Daniel Cohen, 32: DJ known as ‘Nisha’ played final set at festival
Murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Psyduck music festival on October 7
Daniel Asher Cohen, 32, from Tel Aviv, was murdered at the Psyduck music festival near Nirim on October 7.
Cohen, a DJ who went by the stage name Nisha, was playing on stage at the small festival shortly before the Hamas onslaught began early Saturday morning.
His close friend, Shira Mor, told an independent news site that Cohen and another friend fled the festival in their car when the rockets began, and were shot at by terrorists on the road. They were both wounded, and the friend stopped the car and fled as the terrorists approached, escaping alive. Cohen was never heard from again.
He was buried on October 10 at the Yarkon Cemetery in Petah Tikva.
He is survived by his mother Orna and sister Talya. He was predeceased by his father, Tsion.
After 52 days of searching, his family was finally able to track down video footage of his final ever DJ set at the party, recovered from the phone of a partygoer who was also murdered that day.
Roy Zinger, a festival and music producer who worked with Cohen, told Ynet that he was a “trance music creator who combined the modern and old school worlds. He had an incredible passion for it, his music was very joyous. Every time I listened to his music there would be a smile on my face.”
His friend Aviv Cohen told Haaretz that the two of them “sat for many hours in the studio together, jamming. We played music we wrote for each other, and our progress went hand in hand. He was in a good period of growth and creativity. He was really happy to start recording, to play original music in an open place, and happy to be with people he loved. He was really excited about the festival. You could say that he was fulfilled until his very last moment.”
Daniel’s uncle, Rafi Cohen, memorialized his nephew on Facebook, as “the quiet boy, the beautiful boy, the boy who was an officer in the army. The boy who traveled in the forests of South America, the boy who toured for months in villages in India. The boy who did only good. The boy who went to make people happy at a party. This boy — monsters murdered in cold blood.”
Mother Orna told Haaretz that her son always had a love for music, but in high school, he also “learned computers and biology, and wanted to become a biologist.”
She said he served in the army as a “battalion liaison officer and did a lot of reserve duty. I never understood why he liked doing reserve duty so much, but his friends who came to the shiva [mourning period] told me how much he loved it and about the music he would bring.”
Orna told Haaretz that his family wasn’t super enthusiastic about his chosen field, but supported him when he started studying music: “In recent years, what interested him were friends, music and the Florentin neighborhood in Tel Aviv where he lived. A lot of friends who play music came to the shiva. Even when he was a student, I would always go and hear him play – but now my heart aches that I wasn’t prouder of him and more vocal about it at the time.”
