“Imagine if this was Glastonbury”
In one of my first conversations with Raz Gaster, one of the key festival organisers, he said something which started this whole piece: ‘what about all the kids who were high?’.
Nova was a Trance music festival: beats at 130 BPM. The music is repetitive melodies, huge build ups and big drops.
The Trance scene is huge in Israel and this festival was a huge rave. Raz asks: “imagine if this was Glastonbury…like any other music festival…people are coming and doing psychedelic drugs”.
Of course not everyone was on drugs but like any festival, there are drugs, he tells me.
A terror attack filmed for social media
On the 7th October 2023, Hamas, a Palestinian militant group staged the deadliest attack on Jewish people since World War III.
Like most people, I watched on social media how Hamas fighters flew into the festival. They invaded Israel by foot and air, gunning partygoers down.
According to police, 364 people died there that day. With many still missing and taken hostage into the Gaza strip.
After speaking to as many people as possible, people's fates seemed to lay in complete luck, some people ran over 20km to get to safety and didn’t stop. Some hid and were taken hostage, others killed on the spot.
How do we know? Hamas filmed the whole event on GoPros and phones. Releasing it all for the world to see on social media and Telegram channels.
“We are three sisters”
Shani and May Yerushalmi have made it their mission to keep attention on their sister, Eden and the other hostages in Gaza.
“I'm the oldest” Shani tells me. “The responsible one” May says as she finishes her sentence. “We’re completely opposite people” Shani says, her being the older sister in charge, Eden the middle sister being the party girl and May promising me she’s a bit of both.
Eden was working as a bartender at Nova festival and called her Mum and sisters when the attack began.
For five hours Shani, her older sister, kept Eden calm. Telling her to hide under the bodies of her two friends who had been shot dead.
“All the time we hear the gunshots and we think to ourselves: ‘maybe the army arrived? Maybe they are fighting each other?’ But no, it was the terrorists.”
The police don’t turn up and Shani and May are left to hear their sister tell them that Hamas have caught her. The phone goes dead and you hear May screaming. It’s the last time they heard from her.
Although many women and children have been released, Eden is thought to be some of the few left hostage with Hamas.
‘DJ’ing is one of the best experiences in life’
Rocky Tilbur is his stage name but Roy Tilbur is one of Israel's most respected Trance DJs.
“To see people dance from something you’re playing… for me it's one of the best experiences in life.”
Roy has one of the most unbelievable stories of survival. After crashing into Hamas on the road, driving away from them shooting at him, seeing people dead on the floor and hiding in a nearby Kibbutz for nearly 12 hours.
But he counts himself lucky.
Nova festival was down south, about 5 km from Gaza. From visiting the festival site it’s hard to understand how a festival was allowed to happen there.
“Yeah i’ve played in shit places, in places that, who gave the permission to play there?”. Roy explains how he thinks the Trance scene are “outcasts” which is why they have to play in the most unsafe areas.
“Nobody wanted to make the event there, I think it was like an option, from the four options they had, that was the best”.
“It’s not Nova’s fault for sure”.
Destruction of Gaza
After October 7th, Israel declared war on Hamas and you cannot ignore the smell and sound of war.
The incoming and outgoing rockets, the gunfire and the smoke is all around down south.
We tried to get as close as we safely could to Gaza, to try and report on the impact of the war. Sderot hill was as close as we could get and it was shocking to see, firsthand, the destruction of Gaza.
We were at the north of the Gaza strip and there wasn’t much left. Buildings completely demolished. It’s hard to know just how many innocent Palestinians have been killed but authorities put it as over 15,000.
The area we were in felt like death was all around.
‘I took half a pill before Hamas attacked’
Eviatar very nearly didn’t go to the Nova festival. ‘I was pretty tired’ but like most people excited about a party, pushed through.
When walking into the festival he thought to himself “wow, what a huge space for a terror attack to happen”, which isn’t an unusual thought to have as a young man in Israel. He said the thought quickly passed and he started enjoying the party.
He’d taken half a pill at about four or five am and was feeling it at the peak of the party, 6:30am. They play the best music: all to coincide with the sun coming up. People plan their peak for this very reason.
“I had fun,” Eviatar tells me, smiling. “And i think it started to kick in at the peak, the sunrise”.
“It felt to me, the peak of the party, the sunrise was beautiful, the music was great”.
Although the rockets started at around 6:30 am Eviatar didn’t really worry too much about it. Rockets in southern Israel aren’t unusual.
But when a woman at the festival said she heard “terrorists had infiltrated Israel” and then he took it seriously.
He said the pill gave him energy to run for over 15 km to safety.
Healing
Nir and Igal are trained psychologists but also have specific knowledge around psychedelic harm reduction.
When they heard what happened they immediately started offering survivors therapy and care.
Although not everyone was on drugs, it’s the first time a terror attack of this nature happened at a festival where some people were on drugs and Nir and Igal and been providing care ever since.
Of the 2,000 of people that have come forward for psychological support from their organisations, Nir estimates it is around hundreds of people who were under the influence of psychedelics.
ACID
Llana* also attended the festival and had taken acid just hours before the attack.
“I took a quarter of a tab and it was a very smart decision. I was conflicted. Maybe I would take a half, maybe I would take a quarter and I said let's start with a quarter. We have a long day”.
Similarly to Eviatar, she explained how it saved her life and helped her to run 17 km to safety.
Although she survived one of the most awful and terrifying terror attacks she hopes for peace, that her government doesn’t represent her and says there’s a phrase in Judaism which is needed here: “love your other, the other one in front of you like you love yourself”.
*Not her real name.
IDF
Fay Goldstein is one of the IDF’s spokesmen. “We are with Israeli people… I know the pain, I’ve looked into their eyes.”
When asked about the hostages and so many innocent civilians in Gaza being killed Goldstein says that it is the IDF’s “top priority to get the hostages home” and they also need to “completely dismantle Hamas and at the same time we care about the people of Gaza” and say they are helping them evacuate the areas.
Innocent lives on both sides lost
From travelling over to Israel and speaking to as many people as possible about the awful attacks it’s clear Israel is in mourning and people are terrified.
And then hearing about thousands of innocent Palestinians lost for crimes they did not commit is truly awful and can leave you feeling extremely hopeless.
I’ll never know how people on both sides truly feel but one thing is for sure, innocent lives have been lost on both sides of this war - that doesn’t look to be stopping any time soon.
And it is always the innocent people who are caught up in the human cost of what a war means.