Nova music festival massacre

On 7 October 2023, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian nationalist political organization Hamas, initiated a sudden attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip. As part of the attack, 364 individuals, mostly civilians, were killed and many more wounded at the Supernova Sukkot Gathering, an open-air music festival during the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret near kibbutz Re'im. Hamas also took 40 people hostage, and men and women were reportedly subject to sexual and gender-based violence.
This attack had the largest number of casualties out of a number of massacres targeting Israeli civilians in villages adjacent to the Gaza Strip, that occurred as part of the 7 October attack, alongside those at the kibbutzim and moshavim of Netiv HaAsara, Be'eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz and Holit.
At 6:30 a.m., which was around sunrise, rockets were noticed in the sky. Around 7:00 a.m., 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.
Supernova Sukkot Gathering was a weekend-long outdoor trance music festival that began on 6 October 2023 and was 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 psychedelic trance festival started 23 years earlier 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 psychedelic trance 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.
The festival was one of the first targets of Hamas's surprise attack against Israel in the early morning hours of 7 October 2023. Israeli security services investigations have found it unlikely that Hamas had advanced knowledge of the festival, citing, among other evidence, that the festival had been planned to run until 6 October and was only recently extended to 7 October. The massacre was carried out by the 1st and 3rd companies of Hamas's Nuseirat Battalion. Their original target is thought to have been the city of Netivot, but after noticing the party they turned back and headed in its direction, where they committed the massacre. Afterwards, they again headed towards Netivot but after seeing an Israeli tank turned back again and joined the Nuseirat Battalion's 2nd company at kibbutz Be'eri in perpetrating the Be'eri massacre.
The attack opened with a rocket barrage starting at about 6:30 AM that provided cover for infiltration. A rocket siren sounded in the area. Militants blasted through the border fence in numerous locations and began infiltrating into Israel. Some of the Hamas gunmen who attacked the festival infiltrated Israel via motorized paragliders. Following the start of the barrage, the police commander in charge of security at the festival, Deputy Superintendent Nivi Ohana of the Ofakim police station, ordered the party dispersed and requested additional security. Police began to disperse the festival-goers and backup arrived, including a team from the Yasam riot control unit. There were also private security guards present. It took infiltrating Hamas forces about an hour and forty minutes to understand the situation at the festival site, after which they headed in its direction.
At around 7:00 AM, with militant infiltration from the Gaza Strip underway, police and private security personnel on the scene set up a checkpoint at the gate to the festival, positioning themselves to battle any assault. When the militants arrived, police officers and security guards, armed mainly with handguns, fought to hold off the militants who were armed with assault rifles, grenades, and other heavy weaponry. An Israeli tank arrived to assist and managed to kill dozens of the militants, but was hit by anti-tank fire. The fighting went on for hours, but after all but one of the tank's crew members were killed and the sole survivor drove away to avoid being killed as militants tried to storm the vehicle, the militants finally succeeded in breaking through the checkpoint at around 11:45 AM and entering the festival grounds.
A police officer stationed at the festival, Sergeant-Major Yulia Vakser, who would be killed half an hour later, called the IDF Southern Command to alert them, warning that the festival-goers still at the site were about to all be killed, but was told by the operations officer on the other end that there were many active combat zones at the time. Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai called IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi to inform him that forces had not reached the festival site, to which Halevi responded that the IDF was aware and had increased forces near Re'im. However, IDF forces did not arrive until much later. According to IDF officials speaking to the Israeli media, police had informed the IDF that the area of the festival had been cleared, and thus the IDF did not prioritize deploying troops there.
After entering the festival grounds, the militants established a command post and began to massacre the remaining attendees. One attendee stated that after cutting the electricity, a group of approximately 50 Hamas gunmen arrived in vans and sprayed gunfire in all directions. 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 killed as militants methodically shot them. Others who hid in bushes and orchards managed to survive. Many of the attendees attempted to call for help through phone calls and WhatsApp messages however it took hours for emergency responders and the military to reach the festival grounds.
Some participants attempted to shelter inside public missile shelters, such as Aner Shapira and Hersh Goldberg-Polin who were credited with helping protect their shelter. Shapira was killed while attempting to throw out multiple grenades that were thrown into the shelter, and Goldberg-Polin was seriously wounded before the shelter was overrun by Hamas militants. Some 30 attendees were able to hide behind the damaged tank that had helped the police fend off the assault earlier and had been abandoned, and two brothers, Daniel and Neria Sharabi, who were both IDF infantry veterans, entered the tank and were able to fend off the militants with a gun from a dead soldier inside as well as a machine gun. Daniel contacted a commander of his reserve company over WhatsApp, who instructed him on where to find the ammunition for the machine gun and provided tactical advice as they fought to fend off the militants.
Independently verified drone footage from the site showed dozens of scorched, burnt cars and skid marks. Footage of the attack, posted on a Telegram channel, included graphic depictions of killing and hostage-taking. Upon their return to Gaza City, Hamas members paraded the body of a woman in the back of a pickup truck – Shani Louk, a 22-year-old German-Israeli national. In one of the first viral videos to emerge from the attack, her body is shown clad only in underwear, while the gunmen are exclaiming "Allahu Akbar"; they were surrounded by cheering residents, some of whom spat on the body.
The Hamas militants kidnapped an initially unknown number of participants, with later reports defining the number of kidnapped people to be at 40; 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 21-year-old French-Israeli woman Mia Schem and 25-year-old Israeli woman Noa Argamani. Three dual Brazilian-Israeli nationals who had attended the festival were also missing.
During the massacre, according to survivor and emergency responder testimony, Hamas militants raped women and men. According to survivor testimony released by Lahav 433, a young woman was gang raped by Hamas militants before being killed. The testimony was published in Hebrew- and English-language Israeli news outlets. According to Haaretz police reporter Josh Breiner, ZAKA emergency response personnel found naked women with injuries and their genitals mutilated, with others found bound and naked below their waists. The Israel Defense Forces have not verified the claims. In July 2024 an anonymous male survivor identified as "D." recounted his rape on October 7 to Israel's Channel 12, becoming the first victim to do so.
At 12:30 PM, a small force of IDF soldiers arrived on the scene. By 3:00 PM, larger IDF forces arrived.
Photographs from the aftermath of the attack show dozens of bodies on 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 organisations also responded to the scene. The final figure communicated by police on 17 November was 364 dead, including 17 police officers, and 40 abducted.
According to an Israeli media report, the festival-goers were killed throughout the Gaza envelope as they fled the scene, with a minority killed at the festival grounds. According to the breakdown, 153 were killed at the festival grounds, 63 at kibbutz Mefalsim, 27 in a shelter on the eastern side of Re'im Junction, 26 south of kibbutz Re'im, 17 in a shelter at the Gama Junction, 15 in a shelter near kibbutz Be'eri, 15 in a shelter on the western side of Re'im Junction, 14 at kibbutz Alumim, 13 in open areas east of the festival grounds, 12 along Route 232, 10 at the police checkpoint at the entrance to the festival grounds, 8 at kibbutz Be'eri, 7 in the direction of Netivot, 1 at the Black Arrow Memorial, 1 at kibbutz Re'im, and 1 in Sderot.
One of those killed was Nathanel Young, 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 newspaper Maariv and public broadcaster Kan respectively, were also killed in the attack. The event's organisers, twins Osher Vaknin and Michael Vaknin, were killed in the attack as well.
Danielle Waldman, the youngest daughter of Israeli billionaire businessman Eyal Waldman, and her boyfriend Noam Shai were killed during the massacre. When Waldman received word that Danielle was missing, he flew back to Israel from Indonesia and tracked her location via her Apple Watch. Her body was found on 9 October.
Suhaib Abu Amer Razeem, a 22-year-old Palestinian from East Jerusalem, was at the site of the music festival, working as a bus driver transporting music festival attendees. When Hamas militants encountered him, they interrogated him to determine his nationality and why he was present at the site. While at least one of the militants proposed to let him go, the militants ultimately decided to kidnap Razeem and used him as a translator in a hostage stand-off at kibbutz Be'eri nearby. Razeem did not survive the stand-off, and his body was not discovered for 12 days. It is still not known whether he was executed by Hamas or died by IDF gunfire.
Razeem's brother claimed that when he approached authorities about his missing brother, he encountered initial skepticism, with an officer allegedly telling him "go to Hamas and ask them to bring back your brother."
According to reports published on 17 November, Israeli police and security authorities concluded based on interrogations of detained Palestinians that Hamas most likely did not know about the festival beforehand but came across it by chance and decided to seize the opportunity to attack it. Critics such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights Israel stated that any alleged confessions extracted under torture, should not be accepted as credible evidence, and called on the Israeli government to cease their production and publication. Senior officials speculated that Hamas may have become aware of the event through drones or individuals parachuting, and subsequently re-directed their forces to the location using their communication system. Some of the evidence cited included Hamas militants having entered the site from a direction opposite the Gaza border, and that the festival was originally approved for only two days, and was not approved for a third day (which was the day of the massacre) until the day before the festival began. Maps of the target locations recovered from Hamas militants also did not include the festival location.
According to Haaretz 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". A statement by the Israeli police said their investigation focused on police activity and not IDF activity, and thus did not provide any indication of civilian harm caused by the IDF.
In September 2024 Australia's ABC News followed up on Yaniv Kubovich's July 7 article in Ha'aretz that the Hannibal Directive was "apparently applied", with "panicked" aircrews firing on vehicles containing hostages. ABC News asked the IDF about this issue, but the IDF did not answer ABC's questions, saying that "questions of this kind will be looked into at a later stage".
In the aftermath of the attack, a widely disseminated video purported to show leaked footage of an IDF helicopter shooting at civilians during the Re'im festival. However, according to France 24, the footage was actually part of a compilation showing Israeli attacks in the Gaza Strip on October 9.
According to Haaretz, Israel's domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet and IDF military commanders discussed a possible threat to the festival just hours before the attack. However, no warnings were given to the festival's organisers.
According to an investigation by journalist Avi Amit [he] broadcast on KAN News in September 2024, Israeli Air Force commander Tomer Bar was unaware of the massacre for 10 hours. When the massacre started, the Israeli Air Force was operating at its lowest state of readiness, with only two fighter jets and two helicopters available for short notice takeoff and only one drone was flying over Gaza. The fighter jets that were scrambled were directed to protect national strategic assets such as the platform at the Leviathan gas field gas platform for hours.
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".
Hamas initially denied the occurrence of the massacre and the killing of civilians. It later claimed that forces under Hamas never targeted civilians but that the massacre may have been carried out by independent groups of Gazan civilians after Hamas had defeated the Israeli forces in the region.
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 stated 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 U.S. National Security Council spokesman says that the PA later said this was not its official position.
In response to this massacre, as well as other massacres and attacks in what Hamas called "Operation Al-Aqsa Flood", Israel formally declared war on Hamas and initiated its counteroffensive, named "Operation Swords of Iron".
Family members of the victims of the festival and the Psyduck festival together formed the Party Youth Forum to demand the establishment of a third-party investigation committee, which would potentially identify any negligence leading up to the 7 October attacks. On 1 January 2024, 42 survivors of the massacre filed a lawsuit seeking 200 million NIS in damages from the IDF, Shin Bet and the Israel Police.
Shortly after the attack, spaces were created to allow survivors and victims' families to reflect and heal from the attack, with a variety of treatments provided to help them process the mental trauma. Items recovered from the festivals grounds that were not claimed or identified, were brought to another similar event in the Sdot Yam kibbutz.
In late January 2024, a memorial on the site had been opened to tourists, family, and friends of victims to learn about the attack, the victims, and survivors and pay tribute to them. That same month, the families of victims planted trees inside the area of the festival to commemorate the deceased victims.
During a State Audit Commission on the treatment of survivors of the 7 October attacks at the Knesset in April 2024, a survivor spoke out about the psychological damage the attack had caused. He indicated that many survivors were forcibly hospitalized due to psychological state, could not get out of bed, and that there had been some 50 suicides by survivors between October 2023 and April 2024. The Israeli Ministry of Health has reported that they cannot confirm the claim of suicides made by the survivor.
On 20 October 2024, Nova massacre survivor Shirel Golan committed suicide on her 22nd birthday after suffering PTSD symptoms since the event.
The National Insurance Institute formally recognised the trauma and damage suffered by the survivors of the massacre. Survivors can submit claims for recognition as victims of work-related injuries and as casualties of hostile actions. Individuals are eligible for various privileges, including financial aid, medical and psychological assistance, legal representation, and compensation for any property losses or damages.
A total of 40 hostages were taken from the music festival. As of 22 February 2025, 13 of the hostages are still being held captive. Israel has declared that five of the 13 hostages are dead with their bodies held captive: Inbar Haiman, Uriel Baruch, Jonathan Samerano, Guy Iluz and Idan Shtivi. Iluz is known to have been abducted alive, with a released hostage telling that she was treated next to him in a Gaza hospital.
The Yamam, Shin Bet and Israel Defense Forces carried out a rescue operation in the Nuseirat refugee camp on 8 June 2024 in which they successfully rescued four hostages taken from the Nova music festival:
The operation was later renamed Operation Arnon, in honor of Arnon Zamora [he], a Yamam officer who was killed in the line of duty during the operation.
The Israeli Defense Forces recovered the bodies of 13 people who were kidnapped from the music festival to Gaza. Unless otherwise noted, the victims are believed to have been murdered during the kidnapping, with the bodies taken hostage.
Hamas released ten of the 40 people that were taken hostage from the music festival:
On October 9, two days after the massacre, Irish rock band U2 paid tribute to the victims during a Las Vegas concert by performing "Pride (In the Name of Love)" with modified lyrics to reference the massacre. Five Israeli DJs, including Skazi, performed a set during a memorial on 28 November 2023, at the site of the festival. Film makers Reinhardt Beetz, Duki Dror and Danna Stern made a documentary titled Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre.
On December 6, a documentary titled #Nova was aired on Yes Docu, recreating the events of the massacre. The documentary uses videos taken on site, phone call recordings and WhatsApp conversations. As a precedent, Yes announced that it would allow any television channel and broadcaster to show the film for free, and also uploaded the full film to its official YouTube channel.
Supernova: Music Festival Massacre is another documentary about the massacre. Created by Yossi Bloch, Noam Pinchas, and Duki Dror, the documentary narrates the experiences of survivors through interviews and real-time video footage. It also incorporates a limited amount of video captured by the perpetrators. It has been acquired by broadcasters in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, and other countries worldwide.
On 5 February 2024, the 66th Annual Grammy Awards paid tribute to the victims of the massacre. Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. led the tribute, delivering eulogies, while a string quartet composed of musicians from Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab backgrounds provided musical accompaniment.
On 26 September 2024, the BBC, Paramount+ and Israel's (Hot) broadcast a documentary titled We Will Dance Again about the festival massacre.
During the 2024 Paris Olympics, the Israeli sailing pair Nitai Hasson [he] and Noa Lasry [he] named their dingy "Nova" as a tribute to the victims of the massacre.
The massacre at the music festival has been memorialized in several different ways.
In December 2023, activists, including producers of the festival, organised the "6:29" exhibition at Expo Tel Aviv, which recreated the massacre site in detail. It was one of the first physical memorials of the 7 October attacks. The exhibit, named for the minute the music at the festival ceased in response to sirens of incoming rockets, included a reconstructed dance floor, incinerated cars, bullet-ridden portable toilets, piles of personal items, and tributes to the victims. Israeli President Isaac Herzog spoke at opening of the exhibition on December 6. The exhibition lasted for 10 weeks.
The exhibition was brought to the United States by Scooter Braun, Joe Teplow, and Josh Kadden.
The "Nova Music Festival exhibition" opened in New York City on April 21. The exhibition, dedicated to the survivors of the massacre, features tents, blankets, personal objects, and mobile phones displaying videos recorded during the attack. On 10 June 2024, anti-Israel protesters organized by the Within Our Lifetime organization arrived at the exhibition, setting off flares, flying flags of Hamas and Hezbollah, and chanting slogans such as "Long live October 7". Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of the organization, characterized the exhibition as "propaganda used to justify the genocide in Palestine", and called the music festival "a rave next to a concentration camp." The protest was condemned by local and national politicians, including New York City mayor Eric Adams and White House spokesperson Andrew Bates. Originally planned to only stay open in New York until May 23, the exhibition was extended until June 22. During its time in New York, the exhibition attracted 113,000 visitors including New York Mayor Eric Adams and New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
After leaving New York, the exhibition came to Culver City, a suburb of Los Angeles, opening on August 17. The exhibition was scheduled to last until mid-October, but was extended to November 3. From Los Angeles, the exhibition moved to Miami, where it opened on December 18, 2024, and is expected to last until February 16, 2025. On January 16, 2025, Sara Netanyahu and Noa Argamani visited the exhibition in Miami. Argamani recounted her experience as a hostage held by Hamas in Gaza. A month later, Argamani made a second public appearance at the exhibition, this time alongside special envoy Steve Witkoff who pledged to continue working for the release of all the hostages still held by Hamas.