REPORTAGE. “A story that must be passed on”: in southern Israel, the site of the Tribe of Nova festival massacre becomes a place of remembrance

With 364 dead, the Tribe of Nova festival site was the most affected on October 7, during attacks by Hamas commandos. Today, victims and relatives of victims come to pay their respects.

Every day, hundreds of people come to pay their respects at the Tribe of Nova music festival site. Located on the edge of the Gaza Strip, it is where 364 people were killed on October 7, when Hamas commandos spread death and terror in southern Israel. Now, it is an open-air memorial.

A group of visitors listens religiously to the story of this 22-year-old survivor. “I came with two friends and I came back alone. It’s very difficult to explain to people what I experienced. No one can understand what happened here. I still can’t believe it myself. But it’s very important to bear witness and I will continue to do so.”

The field is dotted with trees, one for each victim, and covered with photos. It took this couple from northern Israel ten months to take the plunge. “It was too hard for me to come here. These are young people who came to dance and have fun. This is a sacred place for me,” confides the woman. “I feel the same emotions as in Auschwitz. You are there and you see death, death, death everywhere,” adds her husband.

Suddenly, explosions rang out in the Gaza Strip, a few kilometers away.“It makes me happy, because I know that it is the bombs of our soldiers that punish and kill those who did this, reacted a visitor. And thanks to them, I hope this will never happen again.”

The faces are marked by the gravity of the place. What strikes Nathalie, a resident of Saint-Mandé in the Paris suburbs and on vacation in Israel, is “the number, the extent and the relentlessness they had”. “Even when you come by road, you see lots of places where there are photos. And that means that these are people who tried to save themselves and who did everything to save themselves.”

“They continued for another 17, 20, 25 kilometers. They didn’t want to let them go. They really came to massacre them, to kill them. Such savagery is not possible.”

Nathalie, visiting the site

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Some came from far away, like Yoni, 18, from the state of Florida in the United States. “This story concerns everyone, Muslims, Christians, Jews, non-Jews. It is really a story that must be passed on.” To perpetuate this history from generation to generation, the victims’ families are fighting for this temporary site to become a permanent memorial.