“Do you remember what you felt like going to your first festival? Nervous, anxious, excited. That’s how it was for me, too. Nova was my first ever festival.”
Meet Shye, a new immigrant, or Oleh Chadash, to Israel. He is 26 years old, originally from Toronto, Canada, and works as a photographer. He uses his artform to capture people and places, moments big and small. And the Supernova Music Festival, more commonly known as Nova, was probably one of the most significant events that he will ever be able to capture on film.
You could feel Nova before you saw it. The beats of the music, the energy in the air. Rows upon rows of cars that transported some 3000 people to a small town right near the border with Gaza.
“On one side was the campsite, all lit up with yellow lights, on the other side, the festival. It was one of the most positive environments that I have ever been in. You could really feel the love in the air, you could see that everyone there was happy.”
Shye and his friends set up their campsite. Given that it was a psychedelic trance festival they took some psychedelics to further heighten the experience. They wandered the grounds; they met the artisans selling their wares in the marketplace, stopped by the bar to grab a drink, and went to experience the smaller stage. Given that this is a new experience for Shye, after dancing for a while he decided to explore the festival. He took his camera and set off to meet the others in attendance, and like any photographer worth his salt, learn a bit about each person to fully be able to tell their story. He captured the photos of his new friends, traded contact information so he could share photos later, and continued on with exploring the festival.
6:30am October 7th rolls around. The first round of rockets were sent from Gaza into Israel, intercepted by the Iron Dome. Given the proximity to Gaza there is no siren, there is no time to seek shelter. You could feel the air shaking, you could smell it in the air. The rockets are incessant, they don’t stop.
Immediately Shye is uncomfortable with the situation. Of course, as a Canadian he isn’t used to this. The DJ stops playing, the party is over. Some people started to leave right away. But a lot of people thought a few things “they are firing past us, we’re safe,” “we’ll wait for the rockets to stop and the party will restart,” “we’ll wait for the traffic to clear up and then we’ll leave.” Shye knew he wanted to leave immediately, but the people he came with didn’t have the same urgency. Eventually he wore them down and they started to pack up camp. Wanting to help others, he began walking around the campground offering to help others and took more photos and videos of what was just beginning to unfold.
Off in the distance he could hear machine gun fire. Immediately his heart sinks. There was a general sense of confusion as people headed back to the parking lot. Being the most sober of his group, Shye got behind the wheel of the car. Once the car was fully packed the gunfire at Nova started along with screaming. Pandemonium ensues as people started to flee by car and by foot. Hamas had infiltrated the festival grounds. Everyone is trying to escape at once and the small dirt path bottlenecks. Shye took the car off road to avoid the traffic as his only concern was for the passengers in his car. People began abandoning their cars, trying to escape on foot, and in the process, trapping cars behind them.
They finally make it to the road. There are two options; South, to Gaza, and North, towards Kibbutz Be’eri which was under attack, unknown to them at the time. The police won’t allow people to turn left as Hamas was up ahead slaughtering people in their homes. And there was a traffic jam forming if you were to turn right, as Hamas was shooting people in their cars. The only option was to drive straight ahead into an empty, dusty field.
One passenger in the car yells for them to abandon the car; that they - and everyone else driving in their direction – is being shot at. Perhaps being scattered is a better option than being in a car. So they leave the car and begin to run. As the gunshots continue, they get on the ground to hopefully avoid any bullets. As Shye looks back, he sees his cousin Mordechai running back to the car, and they all get in the car. Now Shye is in the passenger seat, and he decides to do what he knows to do – take photos. He has his iPhone in one hand, his camera in the other as they drive for their lives.
They drive through empty fields and are passed with pickup trucks, full of people in the beds. They eventually drive through an orange grove and onto a gravel road, completely disoriented from where they are and where they should be headed. Shye turns to his cousin and asks “which way is Gaza?” to which he answers the question with another question, “which way is East?” Look to the sunrise, look into the sun while driving, and that is away from Gaza. Cars keep peeling off the roads. They pass two Thai workers on bicycles and invite them into the car; they decline. Finally they come upon a paved road with blind corners. Many cars try to turn around, pointing them back in the direction of the festival grounds.
They come across checkpoints, each with between 2 and 9 officers. Each ask the same questions “are you Israeli? Where are you going?” They drive towards Netivot. They see a cluster of IDF vehicles in the middle of the road, along with civilian cars riddled with bullets and dead bodies inside. They pass more IDF vehicles, press trucks reporting the news, but no one pays their car any mind as they drive by. They pass Netivot and continue to head in the direction of Sderot. Pillars of black smoke rise in the distance, the smoke of Hamas’ atrocities committed that day, of families being burned in their homes.
While at the festival grounds Shye didn’t see any dead bodies; he was focused on fleeing. But now, as they drove for their lives, suddenly there are corpses everywhere. On the streets, in their cars, next to their cars. Shot in the body, or in their faces. Men and women. Bodies, everywhere. Panicking more with each body in the street.
They pass a car on the side of the road with two men standing outside of it. As they got closer, they could see that they were wearing jeans, black t-shirts, tactical vests, and balaclavas, holding machine guns. Hamas. As they got closer Shye could see the whites of their eyes. One had his back towards them, with his hands behind his back. His palms were red with blood. In the car next to them were a man and a woman who they had just shot dead. The car slows down from fear, as the passengers scream to drive as fast as possible. The Hamas terrorist holds his gun, but by some miracle, doesn’t shoot.
They come across another car – trunk open, belongings scattered, and three bodies in the road. Dead. They try their best to navigate around the bodies, to honour the dead, however, it becomes impossible at they drive over the legs of the third body. They come across another cluster of IDF vehicles. This time there are two dead officers. The remaining soldiers explain what is happening, that there are terrorists on the loose up ahead, and advise them to turn back, but they refuse.
Shye wonders if their little four-door sedan will be able to outrun any terrorists that are hidden, and everyone in the car panics for the next 10-15 minutes until they realize that they are in the clear and can finally make it back to Tel Aviv. They arrive in Tel Aviv at 9:45 AM.
Now comes the aftermath. Friends are missing, friends are presumed dead, or worse. What about all those new people Shye met as he walked the grounds? What is their fate? No one heard anything until 5am the next morning. Some friends survived by hiding in a bush for 6 hours. Some ran car to car and eluded Hamas’s fire. Some fled to Be’eri and got shot while hiding in a bathroom. Some were executed in the parking lot. Some were taken hostage. Some were rescued by the kindness of strangers.
Shye documented the festival on film. He could not immediately upload his images, so he called his friend and explained the situation and how it was an emergency to get these rolls of film processed. He uploads the photos to Facebook to see if anyone can identify the people in the images and knows what happened to them. “That’s my son, daughter, brother, sister, cousin, friend, etc.” The messages roll in. For the next weeks Shye is learning if people are alive or dead.
Everyone had to do something to help themselves by helping others, whether that is sharing testimony, volunteering, defending the country in the army. Some people are so severely traumatized that they cant get out of bed, but they have a tribe of people helping them. Shye, a native English speaker, immediately volunteered himself to handle international press that covered the Nova Festival.
A few weeks later Shye finds himself back at the festival grounds briefing all major international news outlets on the massacre that was. The bodies were removed, but the campsite was still set up, stained with blood. He spoke until there was no one left to speak to, and since then travels to university campuses across North America to tell his story.
He noticed that while many of those that came to hear him speak were Jewish, many were not. “The antisemitism that we are seeing is loud. They yell. But why do they yell? Because deep down they know they are wrong. It’s just noise. No matter how strongly you feel about something, it doesn’t change reality, it doesn’t change the outcome.”
When asked about his outlook on going to future festivals, if this experience scarred him, Shye answered, “no, in fact I’ve already gone to another one. Once you feel the love in that environment you can’t help but want to go again.”
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