Arbel Ashkenazy attended the Supernova competition on Friday night time, a desert rave that coincided with the beginning of the week-long Jewish vacation of Sukkot, which celebrates the autumn harvest and commemorates the Previous Testomony story of the Jewish individuals wandering within the desert for 40 years after escaping slavery in Egypt. The competition featured Brazilian psy trance music and targeted on free love, spirit, and environmental preservation.
However within the early hours of Saturday morning, Hamas militants paraglided into the outside competition and started taking pictures indiscriminately at partygoers. On the similar time, Hamas additionally launched 1000’s of rockets from Gaza into Israel and despatched fighters to different border cities within the south of the nation. Hamas says that they’ve taken over 100 Israeli hostages up to now. Over 700 hundred Israelis had been killed, with the dying toll hovering over 1,200 on either side on Monday.
The Supernova competition had one of many highest concentrations of casualties. Greater than 260 our bodies have been discovered from the competition up to now.
Beneath is Arbel’s account of the occasions that unfolded on the competition.
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We arrived on the occasion Friday night time, and at round 6 within the morning on Saturday they stopped the music and sirens began to sound. We heard the sound of rockets over our heads in enormous numbers. Throughout this time we weren’t that burdened, we simply stayed put on the occasion and lied down on the ground. Slowly, slowly we began to see many individuals depart and head to their vehicles even if we had been supposed to remain.
Throughout this time, I began in search of my buddy Eden. Though we didn’t arrive on the occasion collectively, she is my greatest buddy so I instantly began to search for her. Me and my buddy discovered her and we left and began heading for the path of the vehicles at round 7 a.m. At this level, we had been getting extra burdened however we nonetheless didn’t completely perceive precisely what was occurring. There additionally wasn’t any reporting on it within the information or web but.
We began to go away the occasion and get into autos, however as a result of everybody was leaving on the similar time—there have been 3,000 individuals on the occasion—there was a loopy quantity of visitors on the street. We ended up making a left flip and we instantly noticed all these vehicles with shattered home windows from the gunshots. We heard lots of people screaming that they wanted an ambulance. We didn’t know what to take action we stayed in our autos.
By that point, I had misplaced contact with my buddy Eden, as a result of she was in a distinct automotive and hid there when the gunshots began. Then, we heard any person screaming, “get out of the vehicles,” so we left the vehicles, and simply began operating. There was an space with an empty subject because it was a nature occasion. It was very naked with no bushes or something and we began to run towards it. At that very same time, we additionally began to listen to gunshots from each path and voices shouting Allahu Akbar. Whereas we had been operating in that open subject, we may see within the distance among the Hamas individuals. They had been carrying all black with black masks and had these enormous weapons.
For a while, we hid in these bushes earlier than we began to run additional east. However as we began operating east, we noticed different individuals from the occasion operating towards us and so they instructed us, run to the opposite facet as a result of there are terrorists on this facet. That they had simply circled throughout us from each path. We stored operating when out of the blue I noticed an individual—an angel—that had a giant white van. He picked up a bunch of individuals into the van and me and my buddy climbed onto the van.
It was a miracle that although he was driving on this open subject, and there have been gunshots in all places, we had been in a position to get to a police station within the metropolis of Netivot at round 10:30 a.m. We stayed there till the night till issues calmed down, when you may even say “calmed down,” as a result of it didn’t actually settle down. In our space, they captured among the perpetrators.
I heard that my buddy Eden, who had hidden within the automotive throughout the gunshots, was on the cellphone your complete time together with her mom for 4 hours straight. In some unspecified time in the future she made it to the bushes as effectively, however then out of the blue, 4 hours into the cellphone name, they heard her say on the cellphone, “they caught me.” You may hear for a second within the recording the voices of the Hamas individuals after which the cellphone disconnects. Now we have been in search of her however haven’t heard from her since.
The toughest half is to see all of the our bodies of younger youngsters our age with blood laid out on the ground. We had been in an setting of pure chaos. I used to be saved by a miracle and was left in peace, however lots of my buddies together with my greatest buddy Eden are nonetheless there and I simply need everybody to return safely and in peace. I simply need this horrible story to finish as a result of it doesn’t really feel actual. It’s not regular, in any nation, anyplace, no person ought to must undergo one thing like this. It didn’t make any sense. We ran like loopy individuals in the course of an open subject whereas they had been taking pictures at us, there was no place to run, no place to cover. I’m grateful to be alive however I simply need Eden again.