CNN news report: “How Hamas trapped civilians at music festival”

This CNN news report shows video footage of the Hamas attack at the Israeli music festival on October 7, 2023, where they show Jihadist bodycam footage of bathrooms being shot at; the attackers throwing hand grenades into four separate bomb shelters that were full of people; the attackers forcing the people to run across a field to where they were shot at and killed; people trying to escape up a roadway where they were shot and killed by militants; people trying to hide rather than run where they ended up being shot; and it is explained that the Israeli military will be deploying 300 thousand to 400 thousand troops.

Fox News Report: “Concertgoers Scramble for Cover Amid Hamas Attack on Israel”

This Fox News report shows footage of various journalists needing to duck while under fire; footage of bodies of people being strewn on a highway; footage of people running in a field during the music festival attack; a man who were hiding under a car being executed; security guards at the music festival exchanging fire with the attackers; a journalist explaining that many women were raped; photos of people at the music festival who were said to be kidnapped; footage of a woman and her boyfriend being kidnapped; video of a family being held hostage at gunpoint; hostages being paraded through Gaza amid hostile crowds, with an elderly woman being among them; an interview of a professor who explained that he was on the phone with his daughter when she was killed with her husband; and footage of Gaza being bombed and the aftermath in the streets.

“7th October massacre- Nova music festival”

This video contains very graphic footage from the music festival, showing people being shot, trying to hide, and being taken hostage; many bodies are shown laying in a concession area where they were shot; charred bodies are shown having water poured over them; and many photos of the interior and exterior of morgue tents are shown.

NBC New Report: “American survivor of Israeli music festival attack ‘happy to be alive’”

Two weeks after the October 7, 2023 attack, this NBC News video interviews Natalie Sanandaji, a Jewish-American who explains her escape from the deadly Hamas massacre at an Israeli music festival on October 7.  She explains that it is important for everyone to realize that Hamas is a terrorist organization which is everyone’s common enemy, including of the Palestinians.

(Also see this article in the New York Post where she explains that she doesn’t feel safe after returning to the U.S. due to the increasingly hostile antisemitic activity that has been occurring since the start of the conflict.)

Video of a pro-Hamas demonstration in New York City

In this video of a pro-Palestine demonstration in New York City on October 8, a speaker says to the cheering crowd, “And as you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time, until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters.”

(Click on the image of the video to view it in its Twitter page.  Also see this article talking about rampant antisemitism at New York rallies.)

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INFORMATION FROM WIKIPEDIA ABOUT THE NOVA MUSIC FESTIVAL ATTACK

The following information is taken from the Wikipedia article about the Re’im music festival massacre.

On 7 October 2023, the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas initiated a surprise invasion of Israel from the Gaza Strip.  364 civilians were killed and many more wounded during the attack.  At least 40 were taken hostages by Hamas at the Supernova Sukkot Gathering, an open-air music festival celebrating the Jewish holiday of Sukkot near kibbutz Re’im.  This mass killing was part of a series of coordinated Hamas attacks on Israel that day, which included targeting Israeli civilians for mass killings in the nearby communities of Netiv HaAsara, Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Holit at the start of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war.

At 6:30 am around sunrise, rockets were noticed in the sky.  Around 7:00 am, a siren warned of an incoming rocket attack, prompting festivalgoers to flee.  Subsequently, armed militants, dressed in military attire and using motorcycles, trucks and powered paragliders, surrounded the festival grounds and indiscriminately fired on individuals attempting to escape.  Attendees seeking refuge in nearby locations, such as bomb shelters, bushes, and orchards, were killed while in hiding.  Those who reached the road and parking were trapped in a traffic jam as militants fired at vehicles.  The militants executed some wounded individuals at point-blank range as they crouched on the ground.

The details of the whereabouts and condition of the hostages are not publicly known.  The massacre at the festival was the largest terror attack in Israel’s history, and the worst Israeli civilian massacre ever.

Gathering and festivities

Supernova Sukkot Gathering was a weekend-long outdoor trance music festival that began on 6 October 2023 produced by an organizer called Nova (also referred to as Tribe of Nova).  It was the Israeli edition (pre-festival event) of Universo Paralello, a psytrance festival started 23 years prior in Bahia, Brazil.  It took place in the western Negev desert, approximately 5 km (3.1 mi) from the Gaza–Israel barrier, near kibbutz Re’im.  The line-up included artists well-known in the psytrance scene, such as Astral Projection and Man With No Name.  The organizers switched to the site only two days before, after the original location in southern Israel did not work out.  Scheduled to coincide with Jewish holidays: the final day of Sukkot (6 October) and Simchat Torah (7 October), the rave was billed as a celebration of “friends, love and infinite freedom.”  The festival site had three stages, a camping zone, and an area with a bar and food.  Attendees described the crowd as mostly consisting of Israelis of ages 20–40 from across the country.  Attendance was reported to be 3,500 but figures vary.  Security guards and police were present at the festival.

Hamas’ assault

See also: Timeline of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war and List of engagements during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war § Massacres

The musical festival was one of the first targets of Hamas’ surprise attack against Israel in the early morning hours of 7 October 2023.  Israeli security services investigations have found it unlikely that Hamas has advanced knowledge of the attack, citing, among other evidence that the festival had been planned to run until Friday, October 6 and was only extended to Saturday the prior Wednesday.  One attendee stated that after cutting the electricity, a group of approximately 50 Hamas gunmen arrived in vans and sprayed gunfire in all directions.  Some of the Hamas gunmen who attacked the festival infiltrated Israel via motorized paragliders, arriving around 6:30 am.

As festival attendees fled in panic, jeeps filled with gunmen began firing at the escaping cars.  Gunmen also blockaded roads.  The open terrain left few places to hide.  Many attendees who hid in the trees were murdered as militants methodically shot them.  Others who hid in bushes and orchards managed to survive.  The massacre took place amid a rocket siren, signaling a barrage of rockets fired into Israel.  Independently verified drone footage of the site showed dozens of scorched, burnt cars and skid marks.  Footage of the attack, posted on a Telegram channel, included graphic depictions of murder and hostage-taking.

The Hamas militants kidnapped an unknown number of participants; videos on social media showed them being seized.  The abducted concertgoers were taken to the Gaza Strip, where some were filmed in Hamas propaganda videos.  Relatives and friends of the missing searched for information about the missing.  Those abducted by Hamas militants included Shani Louk – a 22-year-old German-Israeli dual citizen, a British man, and a 25-year-old Israeli woman Noa Argamani.  Three dual Brazilian-Israeli nationals who had attended the festival were also missing.

During the massacre, Hamas militants raped women attendees.  According to survivor testimony released by Lahav 433, a young woman was gang raped by Hamas militants before being murdered.  The testimony was published in Hebrew- and English-language Israel news outlets.  According to Haaretz, police reporter Josh Breiner, ZAKA emergency response personnel found naked women with injures and their genitals mutilated, including women shackled naked in the lower parts of their bodies.  The Israel Defense Forces have not verified the claims.

Casualties

Photographs from the aftermath of the attack show dozens of bodies at the festival grounds, including a badly burned body bound by cable ties.  ZAKA, Israel’s volunteer community emergency response group, reported retrieving at least 260 bodies from the party grounds.  The death toll was expected to rise, as other paramedic organizations also responded to the scene.  The final figure communicated by police on 17 November was 364 dead, including 17 police officers, and 40 abducted.

One of those killed was a British man serving in the Israeli military.  Lior Asulin, a retired football striker who had played for Hapoel Tel Aviv Football Club, was also among those killed in the massacre.  Journalists Shai Regev and Ayelet Arnin, who worked for the Ma’ariv newspaper and KAN broadcaster respectively, were also killed in the attack.  The event’s organizers, Osher Vaknin and his twin Michael Vaknin, were killed in the attack as well.

Investigation

As of 14 October 2023, German authorities were aware of eight of its nationals having been taken as hostage in the overall events of 7 October 2023, including the case of Shani Louk, which gained great public interest.  They opened a criminal probe against unknown Hamas members to investigate “belonging to a foreign terrorist group, hostage-taking and murder.”

According to reports published on 17 November, the police concluded based on interrogations and their own investigations that Hamas did not know about the festival beforehand but came across it by accident and decided to attack it.  Israeli security authorities suggested that Hamas likely lacked advance knowledge of the Nova Festival.  Senior officials estimated that Hamas may have become aware of the event through drones or individuals parachuting, and subsequently directed terrorists to the location using their communication system.  According to Haaretz’s journalist Josh Breiner, a police source said that a police investigation indicated an IDF helicopter which had fired on Hamas militants “apparently also hit some festival participants” in Re’im music festival.  The Israeli police denied the Haaretz report and said they found no evidence of civilian harm resulting from the aerial activities at that location.

Response

See also: 2023 Israel–Hamas war and Timeline of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war

Hamas initially denied the occurrence of the massacre and denied killing of civilians. Later it claimed that forces under Hamas never targeted civilians but the massacre may have been carried out by independent groups of Gazan civilians after Hamas had defeated the Israeli forces in the region.

In response to this massacre, as well as other massacres and attacks in Operation Aqsa Flood, Israel declared a formal war on Hamas and began Operation Iron Sword.

On 19 November, the Palestinian Authority (PA) denied that Hamas conducted the massacre in a statement sent to foreign ministries worldwide and to the United Nations.  The PA claimed that Israeli helicopters bombed civilians after the Hannibal Directive was activated, though the directive is claimed by Israel to have been canceled in 2016.  The PA then withdrew the claim and told U.S. National Security Council is was not its official position.

Five Israeli DJs, including Skazi, performed a set during a memorial on November 28, 2023, at the site of the music festival.