OJAI, Calif. — In a circular room bathed in winter sunlight, an organization of young men and women stand cross-legged on the floor. Usually, your eyes are closed. Some lie face down. Others hug each other in pain.
A mane of barefoot hair picks up a guitar: “You’ll be like a bird that flies, free,” he sings. “And I will be a sun to the world. . . “
Together, voices rise in the room. They’re here.
Most of them are in their twenties and have experienced trauma that can take a lifetime to heal. Early on October 7, Hamas terrorists invaded the psy-trance music festival and persecuted, massacred, raped, mutilated and kidnapped them. and his friends.
An estimated 360 young people were killed at the festival that day, and dozens more were kidnapped. The survivors number in the hundreds.
Those who made it out alive, like Lee Sassiyk, a young mother who went to the festival with seven members of her family and returned with just one, suffer damage in tactics most of us can’t imagine. Others, like a policewoman who was shot. Several times in the leg, he suffers despite meeting the participants whose lives he saved in the festival retreat. During a brief verbal exchange with this reporter, she jumped out of a chair, surprised, when an engine began to spin her.
Some suffer persistent physical injuries. Some still hold friends or family hostage in Gaza. Shame, guilt, and worry are common. Many know survivors who have committed suicide since October 7.
“This is not a general trauma,” said Guy Svili, an Israeli specialist who led the organization’s treatment consultation and works with trauma survivors in Israel through his organization, Ruach Adama. “It’s a confrontation with evil. Some had friends cut into pieces. For some, the will to live has disappeared and the shadow of death has settled in their heads. The survivors’ organization declined to discuss the main points of possible suicides.
He spoke after the consultation on a grassy hillside, as teams of youngsters, once united by the love of music and the freedom of a rave, relaxed. We walked through the park with a parrot on our shoulder. An excited dog crunches behind. Many have tattoos, smoke, or vape. An impromptu band sings “Hotel California” in the sun. Many of those who were offered to the retreat arrived without knowing anyone else from the festival.
Psy-trance is a tight-knit global network of psychedelic ravers that spans dozens of countries, including the Netherlands, Brazil, Portugal, and India. The Supernova Sukkot Gathering, named after the Jewish holiday, is an Israeli branch of the Paralello Universe (Parallel Universe) introduced to Brazil more than 20 years ago. One of the founders of the Brazilian company, Juarez Petrillo, DJ Swarup, father of Brazilian superstar DJ Alok, is on Supernova’s list of artists. His son Alok later said on social media that police evacuated his father at the beginning of the attack.
These other young men were not so lucky.
“They’re very young,” he continued, Svili. La Nova network is made up of Americans – all of whom are focused on love and freedom. There’s something symbolic here – there were thousands of other people for love and music – and the worst is coming to them. His recovery from such excessive delight in represents much hope.
NEGEV, Israel — A strong wind blows through a forest of photographs on the land where Nova took place. The Nova camps were once just a public park near Kibbutz Re’im, a few kilometers from the Gaza border, with nature trails and tree clearings. and plenty of open space for a psychic trance rave.
It is now a makeshift monument, marked with images arranged on long stands, each depicting a murdered or kidnapped person. Tamar Goldberg, with dark hair and a wide smile. Guy Gilboa-Dalal, 22 – “take him home now,” the sign reads. A Lost Couple: “In Memory of Amit ben Avida and Karen Schwartzguy. “And Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, the young man whose hand flew out throwing grenades from the shelter where dozens of young people had been hiding. “Take it home now. ” Too much to count.
To take a look around is to believe what it was like six months ago, on October 7. Around 6 a. m. , missiles rained down on the fields near the festival and some 3,000 attendees were stunned, most of whom had just arrived a few hours earlier. Earlier, I looked around and wondered what to do next.
“The rockets start flying through the air,” Ben Landau, a festival-goer, said in an interview posted on YouTube. “At first we see five rockets. Then we see tens, hundreds, thousands of rockets in the air. “air,” he said. At first, he thought he and his friends might still be safe. “From the stories about Iron Dome, we felt at that point. But we understood that the party would not go on.
Festival-goers were fish in the barrel. Some, like Landau, fled in their cars, creating a huge traffic jam. Some discovered a brief hiding place in concrete shelters with open sides. Some began to head for the road, hide in the bushes, or run along a dry riverbed. He began to run, panicked, through an open box as a bunch of terrorists came on foot to the missile attack, firing as they went.
Almost all called their parents and many stood in line for hours as they ran to find a way out of the death trap. Talking to the survivors, one realizes that the bloodbath didn’t happen suddenly. In many cases, the festival-goers attempted an exit route, changed cars, ran on foot, or possibly would have hidden under a bush. In some cases, they thought they were safe, only to be chased by Hamas militants an hour later and killed. . Or worse. Witnesses, along with festival-goer Raz Cohen, describe at least one gang rape of a young woman who was later stabbed to death. This is not the only sexual assault.
The makeshift memorial underscores the absurdity of the tragedy. It has no profound message, no factor to vindicate, no message to teach.
The faces of the sick seem profoundly innocent and full of joy. They came dancing.
TEL AVIV — Romi Gonen, a 23-year-old from a northern Israeli village called Kfar Vradim (People of Roses), had been traveling in South America for seven months when she discovered psy-trance music in Brazil. Peru, Colombia, and then I fell in love with the festive scene.
Gonen, one of the five brothers, was the one in trouble. “She’s a smiling, awkward, awkward person,” her older sister Yarden said. “All the bad things that happen to him are a family joke. He has had Covid 3 times.
After abroad where she learned to speak Spanish, Romi moved to Tel Aviv and worked in a restaurant as a waitress. He enjoyed new cultures and when the Nova festival was announced, he canceled a planned trip to Sri Lanka to make sure he could go.
She went with her friend Gaia.
As she slept in Romi’s bed at home, Yarden’s phone rang at 6:40 a. m. m. of the 7th of October. ” I almost ignored him. At the last minute I thought, “Maybe something is wrong. “Is everything okay?'” asked Yarden. Not really,” Romi said, describing the missiles falling nearby.
For the next 3 hours, they remained on the phone to figure out how to escape the network. Afraid to return to his car, Romi discovered a transient protection shelter.
“You don’t understand,” she told her sister. There are so many rockets. It’s raining rockets. The trees are on fire.
Family members turned on television and watched the news about terrorist gangs in cars throughout southern Israel. In the vicinity of the town of Sderot, CCTV cameras showed Hamas fighters, 10 on horseback in pickup trucks, brandishing automatic weapons.
“We were surprised,” Yarden said. “They said, ‘We’re here to terrorize you. ‘” »
In the meantime, Romi had retrieved her car and was looking to get to the main road, but the parking lot was full. Suddenly, Yarden heard his sister say, “Why are all those other people running towards us?Gaia drove the car while her friend’s father helped them navigate a dry riverbed. Once again, they saw other people running towards the car.
“I begged him, ‘Stay in the car. ‘ But other people were shouting, “Get out of the car. “The terrorists will kill them! They are dressed like the (Israeli) army. They’re killing us!” They were dragged out of the car and fled, hiding in a bush.
Still on the phone but wasting reception, Romi asked her sister, “What do I do now?”Yarden had no response. It was very frustrating,” he said. There’s nothing I can do to help you. Just stay with her on the phone.
More shots. I’m getting it now.
“Do you see the police? The army?”
I see a lot of deaths.
Finally, at 10 a. m. , Romi called her father and told him that a friend had come to rescue them. “I’m so relieved,” Yarden said.
But 10 minutes later, her mother received a call from Romi. She and her friends were ambushed. The car broke down. The dead driver. Gaia had been shot and stopped answering him. Romi was shot in the arm and was bleeding.
The next few minutes passed in slow motion. For the last 10 minutes, Romi didn’t speak. We heard terrorists talking (in Arabic) and gunshots. They opened the door and tried to start the car.
Suddenly, Yarden heard a scraping sound and then an English word: “Stop. “The call ended. Later, she asked a friend to translate the discussion into Arabic: We have two daughters. One alive, the other dead. And then a discussion about killing Romi or taking him to Gaza.
Romi has recently been held hostage in Gaza. Gaia is dead.
Yarden worked tirelessly to expose her sister’s plight to the media. “I don’t know if my sister still has her hand,” Yarden said, noting that freed hostages reported seeing their sister with her hand badly injured and discolored.
“Some days I wake up optimistic. But I feel like I can’t rest until they (the hostages) are all there. It doesn’t matter if I’m tired, upset, or desperate. Our project is to keep fighting.
“This is a fight between the rest of the world and terrorism,” Yarden said. “The music chain is more explicit and conscious. The psy-trance network has the feeling of being a tribe. If it happens at a music festival where 30 other countries participate, it can take place anywhere. No music festival is safe. Wake up. Bear with us in this.
TheWrap reached out to the organizers of the Nova Festival but got a response.
During the donation-funded Ojai retreat, activities in addition to organizing and therapy included an art project, ropes and climbing, hiking, yoga, all with volunteers trained in trauma work.
Therapy continued every day for a week. Most of the young adults here stopped running since Oct. 7. Their occupations ranged from academics and medical staff to lawyers and social staff. The hope is that they can pick up the thread of their life and move on.
The retreat was conceived by American Jewish educator Karin Heprin of Orange County, who first wanted to connect Israeli teens with American children, but was told the most urgent need was for Nova and the other survivors to leave Israel and take a break.
“We went into this not knowing what we were going to accomplish,” he said. “My hope would be that they could go back to their pre-October 7 identity, to their hopes and dreams. We hoped it would be a smart solution. But it can also be a cause or be complicated for them.
During Svili’s organizational therapy, he asked her opinion: “What are you afraid of?” she asked. The answers were announced: “My own thoughts. ” What I think. “
A talli named Talli sang a song she wrote about fear. “My fears are holding me back,” he sang, training the lyrics and agreeing with the piece.
A young man came to the front of the room to share. On Oct. 7, he said, he and a friend were chased by terrorists and, as they ran, he feared he would be arrested. He’s not afraid to die, he says. Instead, as the men drew closer, she feared what would happen to her friend if she was caught. And he thought that perhaps it was his duty to kill her, to prevent her from falling into his hands.
“I asked myself, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’ He asked, “Should you kill the user you love?”Given the evidence that emerged regarding the rape of women at the festival, their fears were not unfounded.
That worry still haunts him, he says. Several other people in the organization began to cry.
During the last song, Rani Pondak, a Sufi-influenced psychotherapist dressed in white, stood in the middle of the circle and spun slowly, like a dervish.
“I know it will bring positive change,” Svili said. Here’s how it works. Like a phoenix, it emerges from the darkness. How it happens, I don’t know. When, I don’t know. But we have to, maybe we don’t have a choice.