Israeli flags lowered to half-mast at 6:29 a.m., three years after October 7

Israeli flags were lowered to half-mast on Monday in remembrance of the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, with ceremonies reported at a military base near the Gaza border and at the official home of Israel's president. The Jerusalem Post reported that the General Staff Forum of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) lowered a flag at the Zikim military base on October 5, 2026, publishing video of the event and a photograph credited to the IDF Spokesperson's Unit.

Separately, Israel's Foreign Ministry said on X that the flag at the President's Residence was lowered to half-mast at 6:29 a.m., the same time of morning at which, according to the ministry, the attack began on October 7, 2023. The Jerusalem Post described the occasion as Israel remembering the massacre three years on.

Why 6:29 a.m.

The timing of the President's Residence ceremony was chosen to match the minute the attack started, as the Foreign Ministry put it. Matching the hour of a commemoration to the hour of the event is a way of tying the ritual directly to the day being remembered, and the ministry's post drew that connection explicitly, stating that the attack began at 6:29 a.m. and that the flag came down at 6:29 a.m. on the day of the post.

Who took part

The General Staff Forum is the senior command body of the IDF, bringing together the military's top officers. Its participation, as reported by The Jerusalem Post, placed the country's military leadership at the centre of the commemoration. The ceremony took place at Zikim, the site of a military base in southern Israel near the Gaza Strip, the area where the attack of October 7 unfolded.

The President's Residence in Jerusalem is the official home of Israel's head of state. The presidency in Israel is a largely ceremonial office, and the residence is often the setting for national acts of remembrance. The Foreign Ministry's account of the flag lowering there came from its official English-language account on X, which it uses to address international audiences.

What the Foreign Ministry said it was remembering

The ministry's post set out the groups it said were being commemorated. It named the women, men, children, infants and elderly people it said were killed by Hamas, and it referred specifically to sexual violence and to kidnappings, stating: "We remember the kidnappings." The post also said Israel remembers the soldiers who fell defending the country in the war that came after the attack, and it honoured people it described as still living with physical and psychological wounds from that day.

The post was written in the first person plural, presenting the commemoration as a national act rather than a statement on behalf of the ministry alone. The text available to us is cut off before its end, so the full list of those the ministry named cannot be confirmed from the material.

Three years on

The Jerusalem Post framed the flag lowering as part of Israel's remembrance three years after the attack. For readers outside Israel, October 7 has become the shorthand used across Israeli public life for the Hamas assault on southern Israel and for the war that followed it, which the Foreign Ministry referred to in its post. Lowering the national flag to half-mast is a standard sign of mourning in Israel, as in many countries, and is used on days of national remembrance.

What the reports do not say

Both reports place the flag lowerings on October 5, 2026, two days before the calendar anniversary of the attack. Neither report explains why the ceremonies took place on that date, nor whether the observance described as a memorial day follows the Hebrew calendar or another schedule. The Jerusalem Post's report, as available to us, consists mainly of video and a photo caption and gives no time for the Zikim ceremony, so it is not clear whether it was also held at 6:29 a.m.

The reports do not name the individual officers present at Zikim, do not say whether Israel's president attended the ceremony at the residence, and do not describe any other events planned for the memorial period. They also give no casualty figures for the attack or the war, and this article does not supply any. Neither report says how long the flags will remain at half-mast.