Here’s a 26-minute i24 documentary of the Nova Music Festival, during which 364 people were killed, most (but not all) Israelis. It show you how scary the whole thing was, and includes the testimony of survivors.
The Nova Music Festival
January 1, 2024 • 11:00 am
Thank you for sharing this.
Yes. Thank you Jerry. This was a very powerful documentary.
Just finished watching. Awful.
I found this map maybe a week after the Oct 7 massacre. It was continually updated as events occurred and more information became available on victims and hostages. Not sure if you have seen it.
The page on the Nova Music Festival links to a one hour documentary on youtube , but youtube now says it is unavailable. Looks like the video was posted two weeks ago and had close to half million views.
https://oct7map.com/
Yesterday my bus to see the only showing in Chicago (at the legendary Siskel art film cinema) of a film that won the main Cannes film festival award, “Fallen Leaves,” was rerouted owing to a pro-Palestinian protest. As I’m neurotic in not being minutes late to a film, I took the Red Line train home. A couple sitting opposite me had a large banner they made that said “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”. I asked them what it meant, and they thought it meant Palestians being free on their land; they didn’t know the area described on their banner meant the entire land of Israel. I told them I too have been frustrated and upset Israel has failed to forge a two-state solution, but reminded them each side had moments when they were willing but the other side wouldn’t accept some condition or other. I told them I am also horrified at the increasing extremist and militarist position of Likud, which has been in bed with right-wing religious parties it wouldn’t have touched with a bargepole years ago. However, I also admitted honestly that as a thinking and caring person who wants to support both peace for Israelis as well as better solutions for Palestinians, I don’t know the answer. I just feel sick, and wish I felt greater clarity taking one position. I worry that Pro-Palestinians can play into the hands of Hamas. My banner creators didn’t know their statement was on the 1988 Hamas Charter, which also endorsed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They didn’t know Hamas came to power in a coup d’etat which executed many of the Fatah government leaders, who had been in power before, just as they executed innocent people on October 7th. In my mind, they are similar to ISIS, they even state they want a caliphate on their Charter. I 100% support our right to protest, even if it means I miss a movie because of it, that right is sacred, but I wary of extremism, and I am willing to say the Israeli government is one too, not just in its recent mowing down of civilians, but in making it impossible for ordinary people to live normal lives. I appreciated the horrific human story encapsulated in that stomach-churning video. Which of you WEIR followers know what organizations reflect sympathy for both Palestinians and Israelis, but refuse to side with extremism?
I hope for your safety’s sake that the couple on the bus you chose to engage were earnest WASPy-looking do-gooder types who grew up in America and went to good schools. (I forget who called them the socks-and-sandals brigade.) They can be dangerous in the dark but they are usually cowards. If they had been foreign operatives of Hamas, or the products of domestic radicalism, they might have killed you where you stood.
That they didn’t know what they were talking about suggests they were the former, harmless-in-front-of-witnesses-with-nowhere-to-flee types. In blaming Israel to their faces for “failing to forge a two-state solution” and “mowing down civilians”, you showed that you don’t either, so you were all in good convivial but ineffectual company.
I often wonder what an organization would look like, devoted to supporting both Israel and Hamas who, like it or not, is the state actor for the Palestinians in Gaza. Both sides would have good reason to hate the members of that organization for being duplicitous in trying to curry favour with both while simultaneously undermining the goals of each. And each side would claim that this bipartisan organization was really working exclusively for the other side as a double agent, its ostensible support being a cover for its perfidy. I know a few well-known organizations who fit that bill, if you really want to throw in your lot with that kind of people whom no one trusts.
If, on the other hand, you don’t care whether Israel wins or loses this existential war and just want to stay neutral, then best not to join any organizations at all, because all organizations have some kind of mission that they articulate to attract money and adherents, which makes it subject to capture.
I would also like to know if such an organization exists. I’ve grown weary of the blaming. I have friends and family who’ve emigrated from the region (Lebanon, specifically).. some are still living there. I find I can no longer discuss the events of 10/07 or the current war. I cannot but feel for the humanity on both sides. But, in my experience, neither side wants anything to do with discussions that humanize the side they are not on. I don’t want to be “right”. I want the suffering to stop.