200 people filled a packed hall in Giffnock Newton Mearns synagogue yesterday, as we held a commemoration for the victims of the Hamas atrocities on October 7th 2023.
Sammy opened the event with a wonderful speech, which Iāll post in the comments and this was followed by two professional musicians, Viola player Lev Atlas accompanied by pianist Michael Barnett, who are well known and loved by our Jewish community. However, many in the audience were not Jewish and it was their first time hearing Lev and Michael, so they had no expectations of what was to come: And they were completely spellbound, with one of the huge number of thank you messages received after the event, describing their music as āexquisiteā
We then showed the film āChildren of October 7thā a harrowing and powerful film that focuses on testimonies of child survivors who lived in kibbutzim on the Gaza border. They witnessed their parents and siblings being murdered by terrorists in their homes and one child was abducted and held hostage in solitary confinement in Gaza.
Asaf Becker the director of the film came to Glasgow as a guest of GFI and he introduced the film and answered questions afterwards.
An Israeli filmmaker from Edinburgh sent us a music and dance video based on a message from Hersh Goldberg-Polin the 23 year old American Israeli who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival. His body with five other hostages was found by the IDF in a tunnel in Rafah where they had been murdered by Hamas.
I interviewed Colin Cowan, brother of Bernard, the Glasgow man who was murdered by Hamas terrorists in his home on Kibbutz Sufa on October 7th. Colin spoke about Bernardās life, the recent marriage of his daughter in Israel and about the kibbutz that has been rebuilt with the help of JNF KKL, including the planting of trees on the kibbutz in the āScotland Avenueā in Bernardās memory.
Stanley Lovatt, Honorary Consul for Israel in Scotland, spoke about his work with JNF and how they helped Kibbutz Sufa.
Unfortunately, because of fire regulations, the hall only held 200 people so we had to close registration a few days before the event. We were so sorry that a very large number of people on our waiting list were unable to be with us yesterday. ... See MoreSee Less
