Hundreds of survivors of the Nova music festival massacre and their family members gathered Sunday evening at Hangar 11 in the Port of Tel Aviv to mark two years since the October 7, 2023, attack, in an event titled “Remembering and Embracing.”
Since the massacre, some 3,800 survivors have formed a community. Including their family members, the broader “Nova Tribe” now numbers around 15,000.
On the morning of October 7, about 120 Hamas terrorists from the Nukhba unit stormed the open-air party in pickup trucks armed with heavy machine guns, grenades, launchers and other weapons. They murdered 411 revelers, in addition to Shirel Golan, who survived the attack but took her own life about a year later. Testimonies collected since have also described sexual assaults committed by the terrorists during the massacre.
At the hangar, memorial installations and a large screen displayed photos of those killed at Nova. Standing before the display was Ofir Dor of Givat Ze’ev, whose son Idan Dor was murdered at the festival. “This angel would have been 27 today. I live the memory as if it were an hour ago,” Dor said. “They went out — four friends — and only one returned. We know they seized weapons from terrorists, rescued revelers and were shot dead by RPG. We buried Idan based on DNA five months later; we opened the grave to bury parts that were found. For two weeks now, my wife Michal and I have felt the pain of Idan’s murder throughout our bodies.”
Yaffa Golan, the mother of Shirel, arrived at the ceremony directly from the cemetery, where her family marked a year since her daughter’s death. “The terrorists’ bullets did not hit her at Nova, and a year later she committed suicide,” she said. “Nova continued to haunt her — mainly the sights and sounds from the massacre — until she decided to join the murdered. The pain only grows and intensifies. A whole year we did not hear from her, until she chose to take her life. All the bodies in the state must wake up; there are many Nova survivors who still have not found relief for their souls.”
At the entrance to the event — hosted by journalist Chen Zander, whose sister Noa Zander was murdered at Nova — a “Tree of Hope” installation was connected to a landline phone, allowing family members to call and speak about their longing. On nearby tables, families lit memorial candles and placed handwritten cards for their loved ones.
Survivor and former hostage Almog Meir Jan, who was kidnapped from Nova and rescued from Gaza last year in Operation Arnon along with Noa Argamani, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv, also spoke at the ceremony.
“This could have been me. This could have been my family sitting here among you now — haunted by painful, wounded longing, when all that’s left are memories,” he said. “Two years since the brutal massacre, I saw the end in so many moments — on that black Saturday, in the moments of flight, in the hiding place, in the moments they wrapped me in a sheet and threw me into a vehicle, and in each of the 246 days in captivity until the operation that rescued us and Arnon fell. And maybe it’s right to say — that was also me. A large part of me, a significant part of my life, left and will not return.”
He continued: “How can I console? What more can be said? Time does not heal — it only deepens the scars. I bow my head before you, the bereaved families; I put myself at your disposal — in the struggle to continue living. But I learned one thing since I returned: it is allowed to grieve, it is allowed to break down, it is allowed to give pain a place. We do not have to hide it, we do not have to be ‘strong’ all the time. The pain is testimony to the love that was. But from this pain we must also learn — live with it, not run from it, and slowly rise from it. Turn it into meaning, into light, into strength.
“I am optimistic that the coming days will give us light within the long darkness we are in; we must believe and hope together that we are approaching the end of the war. We must not stop — until everyone returns home. This is the mission of my life. This is the mission of our lives — all of us here.”
Forty-four festival attendees were kidnapped on October 7. Fourteen remain in Gaza, and 11 are classified as alive. With talk of a potential deal for their release, the survivors’ community remains under intense emotional strain. “We are waiting and praying that our friends return home — some to their families and rehabilitation, and some for burial,” the Nova association said.
“Every bereaved family is a world in itself,” said Soli Laniado, CEO of the Nova association. “There are thousands of family members of Nova survivors, in addition to the support for the families of Nova’s hostages and services for released captives and freed prisoners.”
Laniado said the association has saved 100 Nova survivors from suicide attempts. “The association places special emphasis on supporting Nova survivors. We are in contact with emergency hotlines that forward reports about any survivor in distress, and we reach out to them. We monitor the web to find survivors in distress.”
He added that Israel’s National Insurance Institute has recognized all Nova survivors as victims of hostile actions. About 2,600 of the 3,800 survivors have been granted temporary or permanent disability status.