'They were shooting straight at me': Nova Music Festival survivor recalls miraculous survival from Hamas
'They came to kill, and they did not care how or who'
Central stage, hostage flyers, commemoration
On the second floor, vibrant colors swirled around a recreation of the Nova Music Festival stage. Beer pointed to a photo on the stage's stereo system memorializing her childhood friend Matan Lior, a sound engineer murdered by Hamas at the festival.
The survivor said that she learned about Lior's death fairly quickly compared to Shani Gabay, another friend who was working at the festival when Hamas murdered her. It took days to identify Gabay's body because it had been so severely burned that she was accidentally buried with someone else.
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"They didn't just come to kill us; they dehumanized us. They dehumanized our friends' bodies," Beer said about Hamas. "They have killed and burnt and raped."
Next to the stage is an empty bar with a shattered card reader and glass bottles scattered across the top. Many festival attendees attempted to hide from Hamas militants by crawling inside the refrigerators, with only a few managing to escape death.
As Beer explained, terrorists went from fridge to fridge, shooting the people hiding inside. Further from the stage are portable toilets riddled with bullet holes, another place where attendees attempted to hide when Hamas killed them.
In addition to murdering hundreds of festival attendees, the terror group abducted a number of people from the event. The far corner of the room in the upstairs exhibit wall is dedicated to the hostages, the words "Bring Them Home!" spray-painted beneath the flyers of the victims.
Several tables near the stage held various items such as bags, glasses, underwear, sweaters and shoes. The attendees forced to flee for their lives left behind all of the items collected from the festival grounds. According to Beer, former hostages who had been released from captivity visited the exhibit and discovered items that belonged to them.
"Each of these things has a story," Beer told CP. "I don't know if you feel it, but when I stand next to them, I feel it in my body. Each of these belongs to a human, someone who came to dance that morning and did not make it home."
Moving on with the tour, Beer led CP to an adjacent room that featured photos of the hundreds of victims murdered by Hamas at the Nova Music Festival. The survivor stopped by the pictures of several victims to share additional details about their lives, painting a picture of who they once were.
'We Will Dance Again'
The final room of the Nova Music Festival exhibition showcased the Tribe of Nova Foundation's efforts to uplift survivors and bereaved families through therapeutic horse riding and community-building. In the healing room, a banner prominently displayed the phrase "We Will Dance Again."
"We will dance again; we are dancing again. We will continue dancing," Beer told CP.
The survivor said that she hopes the exhibition will help people understand what the festival attendees endured during Hamas' attack. She also urged those who think of Hamas as "resistance fighters" or those who deny or downplay the festival massacre to educate themselves.
"I think that I would like people to think of themselves in this situation," Beer said. "I think that I would like people to think if they went to Coachella or Burning Man or anywhere else and they find themselves in a massacre where they saw their friends dropping dead on the ground, and blood everywhere, and raping."
"I would like people to come and see for their own eyes what we went through that morning because, in my worst nightmares, I couldn't make something like this up," the survivor added.
Beer also stressed that the issue has nothing to do with one's political leanings, whether they be left or right, but the fact that Hamas intentionally set out to kill innocent people.
"No one has that right, and I think that's what I would like people who come to this exhibition to understand and feel," she stated. "We're peaceful people. We came to dance for love and peace and for humanity. Beautiful souls were taken away from this earth for no reason."
Samantha Kamman is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: samantha.kamman@christianpost.com. Follow her on Twitter: @Samantha_Kamman
