Mr. Speaker, today marks one awful year since the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel took the lives of 1,200 people, including eight Canadians. Also on that day, more than 240 people from dozens of countries were taken hostage to Gaza. Over 100 remain there today. Let us all recommit to ensuring that they can soon rejoin their loved ones.
The killing, the sexual violence and the taking of hostages on October 7 mark the largest atrocity on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. It broke our hearts, but as Leonard Cohen said:
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
Today, we must come together to find and form that light.
Hersh's mother said, “In the competition of pain, there are no winners”. There has been so much pain and no winners, but today we can hold space to mourn those who were killed on October 7.
We pray and work for peace. We pray and work for the release of the hostages. Let that be our light.