Families of American October 7 victims call for US congressional inquiry into massacre

WASHINGTON - Three years after Hamas's October 7 massacre, and with Israel yet to establish a state commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the attack, families of American victims are calling for a separate investigation by the United States Congress.

The demand emerged Wednesday during a memorial ceremony at the US State Department in Washington honoring American citizens killed in the attack and its aftermath.

Speaking to The Jerusalem Post following the event, Ruby Chen, father of Israeli-American soldier Itay Chen, said the families could no longer wait for Israel to investigate the circumstances that allowed the massacre to happen.

"Unfortunately, the Israeli government has not seen fit to establish a state commission of inquiry," Chen said.

"Maybe the time has come for the United States, for the US Congress, to establish an investigative commission for the American victims."

Itay Chen was a 19-year-old IDF soldier when he was murdered during the October 7 massacre. His remains were taken to Gaza and returned to Israel in November 2025.

For Chen, the demand goes beyond determining what happened during the attack. He wants an examination of the failures that made it possible.

"For a thousand days now, the families have been waiting to understand not just what happened, but how it happened," he said.

Chen pointed to previous American investigations following terrorist attacks that killed US citizens abroad, arguing that the deaths of Americans on October 7 justify an independent congressional inquiry.

The proposal has not been formally adopted by Congress or the Trump administration. For now, it remains a demand from bereaved families seeking answers and accountability.

During his remarks at the ceremony, Chen also called for legal action against those he said had financed or helped prepare Hamas's terror attack.

He criticized the fact that individuals he believes bear responsibility remain free in countries including Qatar and Turkey, and called on Washington to help bring them to justice on behalf of the American victims.

At least 46 American citizens were murdered in the October 7 attacks, including Israeli-Americans with dual citizenship.

For their families, the effort to secure recognition for their loved ones is increasingly accompanied by another demand: that commemoration be followed by accountability.

The demand for an investigation formed part of a deeply personal gathering at the State Department's Benjamin Franklin Room on Wednesday morning.

Israeli-American bereaved families came together for a memorial honoring the American victims of October 7, hosted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and his wife, Allison, also participating.

The formal invitation, obtained by the Post, bore the Great Seal of the United States and identified Rubio, Lutnick, and Allison Lutnick as the hosts.

Under the heading "A Memorial for the US Victims of October 7, 2023," guests were invited to attend the ceremony at 10:30 a.m. at the State Department headquarters in Washington.

The invitation was personal and explicitly stated that it was non-transferable.

The event was closed to press coverage, but two family members who participated described its emotional moments in interviews afterward.

For Ruby Chen, one of the most powerful moments came not from a Cabinet secretary, but from a senior American military commander.

Adm. Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command (CENTCOM), attended Itay Chen's funeral in Israel in November 2025.

At the funeral, Ruby gave Cooper his son's military dog tag.

Nearly a year later, as Cooper addressed the bereaved families in Washington, he revealed that he was still wearing it.

"At Itay's funeral, I gave him Itay's dog tag," Chen recalled.

"And today, while he was speaking, he took out the dog tag he was wearing."

Chen said Cooper explained that Itay remained close to him.

For the grieving father, the gesture reflected a personal bond that had developed between the families of the slain Americans and senior US military and administration officials, one that continued well after the return and burial of their loved ones.

Chen said the idea for Wednesday's ceremony began taking shape about a year earlier, when President Donald Trump hosted a group of living hostages who had returned from Gaza at the White House.

Families of deceased hostages whose remains had been returned were not included in that gathering.

Chen recalled approaching Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to ask why the families of the dead had not been invited.

According to Chen, Witkoff acknowledged the oversight and said that a separate event should be arranged to honor the murdered Americans and their families.

The families then waited for an appropriate opportunity, eventually settling on a memorial around the third anniversary of the massacre.

Chen credited Allison Lutnick, the commerce secretary's wife, with playing a significant role in making the event happen.

He said she worked extensively to ensure the families received the recognition they sought.

For Howard Lutnick, the ceremony also carried a deeply personal meaning.

The commerce secretary lost his brother, Gary, in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The attacks also killed 658 employees of Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services company he led.

During the memorial, Lutnick reflected on his own experience of loss and his connection to families whose lives had been devastated by terrorism.

Chen said the ceremony reminded him of a recent conversation with a rabbi about the long recovery process after tragedy.

He recalled the rabbi explaining that healing does not happen all at once. Instead, it is built through a long series of small moments of consolation.

"I think today we can say that we had a small comfort," Chen said.

Another participant was Abbey Onn, an American-Israeli whose relatives Carmela Dan and her granddaughter Noya Dan were murdered in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7.

Speaking to the Post after the ceremony, Onn said she was surprised by the depth of emotion the American officials expressed.

"It was really exciting. I didn't know what to expect, and I thought it would be very formal, and it really came from the heart of Secretary Lutnick and his wife," she said.

Onn emphasized that Lutnick's personal history made his participation especially significant.

"He lost his brother, and more than 600 people in his company, in 9/11," she said.

For Onn, that experience meant Lutnick understood what it was like to lose loved ones and to return, year after year, to ceremonies of remembrance.

She also praised Allison Lutnick for her involvement with hostage families and her efforts to ensure that their suffering was not forgotten.

According to Onn, Allison had remained supportive of the families and had pushed for continued recognition of the victims.

"They say it's important that we remember everyone, every name, every person, every soul," Onn said.

"And that's our job now, to remember and to live."

She added that the gathering was far more than a routine official ceremony.

"It wasn't standard. It was really from the bottom of their hearts."

Family members addressed the audience during the memorial, including Chen and Onn, as well as another family that had lost both of its daughters.

Rubio, Howard Lutnick, and Allison Lutnick also delivered remarks.

A memorial video displayed the faces of American victims killed on October 7 and in the events that followed.

Onn said the ceremony underscored the shared experiences of Israel and the United States, both of which had endured devastating terrorist attacks over the past 25 years.

"Mainly it was the understanding that we, as Israel and America, have faced two of the worst terror attacks in the last 25 years," she said.

"Our fight is against terror, and our fight is for life."

According to Onn, Rubio drew a connection between the September 11 attacks and the October 7 massacre.

She said the secretary spoke about terrorism's purpose: To make people fear for their lives, their children's safety, and their future.

"What Hamas did on October 7 was to try to make us fear for our lives, to fear raising our children in safety and security, and to fear for our futures," Onn recalled Rubio's remarks.

She added that Americans had experienced the same on September 11.

For Onn, the shared experience of terrorism transcended nationality.

It was a struggle, she said, that united people regardless of which country's citizenship they held.

But the ceremony in Washington also prompted Onn to reflect critically on the way Israel had marked the third anniversary of the massacre.

Despite the commemorations and memorial initiatives held in Israel, she said she had not experienced the same sense of national recognition that accompanies other major days of remembrance.

"I think it's something that we've been missing in Israel," Onn said.

"Look, we just had October 7. There was not a national acknowledgment of the day. There was a civic acknowledgment of the day. It wasn't national."

Onn said the absence of a nationwide memorial siren was particularly striking.

"There was no siren. There was no siren. We went to school. We went to work," she said.

In her view, ordinary life continued without the collective atmosphere of mourning she believed the anniversary deserved.

"It wasn't the appropriate level of respect for the day, in my opinion," she added.

Onn acknowledged that ceremonies and civic initiatives had taken place, but argued that Israel still had work to do in recognizing the significance of the tragedy.

"I think that we have to work harder as a country to accept that this was an awful tragedy that we can't forget," she said.

Her criticism was not limited to remembrance.

Onn also supported calls for an investigation that would establish how October 7 happened and how another catastrophe could be prevented.

"They want a state inquiry. They want a memorial in DC," she said, referring to the bereaved families.

She stressed that 46 Americans had been killed in the October 7 attacks and that the US government had a responsibility to examine what had happened.

"The US government [needs] to understand how October 7 happened and how to make sure that it never happens again," she said.

For Onn, Wednesday's ceremony was an important beginning, but not a conclusion.

She described the memorial as a chance for families to connect, honor those they lost, and ensure their names remained part of the public memory.

But she also insisted that recognition must eventually give way to the harder work of examining responsibility.

"The next step is to do the hard work of understanding what happened," she said.

Three years after the massacre, the families are still navigating grief, the return and burial of loved ones, and the struggle to preserve their memories.

Wednesday's ceremony offered them a moment of recognition from the highest levels of the American government.

Yet for Chen, Onn and other bereaved families, the message emerging from Washington was that remembrance alone is not enough.

With an Israeli state commission of inquiry still absent, they are looking to the United States, and potentially Congress, to help provide the answers they have spent three years seeking.