Former IDF soldier speaks at Holocaust Center, marking three-year anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel

Former IDF paratrooper Sam Fried had already completed his tour of duty in the Israeli military from 2020 to 2022 but rejoined, he told a crowd Wednesday night, after Oct. 7, 2023 because “the pain of any Jew anywhere is the pain of every single Jew everywhere"

"We understood the gravity of what was going on," Fried said. "We felt it viscerally. We felt as if it was our own family being taken from us."

It was “apropos,” Fried said, that he was addressing a crowd at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center, because “just three years ago today, we were facing almost similar extermination, where people tried and attempted to do the exact same thing, and fortunately failed it again.”

The 150 attendees of the Glen Cove center remembered the victims of Oct. 7 — Israeli Defense Force soldiers, teenagers and even toddlers — whose faces adorned posters throughout the meeting space, and signed their names to a poster board-sized pledge to “defend American values, civil rights, and stand against antisemitism."

While the killings on Oct. 7 were “atrocities," Michael Schlank and many other speakers said that the antisemitism they saw in America in the aftermath was equally troubling.

“The response following Oct. 7 that began on Oct. 8, is unacceptable," Schlank, the CEO of the Sid Jacobson JCC, which co-hosted the evening's event, said. “We the Jewish community and our allies are here to say, never again, and not here."

Another keynote speaker at the event, Sheikh Musa Drammeh, who founded the Islamic Leadership School in the Bronx, said such events offer him the chance to rectify the Jewish peoples’ “horrendous experience with Muslims."

Many in attendance pointed to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s official Oct. 7 statement released Wednesday, in which he accused the Israeli government of “ongoing genocide in Gaza." They said such statements leave Jewish New Yorkers vulnerable to ire and even hate crimes.

In his opening remarks, Holocaust memorial chairman Alan Mindelaccused the mayor, with his statement, of spreading “propaganda over and over again, just to dig that knife a little deeper on our day of most pain."

Mamdani’s press office did not respond to an emailed request for comment late Wednesday.

On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas and other terror organizations killed roughly 1,200 people in Israel, primarily civilians, at least 38 children among them. The terrorists also kidnapped some 250 people during the attacks, which occurred in communities, at military installations and during an outdoor music festival.

Israel waged war over the 2 years that followed, during which time more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed, about half of whom were women and children, according to Gaza's health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilian and militant casualties.

Hamas and Israel have accused one another of violating the ceasefire brokered on Oct. 10, 2025. More than 1,400 Palestinians  and five Israeli soldiers have been killed since that time.

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and human rights groups have accused the nation of war crimes, including the use of starvation as a means of warfare, which it vehemently denies.

This is the first anniversary since all the hostages, living and dead, were returned. In total, 168 hostages were brought back alive from Gaza.

Newsday's Robert Brodsky contributed to this story.