In the Shadow of Nova

Last week, the campus intifada went into high gear in New York City. The enraged student rioters, all clad in oppression chic, spread from Columbia to New York University, The New School, City College of New York, and then stormed into The Fashion Institute of Technology for the photo-op of the century.

According to multiple interviews, many of the “disrupters” have no idea why they are spouting hateful slogans, throwing glass bottles at the NYPD, or sleeping in tents. Like the Nazi youth of 90 years ago, they are just following orders.

Of the 3,500 who attended this year’s festival in southern Israel, 370 ended up mutilated, raped, shot, and/or burnt alive; 44 were kidnapped. If the disrupters actually were the “resistance” they claim to be, this is what they would be protesting.

Meanwhile, an installation called “06:29AM: The Moment Music Stood Still,” about the Nova Music Festival massacre, opened on Wall Street. Of the 3,500 who attended this year’s festival in southern Israel, 370 ended up mutilated, raped, shot, and/or burnt alive; 44 were kidnapped. If the disrupters actually were the “resistance” they claim to be, this is what they would be protesting: The deadly spread of Islamic jihad through Iranian proxies. If they really wanted to fight injustice, they would also be protesting the ongoing honor killings, persecution of gays and enslavement of Africans. 

Instead, they — and their “professors” — are disrupting Western institutions to enable the spread of jihad’s barbaric inhumanity. It’s the endgame of the Marxist-Islamist oppressor/oppressed ideology that has infiltrated nearly every class. With this in mind, and a deep sadness in my heart, I entered the exhibition.

I walked into the massive installation prepared to look, to feel, to absorb, to cry. But nothing can fully prepare you for the level of evil Hamas is capable of.

Like many, I have tried to shield myself from the worst photos and even some of the worst stories from Oct. 7. But that’s not bearing witness. So I walked into the massive installation prepared to look, to feel, to absorb, to cry. But nothing can fully prepare you for the level of evil Hamas is capable of. An evil the Ivy League is now celebrating.

From light to darkness

Some tragedies are so acute in their instantaneous transition from light to darkness, from good to evil, that the word “biblical” comes to mind. The Oct. 7 pogrom fits that definition. “This wasn’t a terror attack. This was something much bigger—it’s biblical,” said Ofir Amir, the 41-year-old Nova co-founder who still walks with a cane after being shot in the legs on Oct. 7. “We’re fighting for our survival every day.”

The opening documentary is called “We Are Nova.” Thousands of music and arts fans had gathered on Oct. 6 for a celebration of “friends, love and infinite freedom” near Kibbutz Re’im. The next morning the festival goers, aged 20 to 40, can be seen joyfully dancing to trance music, a genre of electronic music, with a quiet spirituality reminiscent of ‘60s bohemians.

And then, at 6:29 a.m., the film shows a couple of Nova employees telling the DJ something. “The music stopped. The rockets started. We started running for our lives,” survivor Tomer Meir, 21, said.

“Thousands of radiant souls came together for a celebration of unconditional love and the spreading of light,” Reut Feingold, the narrator, who is also the creator and director of the 06:29 exhibit, said in the documentary. “In one moment, the festive atmosphere was shattered. The Angel of Death swooped down, firing a barrage of hateful missiles that cut through the joy like an icy winter wind. The air, thick with laughter and friendship, becomes a terrifying scene of inconceivable horror. Innocence and love, which had soared so high, crash into the ground in an avalanche of shattered dreams. The festival, which had been a symbol of joy and unity, became a chilling spectacle of terror, instantly sealing its dark place in history.”

The film ends, and we begin to experience a small fraction of what the 3,500 experienced that day. A nightmare that went from love, peace, joy, and spirituality to barbaric evil in one second. A nightmare now being celebrated on U.S. campuses.

The haunting remains

We begin to walk through the remains salvaged from the festival grounds — torn, charred tents, skeletons of scorched cars, bullet-riddled bathroom stalls and personal belongings. The tents are particularly haunting given that prefabricated versions have now shown up on dozens of campuses to proclaim that “justice” requires not just the death of all Jews, but of Western civilization. 

We walk through the darkened remnants of the campsites, while videos taken on the morning of Oct. 7 — graphic raw footage from both festival-goers and Hamas terrorists — are played on multiple screens. The effect is loud, tense, chaotic, alarming. Producers of the exhibition recommend that children under 16 not attend the exhibit, and yet Israeli kids have to grow up with this.

How would students at Columbia or NYU react, I wondered, if seeing the exhibition was part of a social studies class? That’s never going to happen today, of course, but it would have before Marxist-Islamist ideology permeated academia.

Everything in the exhibit was brought in directly from the Nova site, including the dirt on the ground, lawn chairs, blankets, burned cars, and the DJ equipment and stage. The exhibit, which opened in Tel Aviv for 10 weeks in December, was created by Israeli designers and cultural producers, many of whom were producers with the Nova Festival itself.

Like the Tel Aviv version, the exhibit recreates the visuals and sounds of the Nova massacre. But the New York version is in some ways “more intense,” Yael Finkelstein, a volunteer who collected items from the Nova site and helped set up both exhibits, said.

“In Israel, we did this very fast after the seventh of October, so we don’t want to cause pain to people,” Omri Sassi, one of the exhibit’s producers, who was also a DJ at the festival and founder of the Nova community, said. But in New York, he said, “We needed to show people from out of the country what happened.” 

“On that day, random decisions meant the difference between life and death,” reads a sign.

Both the tables of shoes and kippot are hard to look at. The former is of course eerily reminiscent of the Holocaust, while the latter almost becomes a symbol of centuries of persecution.

A massive “Lost & Found” section fills a corner of the 50,000 square-foot space. Clothing, kippot, backpacks, flasks, prayer books, hats, shoes and watches that were left behind are set up on tables. Both the tables of shoes and kippot are hard to look at. The former is of course eerily reminiscent of the Holocaust, while the latter almost becomes a symbol of centuries of persecution. One small room memorializes each of the murdered with their photos and names. More than one family lost two children.

The festival was one of the first targets of Hamas’ attack. Whether Hamas had advance knowledge of the festival is still a question. One attendee stated that after cutting the electricity, a group of approximately 50 terrorists arrived in vans and sprayed gunfire in all directions. Some of the terrorists infiltrated the festival via motorized paragliders. As the young attendees fled in panic, jeeps filled with terrorists began firing at the escaping cars and blockaded the roads. The open terrain left few places to hide. 

Redefined evil

In one section of the installation, volunteers from Zaka, the first responder search and rescue service in Israel, describe the horror and mutilation they saw when they arrived at the Nova site on Oct. 7 and in the weeks after. A bag full of heads; mutilated and cut off genitals; a badly burned body bound by cable ties. 

“In some cases, they set them on fire and burned them in such a way that when we examined them, we suddenly realized what had appeared to us as one person was actually three,” one rescue volunteer recalled in one of the exhibition’s many videos.

“The sights I saw there will be engraved in my mind till the end of time. It’s not every day that you see young people tied to trees. Naked girls with their legs spreadeagled,” said Rami Davidian, a civilian who led a rescue effort that saved hundreds of festival goers. One woman was found with nails hammered into her thighs and groin.

During the same week, the documentary “Screams Before Silence,” by Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Meta, was released. Through interviews with released hostages, first responders, medical and forensic experts, and Oct. 7 survivors, Sandberg surveys the “systemic sexual violence” against Israeli women of all ages. The film is excruciating to watch. Sandberg makes sure every horrific detail — from the sexual torture, mutilation, and “branding” to the incessant gang rapes — is clear. “Your body is open to all of them,” said one young Israeli.

The incontestable fact that Hamas used barbaric sexual violence as a tool of war — weaponizing Israeli women — has been disputed by leftists on campus, online, and in Hollywood. Each one now needs to publicly apologize for their cult-like ignorance. 

But it is essential to watch the entire film. The incontestable fact that Hamas used barbaric sexual violence as a tool of war — weaponizing Israeli women — has been disputed by leftists on campus, online, and in Hollywood, most appallingly by Susan Sarandon. Each one now needs to publicly apologize for their cult-like ignorance. Or they will continue to be seen as part of the problem.

The fact that both Islamists and leftists here thought that they could get away with lying about the sexual violence when Hamas proudly filmed all of their “conquests” and posted the footage on a Telegram channel shows the depth of the anti-truth world we now live in. The fact that a group of Associated Press photographers won an award for the photo of Shani Louk, the 22-year-old German-Israeli paraded in a Hamas pickup truck clad only in blood-soaked underwear, shows how morally bankrupt our culture has become.

Healing, resilience, strength

Each room of the installation gets brighter as we walk through, ending in a warm, light-filled “healing space” with couches and rocks to memorialize. “The journey to heal yourself is a journey, for sure. Part of the community of Nova is that we heal each other together — healing is to help take care of others,” Meir said. “For me Nova is hope, helping each other, always smiling, and taking care of each other. I wish to spread that hope all my life.” 

I walked out into the spring sunshine with both a deeper sadness and a keener understanding of what Jews worldwide now face. But unlike our ancestors, we have federal and state laws to protect us; the only thing missing is the bravery of nearly half the country.

“We will dance again,” the final wall of the exhibition promises. Yes, we will. But it’s not going to be an easy ride, given that much of the Democratic Party is now jihad-adjacent, just as they were slavery-adjacent before the Civil War. 

None of us thought that it would get this bad this quickly, but that’s how biblical stories go. The Marxist-Islamic deterioration of our universities — where truth, reason, and history no longer exist — began decades ago; the fall into anarchy at Columbia took only a few hours.

And now we can thank George Soros for the subsequent explosion of intifada riots across the country. Students for Justice in Palestine, Within Our Lifetime, and Jewish Voice for Peace are funded by a network of leftist non-profits, all funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundation. At many colleges, the protests are being led by paid radicals who are “fellows” of a Soros-funded group called the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. They are trained to “rise up, to revolution.”

Here in NYC, there are also The Peoples Park radicals, who posted “The Do-It-Yourself Occupation Guide” on its Instagram account. “We are sharing educational-only materials on tactical skills like holding down occupations *inside* of university buildings.” The hashtag #Escalate4Gaza accompanied the post. The 32-page booklet details tips for breaking into abandoned and commercial buildings; diagrams and step-by-step guides for barricading doors; and advice for how to maintain control of an occupied space.

“Use a crowbar to open a window,” the guide suggests. Because that’s what peaceful protestors seeking justice do, right? “We look ahead to when we enter the buildings, take over the streets, and occupy the city,” the text reads.  Sure, there’s nothing specific about planting bombs, wearing suicide vests, and burning students alive. But all of that is no doubt in volume two. 

In November, Within Our Lifetime, a New York City-based “pro-Palestinian” and anti-Zionist activist organization, shared a map of “enemy” — predominantly Jewish — buildings. “Each of the locations on this map reflects the location of an office of an enemy of both the Palestinian people and colonized people all over the world. Today and beyond, these locations will be sites for popular mobilization in defense of our people.”

When these jihadists in training began screaming “Globalize the Intifada” in Times Square on Oct. 8, before Israel even began to respond, few thought they actually meant it. Except those of us who either lived through an intifada in Israel or 9/11 here. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about terrorist groups like ISIS or Hamas, they mean what they say. Hyperbole isn’t their thing.

Is this city — this country — at all prepared for the escalation? Given the tepid response thus far, it doesn’t seem likely. So yes, we have laws in place to protect Jews — but right now we’re being led by an administration that is truly incapable of understanding and responding to this stage, let alone the inevitable next stages.

And that is why the horrors in both the exhibition and the film need to embolden us for the road ahead. This biblical story will also end with the resilience of our people — hopefully more than a little wiser about the cowardice that allowed it to happen. But precisely our passion for the sanctity of life—precisely what distinguishes us from our enemies—now needs to be turned into a type of strength and bravery that we never thought we’d need. The barbarism of our enemies has again created Maccabees, this time in the Diaspora.

“Be strong and of good courage,” G-d told Joshua as he headed into the land of Israel. Now it’s our turn to lead.

Karen Lehrman Bloch is editor in chief of White Rose Magazine.