Tomer Peretz Goes All In

Artist Tomer Peretz never planned to be the one holding a camera in a massacre zone. But there he was, on Oct. 8, 2023, volunteering with ZAKA to clean up the carnage. 

Though he lives in Los Angeles, he and his sons had flown to Israel for a wedding that weekend. Art had been Peretz’s life. But at age 41, he was thrust into the world spotlight for going above the call of duty for his country—with interviews on Fox News, CNN, SkyNews Australia. Today, more than 18 months since that wretched day in the Gaza envelope of Israel, Jews around the world know about Peretz. He’s unmistakable: thick black beard, long but tamed curly Jewfro, sleeve tattoos, and often wearing thick polished athletic shoes.

After the attacks, the ZAKA teams cleaned up bodies and body parts from the multiple crime scenes with haste. They didn’t know the full number at the time, but there were over 1,200 murdered people that needed to be tended to (not to mention the bodies of Hamas terrorists who were neutralized during the attack). Peretz, volunteering to help out in whatever capacity he could in his home country, took out his iPhone and began to document what would soon be cleaned up. 

“On the morning of Oct. 8, I was talking to my family, with my friends, with my cousin, they were confused, no one truly knew what’s going on,” Peretz told The Journal. “And when I got into Kibbutz Be’eri and I saw …” Peretz paused for a beat. “Whatever I saw, I knew that people around the world don’t know or understand what I’m seeing. I wanted to make sure the world knows what is going on. That’s the reason I did it.”

“Whatever I saw, I knew that people around the world don’t know or understand what I’m seeing. I wanted to make sure the world knows what is going on. That’s the reason I did it.” – Tomer Peretz

Peretz understood that if ZAKA’s work wasn’t documented, the world would less fully grasp the scale of the havoc wreaked upon Israel. So as he volunteered with ZAKA to pick up the remains, Peretz’s iPhone captured what would have otherwise been cleaned up. He still uses that iPhone. One day, perhaps, it’ll be in a museum. He reassured The Journal that photos and videos of the evidence of that day had been backed up and shared on a multitude of hard drives and across several cloud storage services.

He would eventually return to California later in October as much more than an artist — he still operates out of the mindset he was in as he helped clean up the brutality on Oct. 8, 2023. 

Peretz’s most recent art project, ART WILL S8 YOU FREE, is a culmination of all that he’s poured into his community since the attacks. Over the course of several months, Peretz had survivors of the massacre fly to Los Angeles to do something special at his downtown art studio — heal through art. The collaborative paintings are currently on display at the Museum of Tolerance. And Peretz is now the 32-year-old institution’s first ever artist-in-residence.

Over the course of several months, Peretz had survivors of the massacre fly to Los Angeles to do something special at his downtown art studio — heal through art. The collaborative paintings are currently on display at the Museum of Tolerance. And Peretz is now the institution’s first ever artist-in-residence.

“This is the first art exhibition that speaks about Oct. 7 that targets mainly non-Jews and children” Peretz said. “I think that’s the best way to break the message out of our echo chamber.” It features a series of paintings, photographs (by Mike Canon), and filmed interviews with Nova festival survivors and ZAKA volunteers (by Kalia Gisèle Littman Cohen). It includes a place for visitors to leave their own messages and art on a communal wall. It’s a fitting touch for an exhibition created by a former graffiti artist. 

He describes it as an art therapy initiative, a place for communal healing, trauma processing and bearing witness. It’s all part of The 8 Project, Peretz’s long-term art therapy and trauma healing model — built specifically for survivors of mass trauma events. It’s where people come to paint with him, or with each other, in controlled, often emotionally charged sessions. That project extends into every classroom of the thousands of Los Angeles school kids to take field trips to the MOT every month. 

The artists are Israeli First responders, IDF units, orphaned children, and even members of ZAKA. 

“Some of them never held a paintbrush before,” Peretz said. The “ART WILL S8T YOU FREE” exhibit makes space for the people who can’t unsee what happened—and offers a way to keep going when words or therapy fall short. Still, when these non-artists come to Peretz’ studio to create, they also have access to licensed therapists and trauma experts. ART WILL S8T YOU FREE is only the latest initiative Peretz has led using art to address the Oct. 7 attacks. 

“I joined the ZAKA team to clean out dead bodies from Kibbutz Be’eri, and it took me a few days and after a few days I arrived back in LA,” Peretz said in his address to the attendees at the exhibit’s opening on March 19. “Since that moment, I couldn’t hang out, I couldn’t create, I couldn’t do anything that was not related to the war. And that’s how I started to invite people, survivors and different people who got affected by these wars to my studio. And that’s how The 8 Project was born.

Many of the stories he shares originate when he started volunteering with ZAKA. He humbly knows his place in history but isn’t taking it for granted. When he volunteered with ZAKA, he knew he looked out of place with his many tattoos, but the team he was volunteering with trusted him.  

“Guys who were not my team, the other guys didn’t even know who the f— I was,” Peretz recalled. “They’re saying, ‘Who’s this guy? This TMZ guy filming everything with a phone?’ But a year-and-a-half later, all of ZAKA knows who I am. The world was exposed to ZAKA because of me in the first 48 hours. The ZAKA spokesperson was the only other one who took photos. That guy actually wanted to kick me out. He saw me taking photos with the phone and he was yelling at me a few times. Obviously, I didn’t give a f— and kept taking photos and videos. Even my team leader on the side said, ‘Just do it, but make sure no one sees.’”

But the raw photos of mangled bodies wouldn’t be enough. The majority of what Peretz photographed and filmed is way too gory to share on social media. He shared a few images, but he saw a much more urgent need. 

During the last week of October 2023, word started circulating on Jewish community WhatsApp groups about a live art installation being planned to commemorate those who were killed at the Nova Festival. The promotional materials asked for volunteers to show up at Grand Park early in the morning, dressed in clothes they didn’t mind ruining. Participants would be lying still or standing frozen, covered in fake blood, bruises, and gunshot wounds applied by professional makeup artists. Peretz was the mastermind and the goal was scale — a visceral accounting of what had happened at Nova, staged in the shadow of City Hall. 

Hundreds of people — many of them Israelis — came for the event. They stood or lay still, covered in fake blood and detailed makeup recreating wounds. It wouldn’t be appropriate to call it a “reenactment” of the Nova Festival massacre aftermath — it was a solemn portrayal.

One volunteer, Gabriell Kijauskas, told The Journal that she was nervous to go to the live art installation as she didn’t know anyone who would be there, on top of still feeling raw from the previous 28 days. “I was very overwhelmed,” Kijauskas said. “I felt I might just turn around and go back home. But then slowly I felt like I was there to help and just ended up being one of the community. It was empowering and a reminder of how lucky we are to be alive.”

Peretz was just getting started. By the end of November, he was speaking publicly several times per week about what he witnessed as he volunteered with ZAKA. One of those nights was at a packed art gallery on La Brea Avenue the week after Thanksgiving. He described — in full detail — what he saw during his time volunteering with ZAKA. He didn’t show photos. He didn’t need to. 

Over the next several months, Peretz kept appearing and sharing what he saw. On the YouTube channel Jubilee, Peretz sat alongside actor Jonah Platt, media personality Shanni Suissa, and Oct. 7 attacks survivor Ariel Ein-Gal to debate pro-Palestinian activists. The video has since been seen over 2 million times.

“It [the Jubilee debate] was actually very tough, I didn’t even want to do it, but I decided that I’m not going to be quiet, I’m not going to sit on the side and let people say bulls— without standing up,” Peretz said. “That’s what happened to us in the Holocaust. People were silent. So I went, and I said what needed to be said.”  

“I decided that I’m not going to be quiet, I’m not going to sit on the side and let people say bulls— without standing up. That’s what happened to us in the Holocaust. People were silent. So I went, and I said what needed to be said.”
– Tomer Peretz

Peretz would host small events where the community could mourn and heal together. Some would be last-minute, like the picnic for an IDF soldier getting treatment in Los Angeles for traumatic brain injury. Peretz’ event in Roxbury Park in Beverly Hills had over 100 people come to show the soldier love and check in on each other. Peretz sat protectively beside the soldier’s wheelchair as people came forward to kiss his hands, thank him, and weep.

By the spring of 2024, a campaign emerged across Los Angeles’ Jewish community to name and humanize the American hostages in Gaza for the media and public that didn’t seem to care. Behind the scenes, Peretz was printing black-and-white stickers with the hostages’ names on them. “Hersh,” “Keith,” “Edan,” “Judi” started appearing in bold letters around Los Angeles. His work sparked a ripple effect. Artists, designers and volunteers joined in, not in competition with each other, but in solidarity among artists looking to heal and create awareness. It was a movement of people using art and visibility to combat the antisemitism and indifference towards the Jewish people following the attacks.

Peretz was born in southeast Jerusalem in 1982 to parents who kept a traditional household. The neighborhood was, by his account, quite conservative — to the point that Peretz often felt like the black sheep. His nickname in school was “Asto,” short for “astronaut,” because teachers said he was always daydreaming. He had trouble focusing and often got into fights. He carried a knife in his pocket for protection and got kicked out of one school as a teenager. Despite that, he insists his family was supportive. His older siblings all went on to earn academic degrees. Peretz didn’t. He barely graduated high school. “I grew up in this conflict in one of those places where it’s just part of life,” Perez said. “That’s where I come from.” He would frequently interact with Arab Israelis and Palestinians. His family used to drive across the border to the Qalqilya and Jenin in the West Bank for shopping because “things were just cheaper there.” 

As a teenager, Peretz became enthralled with graffiti art. He’d start small and then moved onto painting murals inside the safe room of his apartment building. Though the city painted over a lot of the graffiti he made, he says you can still see some of the late 1990s and early 2000s-era colors he put there showing faintly underneath. That became a metaphor of sorts for how he approached everything: put it all on the surface, and even if it gets erased, something lingers.

In his 20s, he did his Israeli military service in Golani 13 during the Second Intifada — including nearly two years in Gaza. He wouldn’t share any details about his service besides that he came out of it having endured quite a bit of trauma. Looking back, he had no diagnosis and no plan. What he had was painting.

Following his IDF service, Peretz relocated to Los Angeles. His first taste of California was in 1998 to visit an uncle. The city of Los Angeles left enough of an impression on him during that trip to inspire a move less than a decade later. 

“I never thought art could be a career until I got here,” Peretz said. “I just started to sell work.” Peretz would launch his art career with underground art parties. “It was not about the painting. It was about the energy, the vibe, the people that I bring together. And I still do it. I just used to create crazy shows and everybody came. And from that moment, it started to grow.”

In Los Angeles in the early 2010s, Peretz was creating a portfolio. Before he was holding space for trauma survivors, Peretz was doing what every transplant artist does in Hollywood — making himself visible. He had his first solo show in 2012 in Culver City, “Unbreakable.”  His next solo shows were “Double Exposure” in 2019, “Incomplete” in 2020, “Welcome to America” in 2021 and “Gonna Make Some Bad Choices Tonight” in 2022.

All of them carried his fingerprint — bold, unfiltered, personal. And they were almost always anchored in LA, at Ouro Gallery, where the space matched the artist: raw and unpretentious. He also was exhibited outside of the city. Milan twice. Miami once. Mexico by way of Art Miami.

He didn’t chase approval. He just kept producing. The awards came — like the Arthur Szyk Prize for Zionist Art in 2014 — and the press followed sporadically.

He opened a studio. He got married. He started a family. Then on Oct. 7, 2023, everything changed,  including Peretz’s art. “It was not about me anymore, and that’s what changed,” Peretz said. “It became about everybody else. I couldn’t just sit.”

By this point, Peretz had what it takes to build a community for healing and creating awareness. He’d already trained himself to sit with discomfort, to turn it into image, to let paint do what words couldn’t. 

He’s been going at a nonstop pace. In June 2024, Peretz hosted an art show at his downtown LA studio featuring Inor Roni Kagno, one of the official photographers from the Nova Festival. At the show, Kagno showcased eighteen photographs captured during the hours leading up to 6:29 a.m. on Oct 7. The first night of Kagno’s shows at Peretz’s studio sold out and a buzz spread around the community quickly. A second night was thrown together at the last minute. Hundreds of people attended — Peretz’ studio became a place for communal healing. The prints sold in droves, and attendees made new friends. “It was a place that people wanted, needed, to come together,” Peretz said. “It was a safe space.”

By July 2024, the Nova Exhibition opened in Culver City and would remain the epicenter for healing and bearing witness for the Los Angeles community through November. All the while, Peretz was working on his next art and healing project. 

“When I’m in, I’m all in. I’m 100% in. I cared about doing something that matters. People think I use art to escape. I don’t. I use it to face s—.”

The Museum of Tolerance gave Peretz a platform with the installation of The 8 Project’s “ART WILL S8T YOU FREE.” The paintings capture survivors’ reflections of the moments that make their eyes wide, mouths agape, hands clutched or some form of stress gesturing. Some paintings depicted hopeful messages, others depicted images of horror and shock they continue to process. 

“I want people to look at that painting and be uncomfortable,” Peretz said. “I want you to see their pain. I want people to connect to the human side.”

Peretz worked closely with each survivor over multiple art sessions. “It was heavy,” Peretz said. “Some of them couldn’t even talk at first. Some of them were shaking. I had to just sit and breathe with them until they were ready. But they wanted to tell their story. They wanted people to know.

“The difference between me and other people, maybe, is that I feel like I’m obligated to do that. That’s what I say to people,” Peretz said. “I can’t sit in my house. I can’t eat. I couldn’t do anything. I can’t enjoy my life knowing that this thing happened. And it’s on my people. This is the moment that we have to stop everything and do what’s right. And I can’t do what’s right by just sitting and crying. I need to go and do something. So I use the skills that I have.”

Sheri Schlesinger, a Museum of Tolerance board member, noticed that school groups at the MOT have been really impacted. “We’ve had public school students, mostly Latino, mostly not Jewish, and they’re connecting to it in a real way,” Schlesinger told The Journal. “They hear the story, then they see the paintings, and it stays with them. This is a different way of learning. It’s emotional. It’s human.”

She is also the founder of the Genesis Arts Collective, an initiative that connects artists and their messages to students across the country, aiming to foster empathy and personal reflection through art. She helped launch the hART Project, which provides students with branded art kits that are used in conjunction with visits to exhibitions like Peretz’s, where students engage in art therapy and reflect on trauma, healing, and personal experience. She said that the MOT reaches over 100,000 students annually at the MOT, with a majority of them not from the Jewish community. 

Littman Cohen, an Israeli artist, who collaborated with Peretz at the MOT on the installation also had an installation. She filmed ZAKA workers at the sites where they cleaned up after the attacks, one year later. The stares of their eyes into the camera tell so much — it’s worth visiting. She would interview them too. “The first ZAKA guy who came in, he looked like he wanted to kill me,” Littman Cohen said. “He was not interested in doing a portrait. He sat there with his arms crossed. I told him, ‘This is not about making you smile.’ I told him, ‘Just sit however you want, and if you want to tell me anything, I’m here to listen.’ And eventually he started talking.”

Littman Cohen said it was one of the most powerful things she’s ever been a part of. “These men went through hell, and they needed to be seen — not as symbols, but as people who did something unbearable,” Littman Cohen said. “I wanted the camera to honor that.”

Peretz is working on bringing those ZAKA volunteers to Los Angeles for a collaborative healing project called “The 8 Retreat.” “It’s not for me. It’s for them,” Peretz said. “They don’t have the opportunity to speak. They didn’t speak for a year. And now, we’re going to give them that opportunity. Not just to speak but to create.” Peretz has also been approached about expanding The 8 Project beyond Los Angeles. He has received requests from major different universities and Hillels and different organizations that want to have it as a pop-up. He’s considering taking it on tour. 

But even as his platform grows, Peretz says the core motivation hasn’t changed. “This is for the people who can’t tell the story. For the people who are not here anymore. I don’t care about the likes. I don’t care about the press. I care that someone feels like they were seen.” It still seems like Peretz is everywhere. Peretz continues showing up at nearly every communal event, while managing his studio, his family life, and his role as an artist.  

Even as his platform grows, Peretz says the core motivation hasn’t changed. “This is for the people who can’t tell the story. For the people who are not here anymore.”

Right before deadline, The Journal received a random call from Gabriella Karin, a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor and artist who wanted to talk about how she is the only Los Angeles Holocaust survivor going to the March of the Living in Poland in April 2025. Karin wanted to talk about the upcoming journey — her 11th — and her 32 years of sculpting art for her own healing. Without any provocation, she added that after she returns from March of the Living, she and Peretz have plans to collaborate and help others confront history. 

Gabriella Karin said “when I walked through [Peretz’s MOT exhibit], I saw that this is the way to speak about trauma,” Karin told the Journal. “Not lectures. Not numbers. Not just books. Art. That’s what people remember.”

Karin said that Peretz is on the right path because “he is not doing this for attention, he is doing it to tell the truth. And people feel that. You can’t fake that. For me, at my age, I am still making art because I want the next generation to feel. I see that in Tomer’s work. He is doing what needs to be done.”