There’s no competition in the levels of anguish and pain experienced during the October 7 massacre. Every loss of life was harrowing.
But statistically speaking, the most unfathomably horrid incident took place at the Supernova music festival. If anything can be labeled a massacre, it’s the atrocities that took place early in the morning of the all-night rave at a field in Re’im in the South attended by some 3,500 young partygoers.
Three hundred seventy-eight innocent people – 344 of them civilians – were brutally murdered by Hamas, and another 44 were taken hostage and brought to Gaza.
According to the report issued by the IDF for publication on Thursday – and presented to the families of the Supernova victims a day earlier at a mass gathering in Tel Aviv – 171 of the partygoers were killed in the immediate area of the party, while 207 were murdered while fleeing throughout the Gaza periphery.
Most of the murders, which were perpetrated by more than 100 Hamas terrorists from Nuseirat in central Gaza, occurred between 9:15 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., as Hamas did not know about the festival until 8:12 a.m. Only at around 3:30 p.m. had large numbers of Israeli reinforcements arrived, although there were some sporadic influxes earlier.
The Supernova probe – one of 41 reports by the IDF on the major incidents of October 7, 2023 – only investigated events that took place at the festival site itself and at the nearby parking lot. Many other victims were killed on nearby roads or while hiding in bomb shelters they found while fleeing the massacre.
The probe found that there was no coordination between the police and the IDF in responding to Hamas’s invasion – neither in the initial hour, nor in the hours during the second and third waves of terrorists, The Jerusalem Post’s Yonah Jeremy Bob reported.
That 90% of the partygoers were saved was only because:
• a mid-level police commander at the party ordered an immediate evacuation on his own authority as soon as the massive rocket fire started at around 6:30 a.m.;
• Hamas did not know the party was happening, so it did not start attacking the area until 8:12 a.m., leaving almost 100 minutes for partygoers to evacuate.
Nevertheless, the remaining partygoers were essentially left defenseless once the Hamas invaders noticed their presence.
The reactions to the report on Wednesday by some of the victims’ family members were strong reminders that the wounds of October 7 are still very raw. They rose to the surface during the briefing for families at Expo Tel Aviv, when some attendees interrupted the proceedings with shouts of anger and cries of anguish.
“This is the first time someone from the IDF is even speaking to us… My son was killed by an RPG missile, and the army says, ‘We failed.’ But how do you fail like that and still have no answers?” bereaved father Ophir Dor, whose son Idan was murdered at the Supernova, told Ynet.
Nissim, the father of Shani Louk, the 23-year-old tattoo artist who was killed at the music festival and became a visual symbol for the October 7 massacre victims, said the security forces had done their best during the massacre.
“Although the army tried to explain the situation, they apologized [and said]: ‘We were not prepared because of the [preconceived notion] that Hamas was deterred,’” he told 103FM, adding that he came away from the meeting not knowing much more about his daughter’s last minutes than before.
The upshot of the report was that despite the efforts of those involved, it’s not enough. It didn’t provide the families with solace or closure.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said the investigation was “superficial,” with facts that were “inaccurate at best, lies at worst.”
No new information will help victims' families cope with losses
Maybe there’s no new information that will enable the families to move on and cope with their massive losses.
But one thing is clear: Until a state commission of inquiry is established to probe all of the angles of October 7 – the before, during, and after – the raw wounds that are festering and were on display so clearly this week will remain raw and unable to scar over.
The same can be said for Israel as a whole, which is why a state commission of inquiry is essential.