Orel Peso, 26: Budding DJ who was schooled in New York

Orel Peso, 26, from Kiryat Yam, was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival on October 7.

He attended the rave with his close friend, Hai Zfati. When the rocket fire began, he and Hai ran for a nearby bomb shelter, where they soon realized that there was more to fear at the festival than missiles.

At 7:20 a.m., he sent his mother one last message: “Mom, if something happens to me, know that you are my whole world and I love you the most in the world.” Orel and Hai were both shot dead inside the shelter. His family searched for any word of him for several days before they were informed that his body had been identified.

Orel was buried outside Haifa on October 11. He is survived by his parents, Meirav and Ariel, and his younger brothers Adiel and Maor.

Born in Haifa, when he was 4 his family moved to New York, where he attended public school in Queens, according to a state eulogy. At age 14, his parents divorced, and he returned to Israel with his mother and siblings and they settled in Kiryat Yam outside Haifa.

After finishing high school, Orel enlisted in the IDF and served as a truck driver in the Artillery Corps under the Northern Command. Following his release, he worked in a number of different jobs while pursuing his major dream — to produce techno music, a love he inherited from his parents.

He worked in deliveries and driving an ice cream truck, and in 2020 he moved to Hadera, where he worked as a waiter, before moving to Kiryat Motzkin in 2023.

He continually pursued a musical career, studying music production and creation at a school in Haifa, buying recording equipment, producing his own tracks and DJing at small festivals. He was planning to head to the US to visit his father and try his hand at pursuing music overseas.

His friend and collaborator Shahaf Zarfati wrote on Facebook that “at any event that I wanted him he would always come and not ask for a shekel. A modest guy with a huge talent in music. Just a couple months ago he gave me a closing set.”

His mother, Meirav, told a local news site that Orel “had a pure heart, a person you could never fight with. Someone would have to really work at it in order to get mad at him ever.”

Orel “was a good person, he respected his parents,” although she noted that “I wasn’t so into his dream to be a DJ, I wanted him to also study alongside his desire and efforts to be a DJ. I had a bad feeling but he told me that I was always worrying. He went to the Supernova on Friday and I never saw him again.”

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