Harlev points towards a eucalyptus tree he planted nearby in his daughter’s honour. Gum trees flourish here in the Negev Desert, just as they do in Australia, a country he used to regularly visit in his defence industry job. Nearby, a group of young people gaze admiringly at a tribute to their friend. He died with eight bullet holes in his body after trying to shield his girlfriend from attack. Despite his efforts, she died from a single bullet wound.

You knew it before you arrive, but feel it in your gut as you look around at row after row of photo tributes. Just how young most of the people here were – in their 20s and 30s mostly. So full of potential, so full of hope when their lives were brutally snuffed out.

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Israeli President Isaac Herzog is here to pay respects, but it is a low-key occasion. After a heated debate about how to mark the first anniversary, the Israelis most affected by the attacks largely opted for small, and in some cases private, commemorations to remember the estimated 1200 people who died in total that day.

A nearby ceremony at Kfar Aza, a kibbutz near the Gaza border where about 60 people were killed on October 7, was disrupted when attendees were forced to scamper to bomb shelters as air raid sirens rang out. Outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s home in Jerusalem, a group of hostage families has gathered to demand he strike another ceasefire deal with Hamas so that their loved ones can hopefully return home.

As she tends to the tributes to her late son Oz Ezra and his girlfriend at the Nova site, Rachel Moshe hugs and pats their photos as if they are living and breathing. She howls in pain as if she has been stabbed in the chest, wailing: “Why, Lord, why?” Grief can be as painful as any wound. And yet somehow she has to go on, to live another day without the young man she brought into this world and loved so much.

As the sun rises in the sky, a man nearby, perhaps, offers a clue. “You only have one life,” his white T-shirt reads. “Just f---ing do it.”

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