An estimated 2,000 participants were at Universo Paralelo festival in Be’eri, Israel from late Friday night until early Saturday morning, when the crowd had quickly dispersed to find shelter as rockets fired overhead from Gaza.
The festival, which was set to run all night, ran until 6 in the morning after rocket fire raised concern for participants. Those at the scene heard the explosions long before they heard sirens, leading some participants to stay put while others ran for their vehicles to evacuate.
Rafael Birman, 30, quickly mobilized with the friends he attended the festival with to get out as soon as possible. In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Brazilian-born Birman shared a first-hand account of narrowly escaping death at the hands of Hamas terrorists who attacked participants, murdering 260 at the site alone, not counting fatalities around the premises of the grounds.
Birman said that the festival location had remained secret until shortly before it was set to start, per the nature of the event. “I asked the festival organizers for an estimated location, to plan,” he said. “But then when I got the location from Waze, I saw it was basically next to Gaza and I started to feel very uncomfortable.”
In addition to being filled with dancing and celebration, he described the scene as flowing with security and police, assuring the safety of festival goers.
Traveling with four others, the group danced and enjoyed themselves until the first sign of a safety concern, in which the group took no chances and ran to their rental car. They left the grounds and were directed to drive south, as the route north was blocked by police.
After ultimately taking a U-turn to head back north and receiving approval from the officers, they started to drive before being met by a vehicle that had clearly been attacked, a woman in the front with a bloodied face, and screams of a terrorist.
The ravers found themselves in a war zone
Before they knew it, the group was being shot at with no clue just where shots were coming from. Within moments, the back glass window had shattered and one thing became clear to Birman: “we became targets. We saw IDF jeeps and the terrorists were shooting at them and shooting at us, and we decided to get out of the car and use the car as a shield.”
“Terrorists were shooting at the soldiers and at us simultaneously, soldiers were shooting at them.” After nearly 30 minutes of firing, the group suddenly felt lightheaded, hearing vibrations and feeling some form of explosion. “It felt like there was a bomb, it felt like something from the movies,” he added.
An officer quickly directed them to get out while they could and head over a nearby trench to a shelter. The officer appeared to be only 20 or 21 years old, and left a lasting impression on those he saved. When they managed to get back to their rental car later that day, they saw the soldier who saved them had been gravely injured, having been shot in the leg and the cheek.
He emphasized the impact of this soldier on him. “I really want to know that he is ok,” Birman said. They were directed to drive toward an inland city, where they quickly heard sirens and were welcomed into someone’s personal space for shelter. They quickly understood the situation at hand as it was — a brutal series of attacks on civilians on a street filled with bodies and attacked cars, like a zombie apocalypse.
Hundreds of cars abandoned in the scramble to flee the Hamas massacre at the weekend music festival in the South were seen in drone footage released in the aftermath of the attack near Kibbutz Re’im.
Footage circulated on social media
“It was just a massacre, a total massacre,” said 26-year-old Arik Nani, who escaped from the dance party, where he was celebrating his birthday after hiding for hours in a field. “We didn’t know where to go,” he said. “I found myself with a friend, we found ourselves completely afraid and in shock, we ran just to understand what was happening to us.”
Thousands of young people attended the nature party, which became one of the first targets of the terrorists. Video footage circulating on social media shows them descending in para-gliders on the gathering in the northern Negev.
“I felt existential fear. I have never felt so close to death, this time I really felt like it was the end,” said 23-year-old Zohar Maariv, who had to jump out of the car she was escaping in when it came under fire from two sides.
Other social media footage shows some of those taken captive from the party being led away by jubilant gunmen. “I live on the Gaza border and I’ve seen things in my life, but I’ve never felt it this close,” Maariv said.
Reuters contributed to this report.