‘I fed my 30-year-old with a spoon’: Nova survivors, relatives beg state for support
In tearful Knesset session, people recovering and supporting their loved ones through rehab after Oct. 7 massacre bemoan scant mental health resources, financial assistance
The mother of a 30-year-old man who survived the Hamas terror group’s brutal rampage through the Supernova music festival on October 7 on Monday shared shocking testimony about her son’s condition during a special Knesset committee session.
“My son is not functioning, he doesn’t leave the house. My son fled the country two weeks after his ordeal at Nova,” Roni Katz said through tears during an emotional session at the Knesset State Control Committee attended by survivors of the Nova massacre and their relatives.
Katz told the committee that she had received a call from the Israeli embassy in Bangkok, telling her that her son was “having a psychotic attack.”
“I went to Thailand to rescue him myself, because I couldn’t get to Nova to save him,” she said. “It took me 12 days to get him on an El Al flight home. When we got home, he sat on the balcony day and night, with a knife. ‘Mom, so they won’t kill you, so they won’t kill you.'”
“He is 30 years old. I fed him with a spoon… I’m alone, just me and him. I can’t leave him alone because I’m afraid something will happen to him,” she added. “I’m scared to death, I don’t sleep at night, I put a baby monitor under his mattress. I’m afraid to leave the house.”
The massacre at the rave near Kibbutz Re’im came as thousands of Hamas-led terrorists launched a widespread onslaught into southern Israel on October 7, butchering 1,200 people and abducting 251 while committing horrific acts of brutality including rape, torture, and mutilation. The rampage at the festival left 360 dead, with over 40 taken hostage.
Katz bemoaned the fact she is left footing the bill for anxiety treatment for her daughter, who took care of her son through his ordeal, as the immediate family of survivors are not recognized by National Insurance as victims.
Nova survivors who shared their stories during the Knesset session also shone a light on the difficulties in accessing the necessary resources to recover, over nine months since the most devastating terror attack in Israel’s history.
Ron Segev told the committee that he was told he was eligible for 36 psychological treatment sessions, after which he would receive disability status.
“What the state is doing right now is sending us off to be disabled, and that’s the opposite of what we want to achieve as a community and as a society — to send people off on disability pensions instead of getting us back to regular life and to work,” he said.
“We’re not talking about a normal terror attack; this was an extreme terror attack. So the [mental health] treatment regimen should also be extreme,” Segev added, noting that many survivors spent hours under extreme stress on October 7.
Another Nova survivor, Raz Perry, told the committee that he was hospitalized for six months after the massacre.
“My mother fed me with a spoon for six months, telling me, ‘Raz, you will live,'” he said. Perry, who is battling cancer, said he had gone to the outdoor rave to dance and let loose.
“I was supposed to be in chemotherapy. Instead, I found myself tying tourniquets, trying to save others — and failing,” he told the committee. “No one supported me except for my immediate family.”
Michal Ohana, a veterinary nurse, told the committee that she requires at least two sessions of therapy per week after she was shot at Nova and hid from terrorists under a tank for nine hours.
“It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that after nine months, we are not okay,” she said, recounting being moved from psychologist to psychologist for treatment.
“I am a veterinary nurse by profession, and I can’t go back to my work right now as I can’t stand the sight of blood… we’ve all been through an inhumane massacre and what we’re asking is to be able to return to work,” she said.
In response, a Health Ministry spokesperson told the committee that a “national resilience center” had been established to treat Nova survivors a week after October 7.
“We try to locate people who began treatment and then stopped in the middle, to refer them for further treatment,” Health Ministry representative Dr. Bella Ben Gershon told the committee, adding that specialized wards in psychiatric hospitals had been adapted for survivors of the October 7 massacre and that treatments were also covered via the health funds.
A recent study found that 31 percent of people who were directly exposed to the October 7 attack, specifically those who were at the music festival near Kibbutz Re’im and in the communities around the Gaza Strip and surrounding cities, will develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“Even before the war, the country did not have enough psychologists and mental health specialists, including ones trained to treat trauma and PTSD,” lead author Dana Katsoty said in March.
“Not everyone will be able to have one-on-one therapy. We need to also consider large-scale interventions that include group therapies, community programs and other broad system-based interventions that can manage to reach more people in need. This is needed not only for PTSD, but also for other mental conditions like anxiety and depression that result from trauma and war,” she said.
