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Re'im music festival massacre
Part of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war and mass shootings in Israel
Re'imclass=notpageimage| Site of the attack in Israel
Location	Re'im, Israel
Coordinates	31°23′52″N 34°28′18″E / 31.39778°N 34.47167°E / 31.39778; 34.47167
Date	7 October 2023; 14 months ago (2023-10-07) Starting c. 7 am (UTC+3)
Target	Civilians, mass shooting, hostage taking
Weapons	Firearms including AK-47 assault rifles, RPGs, hand grenades
Deaths	364; 40 captured
Perpetrator	Hamas
Motive	Palestinian political violence, anti-Zionism

On 7 October 2023, the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas initiated a surprise invasion of Israel from the Gaza Strip and killed 364 civilians, wounded many more, and took at least 40 hostages at the "Supernova Sukkot Gathering", an open-air psychedelic trance music festival celebrating the Jewish holiday of Sukkot near kibbutz Re'im. This mass killing was part of a series of coordinated Hamas attacks on Israel that day, which included targeting Israeli civilians for mass killings in the nearby communities of Netiv HaAsara, Be'eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz, Holit at the start of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war.

At 6:30 am around sunrise, rockets were noticed in the sky. Around 7:00 am, a siren warned of an incoming rocket attack, prompting festivalgoers to flee. Subsequently, armed militants, dressed in military attire and using motorcycles, trucks and powered paragliders, surrounded the festival grounds and indiscriminately fired on individuals attempting to escape. Attendees seeking refuge in nearby locations, such as bomb shelters, bushes, and orchards, were killed while in hiding. Those who reached the road and parking were trapped in a traffic jam as militants fired at vehicles. The militants executed some wounded individuals at point-blank range as they crouched on the ground.

The details of the whereabouts and condition of the hostages are not publicly known. The massacre at the festival was the largest terror attack in Israel's history, and the worst Israeli civilian massacre ever.

Gathering and festivities

Supernova Sukkot Gathering was a weekend-long outdoor trance music festival that began on 6 October 2023 produced by an organizer called Nova (also referred to as Tribe of Nova). It was the Israeli edition (pre-festival event) of Universo Paralello, a psytrance festival started 23 years prior in Bahia, Brazil. It took place in the western Negev desert, approximately 5 km (3.1 mi) from the Gaza–Israel barrier, near kibbutz Re'im. The line-up included artists well-known in the psytrance scene, such as Astral Projection and Man With No Name. The organizers switched to the site only two days before, after the original location in southern Israel did not work out. Scheduled to coincide with Jewish holidays: the final day of Sukkot (6 October) and Simchat Torah (7 October), the rave was billed as a celebration of "friends, love and infinite freedom". The festival site had three stages, a camping zone, and an area with a bar and food. Attendees described the crowd as mostly consisting of Israelis of ages 20–40 from across the country. Attendance was reported to be 3,500 but figures vary. Security guards and police were present at the festival.

Hamas' assault

The musical festival was one of the first targets of Hamas' surprise attack against Israel in the early morning hours of 7 October 2023. 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. One attendee stated that after cutting the electricity, a group of approximately 50 Hamas gunmen arrived in vans and sprayed gunfire in all directions. Some of the Hamas gunmen who attacked the festival infiltrated Israel via motorized paragliders, arriving around 6:30 am.

As festival attendees fled in panic, jeeps filled with gunmen began firing at the escaping cars. Gunmen also blockaded roads. The open terrain left few places to hide. Many attendees who hid in the trees were murdered as militants methodically shot them. Others who hid in bushes and orchards managed to survive. The massacre took place amid a rocket siren, signaling a barrage of rockets fired into Israel. Independently verified drone footage of the site showed dozens of scorched, burnt cars and skid marks. Footage of the attack, posted on a Telegram channel, included graphic depictions of murder and hostage taking.

The Hamas militants kidnapped an unknown number of participants; videos on social media showed them being seized. The abducted concertgoers were taken to Gaza, where some were filmed in Hamas propaganda videos. Relatives and friends of the missing searched for information about the missing. Those apparently abducted by Hamas included Shani Louk – a 22-year-old German-Israeli dual citizen, a British man, and a 25-year-old Israeli woman Noa Argamani. Three dual Brazilian-Israeli nationals who had attended the festival were also missing.

Witnesses have reported that some of the captured women have been raped. The Israel Defense Forces have not verified the claims.

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. ZAKA, Israel's volunteer community emergency response group, reported retrieving at least 260 bodies from the party grounds. The death toll was expected to rise, as other paramedic organizations also responded to the scene. The final figure communicated by police on 17 November was 364 dead, including 17 police officers, and 40 abducted.

One of those killed was a British man serving in the Israeli military. Lior Asulin, a retired football striker who had played for Hapoel Tel Aviv Football Club, was also among those killed in the massacre. Journalists Shai Regev and Ayelet Arnin, who worked for the Ma'ariv newspaper and KAN broadcaster respectively, were also killed in the attack. The event's organizers, Osher Vaknin and his twin Michael Vaknin, were killed in the attack.

Investigation

As of 14 October 2023, German authorities are aware of eight of its nationals being taken as hostage in the overall events of 7 October 2023, including the case of Shani Louk, which had gained public interest. They opened a criminal probe against unknown Hamas members to investigate "belonging to a foreign terrorist group, hostage-taking and murder".

According to reports publicised on 17 November, the police concluded based on interrogations and their own investigations that the terrorists didn't know about the festival beforehand but came across it by accident and decided to attack it. According to a Haaretz report quoting a police source, the investigation also showed that an IDF combat helicopter that arrived at the scene and fired on terrorists also hit some festival participants.

Response

Hamas denied that the attack was against civilians and said that it viewed the victims as "soldiers". Later Hamas changed their stance claiming that forces under Hamas never targeted civilians but the massacre was carried out by independent groups of Gazan civilians after Hamas had defeated the Israeli forces in the region. Later still Hamas denied that any massacre had taken place at the festival.

In response to this massacre, as well as other massacres and attacks in Operation Aqsa Flood, Israel declared a formal war on Hamas and began Operation Iron Sword.

See also

• Outline of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war
• Battle of Re'im, a 2023 Hamas attack on an Israeli military base as part of the same offensive
• Dolphinarium discotheque massacre, a 2001 Hamas attack in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv
• Coastal Road massacre
• List of massacres in Israel
• List of terrorist incidents in 2023
• Palestinian terrorism
• Moshe Dayan's eulogy for Ro'i Rothberg

Notes

1. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist group by Australia, Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan, Paraguay, the United Kingdom, and the United States
2. After the attack, relatives searching for missing loved ones said more than one thousand were at the event at the time of the attack. Some festival attendees estimated 3,000–4,000 people. An emergency medic who responded to the massacre at the festival placed attendance at 3,000.

References

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External links

• Official festival website
• Roger Cohen, Slaughter at a Festival of Peace and Love Leaves Israel Transformed, The New York Times, October 15, 2023

• Massacres during the 2023 Israel–Hamas war
• 2023 mass shootings in Asia
• Attacks on music venues
• Cross-border operations
• Hamas attacks
• Terrorist attacks attributed to Palestinian militant groups
• 21st-century mass murder in Israel
• Kidnappings in Israel
• October 2023 crimes in Asia
• October 2023 events in Israel
• Mass kidnappings of the 2020s
• Massacres in Israel during the Israeli–Palestinian conflict
• Mass shootings in Israel
• Sukkot
• Islamic terrorist incidents in 2023
• Rave
• Palestinian war crimes
• Re'im