DOMINANT ANGLE
The United States prioritizes mourning over politics: the American press brings the third anniversary of October 7 back to the pain of the hostages and their families, without referencing the Israeli campaign.
Dominant angle identified — does not reflect unanimity of this country’s media
KEY POINTS
- 01
Time (October 6): Rachel Goldberg-Polin writes that her son Hersh was held for 328 days before being executed with five other hostages in a tunnel under Gaza.
- 02
NBC News recalls that 1,200 people were killed on October 7, 2023, and that 251 were taken hostage in Gaza.
- 03
Time compares the grief of the families of hostages to that of the loved ones of the 9/11 victims, a quarter of a century later.
ANALYSIS
Washington, October 7, 2026. In the United States, the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023 attack is first treated as a story of mourning, through two publications: an op-ed in Time magazine and a video report by NBC News.
The Time text, dated October 6, is signed by Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin. She writes: "I will always be the mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin," and recalls that her son was kidnapped at a music festival, then held for 328 days in Gaza. According to her account, his captors executed him with five other hostages in a tunnel under Gaza. His body was returned to her in a bag, with signs of torture and six bullet wounds. She describes a time frozen in place: "I am stuck in time. I always will be."
The op-ed also deals with how those around her react to her grief. Those close to her, she writes, want her family to be "better" emotionally, psychologically, mentally, and spiritually. She compares this situation to that of the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, who also receive well-intentioned condolences a quarter of a century later. She remembers the morning of September 11, 2001, in Berkeley, California, where Hersh, 11 months old, was babbling in his bed. The text itself thus mixes Israeli memory and American memory.
NBC News devotes a 3-minute, 43-second video to this anniversary, titled "Remembering the impact on the ground three years after the October 7th attacks on Israel." The presenter recalls that 1,200 people were killed in the "terror attacks" and that 251 others were taken hostage in Gaza. Reporter Raf Sanchez covered the day in Israel. The retrieved text is limited to this balance and presentation. It contains no comments on the Israeli elections of October 27 or the investigation commission that Benjamin Netanyahu refuses.
The NBC video page refers to other recent topics, including a meeting between Jared Kushner and Benjamin Netanyahu on a potential peace plan for Gaza and images of life in the ruins of the territory. These links are not developed in the article's content.
In this restricted corpus, the American lens is therefore humanitarian: hostages, bereaved families, a numerical balance of the attack. The stakes of the Israeli campaign and the war in Gaza remain in the background.
