The Supernova Sukkot Gathering was a weekend-long outdoor trance music festival that began on 6 October 2023.[7][8] It took place in the western Negev desert,[6] approximately 5 km (3.1 mi) from the Gaza–Israel barrier, near the Re'im kibbutz.[3][9] Produced by an organizer called Nova,[9][6][a] the gathering was the Israeli edition of Universo Paralello, a psy trance festival that originated in Bahia, Brazil.[7] The organizers switched to the site only two days before, after the original location in southern Israel did not work out.[11] Scheduled to coincide with the Jewish festival of Simchat Torah,[3] the rave was billed as a celebration of "friends, love and infinite freedom".[9] The festival site had three stages, a camping zone, and an area with a bar and food.[3] Attendees described the crowd as mostly consisting of Israelis ages 20 to 40, from across the country.[6] Attendance was reported to be 3,500, but figures vary.[12][b] Security guards and police were present at the festival.[6][11]
Hamas' assault
The musical festival was one of the first targets of the surprise attack against Israel, launched by Hamas in the early morning hours of 7 October 2023.[9] It is not known whether Hamas knew beforehand that the festival was taking place there or whether they heard the music and came across it by chance, according to the BBC.[13] One attendee stated that after cutting the electricity, a group of approximately 50 Hamas gunmen arrived in vans and sprayed gunfire in all directions.[3] Some of the Hamas gunmen who attacked the festival infiltrated Israel via motorized paragliders,[14] arriving around 6:30 a.m., around sunrise.[14][15]
As festival attendees fled in panic, jeeps filled with gunmen began firing at the escaping cars.[9][6] Gunmen also blockaded roads.[9] The wide open terrain left few places to hide.[9] Many attendees who hid in the trees were murdered as militants methodically shot them.[3] Others who hid in bushes and orchards managed to survive.[3] The massacre took place amid a rocket siren, signaling a barrage of rockets fired into Israel.[6] Independently verified drone footage of the site showed dozens of scorched, burnt cars and skid marks.[16] Footage of the attack, posted on a Telegram channel, included graphic depictions of murder and hostage-taking.[16][12]
The Hamas militants captured an unknown number of participants; videos on social media showed them being seized.[17] The abducted concertgoers were taken to Gaza,[15] where some were filmed in Hamas propaganda videos.[18] Relatives and friends of the missing searched for information about the missing.[15][19] Those apparently abducted by Hamas included a British man[20] and a Beijing-born, 25-year-old Chinese-Israeli woman.[21][22] Three dual Brazilian-Israeli nationals who had attended the festival were also missing.[21]
Hamas paraded an injured woman[23] in the back of a pickup truck – Shani Nicole Louk, a 22-year-old tattoo artist and German-Israeli dual citizen; a video, which became viral,[24][25] shows her in a motionless state, clad only in her underwear, while the gunmen are chanting "Allahu Akbar", one draping his leg over her waist, another grabbing her hair, and a man in the crowd spitting on her.[26][17][27][9]
Footage from the attack raised concerns about sexual abuse of women.[26] A few sources claimed that some of the women were raped and then killed.[28] However, the Los Angeles Times, which had published a column conveying such claims, retracted it, saying that "An earlier version of this column mentioned rape in the attacks, but such reports have not been substantiated."[29]
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.[30]ZAKA, Israel's volunteer community emergency response group, reported retrieving at least 260 bodies from the party grounds.[9][31][32] The death toll is expected to rise, as other paramedic organizations also responded to the scene.[32]
One of those killed was a British man serving in the Israeli military.[20]Lior Asulin, a retired football striker who had played for Hapoel Tel Aviv Football Club, was also among those killed in the massacre.[33] The event's organizer, Osher Vaknin, was killed in the attack, while his twin and co-organizer Michael went missing.[34]
Investigation
German authorities believed that multiple German-Israeli dual citizens were victims of the overall events of 7 October, and opened a criminal probe against unknown Hamas members, to investigate "belonging to a foreign terrorist group, hostage-taking and murder".[35][36][37] While the persons involved or their number were specified by the officials, the German public-service broadcaster ZDF claimed knowledge of five instances of abduction,[c] referencing also the case of Shani Louk, which had gained public interest.[36][25]
Hamas denied that the attack was against "civilians" and said that it views them as soldiers.[38]
^After the attack, relatives searching for missing loved ones said more than one thousand were at the event at the time of the attack.[9] Some festival attendees estimated a higher figure, of 3,000–4,000 people.[9] An emergency medic who responded to the massacre at the festival placed attendance at 3,000.[3]
^ ab"Israel: Shani Louk - Deutsche Geisel der Hamas lebt" [Israel: Shani Louk – German Hamas hostage alive]. ZDF (in German). 10 October 2023. Retrieved 10 October 2023. Das Video der schwer verletzten Shani Louk erlangte im Internet große Bekanntheit. (transl. The video of seriously injured Shani Louk became widely known on the Internet.)
^Kalisch, Muriel (8 October 2023). "(S+) Israel: Shani Louk, die Deutsche in der Gewalt der Hamas" [(S+) Israel: Shani Louk, the German in the hands of Hamas]. Der Spiegel (in German). Archived from the original on 8 October 2023. Retrieved 8 October 2023. Die Familie hat die junge Frau auf dem Video erkannt, ein Ex-Freund von Shani Louk hat es ihnen zugeschickt. ... Die 22-Jährige lebt allein in Tel Aviv... (transl. The family recognized the young woman in the video; an ex-boyfriend of Shani Louk sent it to them. ... The 22-year-old lives alone in Tel Aviv...)
Hamas
