Two years on, Nova festival survivors gather to honor the dead — and the living

Two years after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre at the Nova music festival in southern Israel, hundreds of bereaved families, survivors and friends gathered Sunday night in Tel Aviv for a memorial ceremony organized by the Nova Tribe Community Association.

The Nova music festival was held in the Re’im area near the Gaza border as part of the Sukkot holiday celebrations in 2023. In the early morning hours of October 7, Hamas terrorists stormed the festival grounds during their surprise attack on southern Israel, murdering 378 people and kidnapping dozens more. What began as a sunrise dance party turned into the deadliest civilian massacre in Israeli history.

Hosted by Channel 13 journalist Hen Zander, whose sister Noa was murdered while attempting to flee the festival, the evening intertwined grief, music, and resilience.

“Being a bereaved sister is feeling your life shatter in an instant, watching your family fall apart, and knowing that something inside you dies too,” she told the crowd. “We each grieve differently, cope differently — but we all try to stay strong to preserve the family we have left.”

Performers Sunday included pop star Eden Ben Zaken and the Heart of Nova band — a group formed by survivors and bereaved relatives — who performed songs of loss and hope beneath a large screen displaying photos of the victims.

“This is an event that reminds me to appreciate my life, the fact that I survived, that I came home,” Tali Binner, a survivor and singer in the Heart of Nova band, told The Times of Israel.

Before October 7, Binner was an operating-room nurse. That morning, she found herself trapped for hours inside an RV on the festival grounds as Hamas gunmen surrounded them, fired live rounds, and tried to kidnap and burn them alive. Miraculously, everyone inside survived.

“[October 7] was a complicated incident — a never-ending incident,” she said, looking up at the screen of faces of victims. “To see pictures of my friends, of people whose bodies I saw — it’s difficult.”

Pinned to her shirt were two yellow hostage ribbons, marking two years since 251 hostages were taken to Gaza. Forty-eight remain in captivity, 14 of whom are members of the Nova community.

“I hope I won’t need to add another,” she said.

Former hostage and Nova survivor Almog Meir Jan, rescued from Gaza in June, addressed the crowd, saying: “We cannot stop until everyone is home. This is the mission of my life — of all our lives.”

For Binner, the ceremony was both painful and healing. “Our entire community is based on music,” she said. “We came to celebrate life, to celebrate music. Now we connect music to pain and mourning — and that, in itself, is healing.”

Binner highlighted the importance of the Nova Tribe Community Association in helping survivors rebuild a sense of belonging after the attack. Unlike kibbutz communities that endured the assault together and remained united in its aftermath, Nova survivors are scattered across Israel — and beyond.

“All corners of the country united into one little city for a few hours, and then everyone went back to their own corner,” she said. “This community allowed us to become a family that no one wants to be a part of, but no one can leave.”

Also part of the Heart of Nova band is Simo Sela, father of Ram “Eagle” Sela, an event producer killed at the festival who left behind his wife of a year and a half, Lilach. Sela, who has a tattoo of an eagle in his son’s memory, joined the band to keep his son’s spirit alive through song.

“Since that day, my family and I have done everything we can to commemorate him,” he said. “Just on Friday, we held a memorial for him at home with 400 friends. He loved parties, cold beer, good food — the good life.”

The family also bought a food truck and traveled to military bases to serve meals to IDF troops.

“The Nova community was a special group of people who loved to dance and be happy,” Sela said. “It’s hard for some people to understand because they didn’t go through it. After two years, the world has almost forgotten. We need to remind them what this nation went through.”

At the close of the evening, Rif Peretz, chair of the Nova Tribe Community Association, addressed the crowd: “Our goal is to make sure no one from the Nova community is left alone. Through this evening and our ongoing activities, we honor the memory of those we lost, and we lift up the families and survivors.”

Binner put it simply: “The goal is to remind people that we’re not just a community of trance music and drugs. We’re a community of light.”