I think about everything that happened that day.
Even if I don't want to think about it, it pops up.
I kind of dive into the thoughts sometimes by mistake.
At the beginning, I thought maybe to tell my friends to...
to leave.
But at that point, it was already too late.
They're shooting at us, and they're going to try
to kidnap us or kill us.
Everyone was trying to call some authority.
And no one was really answering.
I remember at one point that there was a really big
explosion, and I flew back.
Someone flew on me.
And when I finally got up, I realized that I was
sitting in a pile of bodies.
Car after car of dead people.
Then you start realizing what happened.
We survived a horrific terror attack that didn't
seem possible to survive.
I've kind of understood that I'm never
going to be the person that I was before the 7th of October.
And I'm trying to figure out who I'm going to be now.
The festival itself was amazing.
I've not seen anything even remotely close
to that in Israel in years.
Everything was perfect.
The energy of people just wanting to dance and enjoy
themselves and then going at it with all that they have,
it was beautiful.
There's something about seeing a trance dance floor move.
You feel connected.
You feel part of something.
You're accepted no matter who you are
and what you're bringing.
3,500 people went to a festival to dance
in the nature for peace and for love.
400 of them didn't come home.
And they're not going to.
In these kind of raves, you don't really know where it is.
And you get a location the night of the party.
I remember driving and just looking out the window
and seeing Gaza.
And I didn't even think it was dangerous.
We were all students starting our fourth year.
We all like going to parties.
And the second Nova tickets came out,
they were really cheap.
Seemed like a perfect thing to do right before
the year started.
When I got there and I understood that I can see
the fence dividing us from Gaza from where we are,
it was like, well, it's been quiet for a while.
There haven't been any missiles.
It will probably be OK.
So my name is Noa.
I'm 29 years old.
I work as a booking agent for electronic music.
I came to the Nova party for work.
I brought a DJ from Hungary.
My job was to take him to the party, let him play his set,
and then take him back home.
This production was in collaboration
with the Universo Paralello.
It's a very big festival in Brazil.
They were in Israel.
It looked like we were at a concert somewhere in Europe.
It was... it was beautiful.
I've met people and DJs from all over the world.
There are Jews and Arabs and tourists that come in.
You see people from every edge of religion.
It's not something that we notice.
It's not something that we care about.
Be a human being.
Be happy, smile, dance with people,
and you'll probably be fine in the end.
Whoo-hoo!
Hey!
There's something about the moment
that the sun rises that you suddenly see the people
around you, that you suddenly see the smiles
and that the energy comes together.
You can actually see the dance floor moving into a place.
I was on the stage. So I could actually see it.
I looked at the person next to me, and we were both like, wow.
This is a test of frequency instruments.
Bass, drums, distortion, artifacts.
And I see a bunch of people looking up to the sky.
OK, probably just like seeing the sun rise or something?
The last video I took from my phone
was at 6:28 in the morning.
It was the last drop that he played.
The moment that I stopped filming,
someone grabbed my hand and showed me the sky.
He yelled into the crowd, Tzeva Adom, Tzeva Adom.
Everyone scattered.
It was like a screen coming up from the sky of rockets,
just like whew.
The most rockets I've ever seen in my life.
Oh, fuck!
We laid on the ground.
I was honestly scared.
You're in an open field.
There's rockets everywhere.
Nothing is stopping these rockets from falling
exactly where I am right now.
Whoa!
Whoo.
Whoa.
We were parked in the artists' VIP area.
The big parking was a little bit more in.
So we were very close to the road.
We could get out very quickly.
I went to the DJ, and I told him, listen,
there's no time for goodbyes.
There's no time for waiting.
We're running to the car.
We're going to leave.
And we were driving on Route 232.
On the way north, we passed Be'eri.
I'd close the windows and put on music
so that we don't hear what's going on outside,
and we were driving.
Rockets were exploding over our heads.
We didn't understand if we're safe or we're not safe.
We stop at the side of the road.
We see the migunit, concrete structure
on the side of the road that is supposed
to be as close to a bomb shelter as possible.
And it seemed like the smartest move
to make, to go into the migunit.
Whoo!
When we got to about 200 meters before the first thing,
we took the turn.
The two cars that were in front of me suddenly hit the brakes.
At first, it looked like an accident.
So my first instinct was, you need
to get out and help someone.
So I opened my door.
And the moment I opened my door, I heard the first bullet.
At this point, no one knows that there's terrorists
that entered Israel.
I think there was about 19 people in migunit.
It's a tiny structure.
There's not that much room to move inside.
Some of the people are still standing outside just
to look at the rockets.
And then slowly, more and more people come.
Finally, four people arrived.
One of them was Aner Shapiro.
And one of them was Hersh Goldberg.
Aner was very confident.
I remember it. He walked in.
He told us that there's a big attack on Israel from Gaza.
He didn't really elaborate too much.
My... my heart jumped a beat.
And I realized that something bad is about to happen.
I felt it so deep in my stomach that I didn't even
know what to do or how to react.
At the beginning, I thought maybe
to tell my friends to leave so they get in the car
and drive away.
But at that point, it was already too late.
The only thing between me and the terrorists
were my car doors.
There were a few moments where I thought I was dead.
The only reason that they missed is by chance.
Something was protecting us.
I don't have a word for it.
But I thought I was dead.
I was either dead, or I was very, very hurt
and I wasn't feeling it.
If I'm not feeling any pain, then I'm probably dead.
That was the math I did in my head.
I looked at my hands and understood
that I was still alive and that we need to do something.
And then I just yelled, "Get in the car."
[car horn honking
I looked in the back mirror, and I could see the car
behind me that had stopped.
The driver and the guy that were next to him
were shot in the head.
And I saw them slaughter people.
Every car that had come towards us had either been
show off the road... and you could actually see cars just
going off the road in a moment.
And then people tried to run out of the cars,
and there were terrorists shooting them down.
Whoo!
Tuck your heads down. Tuck your heads down.
After we... we had gone out of the shooting range,
I called the police.
And the first question they asked me was, "What?
What do you mean they shot at you?"
No one understood the situation.
A group of people jump out, screaming in Arabic.
Aner tried to calm everyone down as much as possible.
And then they started firing
at the entrance of the migunit.
Lobed, he went outside and tried
to talk to them in Arabic.
They did horrible things to him
and murdered him in the end.
Everyone in the migunit was trying
to call some authority, MDA or the cops
or the army or someone.
No one was really answering.
And then I see Aner just picked
them up and tossed them out.
And he does that once, and then they throw another one in.
Every time they throw in a grenade,
he just grabbed it and tossed it out.
He acted like a commander.
He took all the responsibility onto himself.
He was focused.
He... he understood that he had a mission.
All he was looking for was to fight, to stay alive.
I'm thinking to myself, oh, my God,
this kid is throwing live grenades.
I don't think that I've ever heard
of anyone ever doing that.
I know how dangerous this is.
I think there's a chance that he's not the only one that's
going to have to do this.
And I kind of get myself ready for the point
where if something happens to him, that I'm going to have
to pick up what he left.
There was a really big explosion, and I flew back.
Someone flew on me.
And when I finally got up, I remember
Aner wasn't standing anymore.
He wasn't with us.
Hersh lost his hand.
And he was just sitting there.
He said, "I lost my hand.
I don't have my hand."
And he was trying to, like, tie it off.
At that point, I kind of realized
that someone's going to have to continue what he started.
And then I remember a grenade flying in,
just landing right in front of me.
And you could see the flame coming
out of the top of the grenade.
And it was a few inches.
And I remember it getting smaller and smaller.
And I just picked up the grenade and threw it out.
And I'm not sure how many of those there were.
I remember the first one, and I remember the last two.
The one at the entrance I remember
I was able to throw out.
But then there was an explosion.
I went flying into the wall and passed out.
Hey, hey, hey!
Shup, shup.
Pew, pew.
You know, Russian roulette.
Who gets the bullet?
At that point, they started kidnapping people.
They took Hersh out because he was at the entrance.
They started putting them in the trucks wherever they could
and whoever they tried to kidnap.
I remember seeing a terrorist walk in.
He was wearing all black.
He had a black mask on, an AK-47,
and a green bandanna on his head with the Hamas symbol.
I remember you could see his mouth through the mask,
like he had a little opening.
And he was smiling, like it was a game that they won.
They came back in.
And then they started shooting everyone inside.
They left.
I looked left and right.
And I thought everyone was acting
or playing dead so that they wouldn't get kidnapped.
But after a minute or two, where... when
people weren't lifting their heads or waking up,
I realized that I was sitting in a pile of bodies.
Fuck.
We were there for another six hours.
Six hours in piles of bodies, praying to God
that no one... no terrorists come back and just
look or pop in their head.
We both got into an army Jeep.
And they told us to put our heads down.
But I... I couldn't look away.
Car after car with dead people.
Then you start realizing what happened.
We survived a horrific terror attack that
didn't seem possible to survive.
I'm still coping.
I don't know.
Like, I can find myself crying in the middle
of the day for no reason.
Sleeping has become a mission.
Every single person that I lost on that day
would have made the hell out of this life.
And for them, I need to continue living.
We are going to need to go through mountains of pain
until we get there.
But I close my eyes for a moment,
and I picture my friends that aren't with us
anymore and hoping that...
that wherever they are, they're partying like crazy,
and that one day we will, too.