.

"I think what most of us, particularly today, are thinking about is all the loss and devastation that happened on that day, but the fact that there's still 101 hostages being held in Gaza that now have been there for a year, we don't know the status of all of them," Dragon said.