It was an election-season stunt that drew such a flood of responses that the number’s WhatsApp account was blocked within minutes and those calling received a busy signal.

 It also drew suspicions that it was a ploy to collect voter data.

 In a video posted to social media, Netanyahu is seen with longtime adviser Topaz Luk, who asks the prime minister whether he can publish his phone number. Netanyahu initially reacts with disbelief, saying, “Topaz, have you gone crazy?” before agreeing. 

 “I want to hear from you. Your suggestions, your questions, your problems. I want to hear, so leave me a message,” Netanyahu said. He added that he could not promise to answer everyone but would respond to as many people as possible. 

 Hundreds of messages and calls arrived within minutes and the WhatsApp account associated with the number was blocked. Luk later posted on X that the account had been disabled because of the volume of calls and said Netanyahu’s team was working to restore it, directing people to Telegram in the meantime. 

 Kan political correspondent Michael Shemesh questioned whether the number belonged to Netanyahu at all and suggested on X that the exercise was “probably designed to harvest the phone numbers of potential voters.” 

 Other users pointed to another clue that the handset seen in the video was unlikely to be Netanyahu’s personal phone. One of the WhatsApp groups visible in Luk’s video was a synagogue updates group whose latest message appeared to back political rival Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister who now heads the Beyachad party. 

 “Something tells me that Bibi isn’t signed up to the ‘Menachem’s House Main Shul Updates’ group,” one X user wrote, “especially not when the latest message there is ‘yalla, it’s time for Bennett.’” 

 It was not the first time Netanyahu handed out what he presented as his personal number during an election campaign. In August 2022, little more than two months before the vote that returned him to power, the then-opposition leader published another number and invited Israelis to video call him. 

 “Why should only some people have my phone number? Everyone should have it,” Netanyahu said at the time, joking that the move was a “dramatic, world-changing decision.” He told supporters who sent proof they had joined his Telegram channel that they would have a better chance of receiving a video call from him. 

 The response was similarly intense. Likud said Netanyahu received 9,420 calls within the first 30 minutes, while follow-up videos showed calls and messages flooding the phone. 

 Netanyahu’s rivals mocked the stunt. Then-Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman released a parody video saying Netanyahu “has not picked up the phone in 12 years,” while Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid dismissed it as a “fictional phone operated by Netanyahu’s aides.” 

 The episode comes as Netanyahu faces a difficult reelection campaign, with roughly 20% of voters remaining undecided, many of whom are disillusioned Likud voters, according to pollsters and researchers. 

 A Channel 13 poll put Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar party at 23 seats, ahead of Likud with 21, and Netanyahu’s current coalition projected to win just 49 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. Eisenkot also led Netanyahu 47% to 34% when respondents were asked who was better suited to serve as prime minister. 

 The phone-number appeal is the latest in a series of efforts to put Netanyahu directly in front of voters. 

 Likud also rolled out billboards showing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani alongside the leaders of Iran, Turkey, and Hezbollah under the slogan, “They want Netanyahu to lose. Don’t let them win.” 

The government postponed official remembrances until the day after the Simchat Torah holiday that bookends Sukkot rather than the Gregorian anniversary. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came under fire for initially failing to acknowledge Oct. 7 directly, writing a social media post that read simply “Happy Sukkot.”

The convergence of the festival’s religiously required joy with the memory of mass death set off a broader debate over whether celebration and grief could coexist. Some religious leaders and community groups, including the Reform movement, urged weaving remembrance into holiday rituals — lighting candles, reading names, adding prayers for the fallen — while others argued that Sukkot’s happiness should remain intact, with official mourning deferred.

Some Israelis traveled south to visit sites of the attacks, including at official memorials at some of the kibbutzim that were devastated on Oct. 7. Travel is prohibited on the first day for those who adhere to traditional interpretations of Jewish law.

Even among the bereaved, observance varied. British-Israeli Gaby Young Shalev, whose younger brother Nathanel Young, a soldier, was killed in action on Oct. 7, said her family chose to celebrate the festival with friends and relatives before turning to commemoration.

 “I tried not to think about the fact that it’s Oct. 7. Because I really think it’s important that we don’t let these atrocities of Oct. 7 ruin our chagim,” she said, using the Hebrew word for Jewish festivals.

But once the holiday day ended on Tuesday evening, Young, her parents and sister Miriam went to Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park for the Oct. 7 memorial organized by Kumu (“Rise Up”), an initiative set up by families of victims and hostages as a counterpoint to the official state ceremony.

The event was livestreamed globally and screened simultaneously at Hostages Square. It opened with released hostage Agam Berger performing the theme from Schindler’s List on violin. Between speeches from hostage relatives, bereaved families, and released captives, well-known Israeli musicians performed on a stage that was a tableau of symbols: a burned-out car like those destroyed along the Gaza border, encircled by red crown anemones — the national flower and an emblem of remembrance — a bullet-riddled bomb shelter, and 48 suspended yellow chairs representing each hostage still in Gaza.

Singer Yuval Rafael, who survived the Nova festival massacre and later represented Israel at Eurovision, sang with Daniel Weiss, whose parents were murdered by Hamas. Zvi Zussman, father of Maj. Gen. (res.) Ben Zussman, killed in December 2023, recited the Yizkor prayer, while Elchanan Danino, whose son Ori was kidnapped and later murdered in captivity, recited the Mourner’s Kaddish.

Eurovision contestant Eden Golan addressed the livestream in English, saying the nation “had been holding its breath” for two years and calling for the release of the 48 hostages still held in Gaza. She performed I’m Coming Home as images of hostages filled the screen behind her. The crowd erupted in chants of “Everyone, Now,” the slogan that has become shorthand for demanding their return.

Unlike last year, the memorial was open to the general public and drew an estimated 30,000 people. In 2024, 50,000 tickets had been reserved by the public, but organizers were forced to curtail attendance to the press and victims’ families amid security threats. For Young, the crowd’s size this year conveyed a collective response beyond those most directly affected.

“It’s a reminder that it’s not just about the bereaved families or the families of hostages,” she said. “The whole country is mourning.”

At last year’s memorial, Young told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that it was the first time her brother’s death had truly sunk in. In the months before, she said, her family’s grief had been buffered by “happy” distractions — the birth of her twins, her parents’ aliyah from the United Kingdom, and the flurry of projects created in Nathanel’s memory. But as another year passed and she returned to the same spot this October, the sense of loss felt sharper. The passage of time, she said, had made his absence harder, not easier.

“We realize that Nathanel’s not just on a long holiday, but that he’s not actually coming back,” she said. The release last month of the army’s year-long investigation into what happened on his base that morning, she added, made the loss feel newly immediate. Still, “we live life with a lot of purpose,” she said. “We keep his spirit alive by asking, even in the most everyday situations, what would Nat do?”

Young said she resonated deeply with an image shared on stage by fellow bereaved speaker Tomer Zak, whose parents and younger brother were killed in the attacks. Zak compared herself to a tree that had lost its leaves but whose roots remained strong. For Young, the metaphor captured the tension between devastation and resilience.

“When other people look at it from the outside they’re like, how can this person continue with their lives? But the memory and the light from the person we lost, from Nathanel, makes us keep going, makes us stronger. It gives us these magic powers — you basically want to do all these things for them,” she said.

To that end, the family have set up a memorial fund in his name to support projects for youth at risk, including young people with ADHD and other forms of neurodivergence.

A few miles east in Bnei Brak, the atmosphere was strikingly different. Late at night, Hasidic music blasted from the Beit Hashem synagogue during a simchat beit hashoeva — a Sukkot celebration where worshippers dance and play music late into the night during the holiday’s midweek nights. Men in fur streimels streamed inside while children chased one another through the narrow alleys.

Asked about the tension between celebration and mourning, several attendees said they were unaware the Gregorian anniversary of Oct. 7 had arrived. Down the road, emissaries of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement had erected a roadside sukkah draped with yellow Mashiach flags — contrasting with the yellow hostage ribbons ubiquitous at the Tel Aviv memorial — and were handing cotton candy to children.

Yossi, one of the Chabad volunteers, said the date did not change their message. “We pray every day for the return of the hostages and the safe return of the soldiers. In all our daily prayers and also when we read from the Torah,” he said.

A woman in a tank top said that despite identifying herself as secular, the attack’s timing would fix the memory to the Hebrew calendar. “I can’t separate from the fact that it happened on Shabbat and also such a joyous festival — Simchat Torah. [Hamas] took that from us forever.”

In Holon, south of Tel Aviv, Eyal Golan spent the day at home. His youngest sister Shirel, a Nova festival survivor, died by suicide shortly before the first anniversary of the attacks. He could not bring himself to attend a memorial, he said, but added that looking after his two small daughters, the youngest of whom is a newborn, took precedence.

“The mental is affecting the physical,” he said of the migraines he was suffering. “I felt a sense of emptiness all day and I struggled with my own PTSD just to function.”

As the event in the Yarkon Park wrapped up, the crowd stood to sing Israel’s national anthem. For Young, the moment tied mourning to resolve. “It’s a collective grief but also a collective hope, that’s how I felt at the end of Hatikvah. Yes, we are all grieving, but there’s something with Am Yisrael, with the Jewish people and with Israeli people. We keep going.”