A man who was held down and gang raped by Hamas terrorists at the Nova festival has told the MailOnline that he was used as their ‘doll’ where they did whatever they wanted to him.
Speaking on condition of anonymity nine months after the attack, the former tennis coach painstakingly recounted his horrific ordeal on October 7, said how it has left him feeling dirty with shame, and told how he has gained a large amount of weight from the trauma.
‘D’ – identified only by an initial – says he is still unsure whether it would have been better to have been killed, rather than to have survived the horror.
‘My friend and I arrived at the Nova Festival Friday night around midnight, which was truly a very special party,’ he recalled.
‘At the beginning, there was a unique atmosphere, distinctive music, and interesting people. During the first few hours of the party, we thoroughly enjoyed everything that was happening.’
Things soon took a terrifying turn, however. Thousands of Hamas gunmen streamed across the border from Gaza and rampaged across southern Israel.
They killed around 1,200 people at the festival and in nearby kibbutzim, and took more than 250 people hostage back into Gaza.
Speaking on condition of anonymity nine months after the attack, the former tennis coach painstakingly recounted his horrific ordeal on October 7, said how it has left him feeling dirty with shame, and told how he has gained a large amount of weight from the trauma
‘At 6.30 in the morning, when the chaos of gunfire and everything else began, we initially thought it was just sirens,’ D recalled.
‘We were certain it was incoming rockets, something we could handle by entering a shelter. At some point, we realised it was actually a terrorist infiltration.
‘A massive panic ensued, with screaming and gunshots. People didn’t know what to do. We asked the police officers where to go and what to do, but they said they would look into it.
‘Eventually, everyone started fleeing in different directions. Some drove or ran towards open areas, while others headed for their vehicles in an attempt to survive.
‘It turned into an enormous chaos,’ he said.
‘Because of the party and everything going on, it took us a few moments to grasp what was happening and the situation we were in.
‘This continued until an announcement was made over the loudspeakers that the party was cancelled, and they finally told us what was going on.’
But when he realised terrorists had infiltrated the Nova peace party D says he was scared, and had a panic attack.
‘It’s like all the demons come out at that moment, you become very tense and you suddenly enter survival mode.
‘We started running. At first, you don’t even know whether to run or not, because if you stay, security forces might say “listen, we are evacuating you from here and there”.
‘You are trying to understand what’s for the best. At first, I managed to run after some guy. I saw a certain number of people going (in one direction) so I went too. I don’t know if at that moment you think, “Okay, maybe this is the right place because there are many people”.’
But as he fled, D says that he was suddenly grabbed by Hamas terrorists.
‘Out of nowhere, they pounced on me. I mean, not out of nowhere – you do know it’s happening, but until that moment it seemed very distant to me. When it happened and you get hit, you go into a very, very big shock, and because I was in such shock, it was hard for me to resist. Not that it would have helped because it’s possible that if I had resisted more, they would have shot me.’
It was a gang of Hama’s elite forces, known as Nukhba, that had surrounded D – all dressed in army clothes.
Thousands of Hamas gunmen streamed across the border from Gaza and rampaged across southern Israel on October 7. They killed around 1,200 people at the festival and in nearby kibbutzim, and took more than 250 people hostage back into Gaza
File image of festivalgoers fleeing as Hamas gunmen storm the Nova music festival on October 7 last year. People fled in their cars and on foot. Many were killed
‘D’ – identified only by an initial – told MailOnline he is still unsure whether it would have been better to have been killed, rather than to have survived the horror of being attacked and raped by a group of Hamas gunmen on October 7
‘One of them was their commander, I think he was their leader. They addressed him according to his bandana,’ he recalls.
He was unable to run very far as he was surrounded by the terrorists who punched him to the ground and held him down in a choking position.
‘They put me on the ground like something like this (demonstrates) and my head is on the ground.’
‘In that moment, you feel a sort of disconnection from your body. At first, you try to resist, but after a while, at some point, you surrender to the situation.
‘You enter this incredibly difficult mental state within yourself.’
It was at this point, D said, that the terrorists sexually assaulted and raped him.
‘They took my clothes off. They start to like (makes spit noise) on my head. They spoke Arabic. I know Arabic because I served in national service. I could hear them say Yahood (the Arabic word for Jew), and all these words.
‘They choked me very hard when they pressed my head to the ground and then they forcibly removed my clothes. And they were laughing about the situation. It sounds crazy. But if you looked around them, you see they enjoyed the situation.
‘At the start I said stop, but you don’t have a person to talk to, they do not listen to you. And they did it more… [saying stop again is] not going to help this time.’
‘At that moment, I am like a doll to them. At that moment, I am their Jewish doll. That is what I am supposed to do, to them, to do whatever they want to me.’
‘I was raped there. There were several people, five in total, but two were directly involved in holding me down during the assault. There was spitting, screaming, laughter – impossible things. In that moment, you feel torn between wanting to scream and maintaining a kind of silence.’
After the rape, D said could see people being taken away in cars as hostages.
‘Their commander was there, and I was supposed to stay with someone in the same place. He left for some reason, and I didn’t dare move because of everything that had happened.
‘But at some point, he disappeared. They had various people calling for them and things they were discussing.’
D said he didn’t have much strength left in him, so he hid in the stage area of the festival grounds. Eventually, people came to rescue the survivors.
People are seen fleeing across a field from Hamas gunmen on October 7
This image from video provided by South First Responders shows charred and damaged cars along a desert road after an attack by Hamas militants at the Tribe of Nova Trance music festival near Kibbutz Re’im in southern Israel on Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023
A group of Hamas gunmen are seen riding in the back of a pickup truck on October 7
‘When people came to rescue us, at first, I didn’t know there were other people there, but when I saw people coming out of that area, I realised there were people alive there, people speaking Hebrew.
‘I don’t remember exactly what they said in Hebrew, but there are things you understand when an Israeli is speaking, by the spirit of how they talk, and it’s funny because that is what calmed me at that moment, what gave me the confidence to go with them.’
Amidst the chaos D says that the Israeli police turned up and he ran to their vehicle.
He managed to get his jeans back as the first thing he wanted was his clothes, but he had no top, so the police gave him some sort of jacket from the car.
‘At the beginning because of all the trauma of this situation you freeze. You do not trust anyone to go with them.
‘You feel terrible because you don’t have control over what is happening, and I asked God to help me so I said the (Jewish Prayer ) “Shema Israel” and we want it to be the end.’
But what he witnessed on that escape out of Re’im will forever haunt him.
‘We saw a lot of people die. They cut their legs, they cut them, amputated people. A lot of dead bodies on the ground with a lot of blood.’
He said the journey back was a blur of absolute fear, and once in safety it took him a long time to process what had happened. He is still coming to terms with it, he said.
‘There are stages where you feel it very, very strongly, where you feel disconnected, and there are stages where it rises up. These days, I often shower many times to wash away the energy of everything that happened.
‘At first I didn’t want to talk about what happened with anyone ever, and if you ask me, I never thought I would talk about the rape I experienced there.
‘Even today I am ashamed of it, but at that moment I felt such shame, like something in me was damaged at that moment.
An Israeli officer walks on the ground of the Nova Festival in Re’im, Israel, 17 October 2023, which was attacked by Hamas on October 7
A woman visits the site of the Nova festival, with displayed photos of the people who were killed and kidnapped during the October 7 attack by Hamas gunmen from Gaza
‘After the attack, I shut myself in a hotel room a lot, and didn’t go out much. I am a tennis coach. I was ranked in Israel. But After Nova I was like 20 kilogrammes heavier because of the situation.’
D says it was hard to eventually come to terms with what had happened, and he confided in a close friend.
‘I couldn’t believe I told him, but when I did, it was the right thing to do. He said: “You can’t erase what happened but you need to talk about it”.
‘In a therapy session, I would feel like I needed to leave the room and I couldn’t talk about it. You feel like all your boundaries are being broken.
‘You’re talking about something that has a very sexual context and something that is very private, and especially if you come from a religious background, it intensifies it even more.
‘Really, in conversations and dealing with this whole issue, you understand that it’s important to talk about it and share, though not with everyone – with people who truly know how to contain it and deal with it, and who is really on your side.’
But while talking with people has helped, D said October 7 still haunts him.
‘I still have horrible nightmares. I don’t sleep. I need a lot of time to have a shower. Because I feel dirty.’
Now nearly 10 months later he and 103 Nova survivors are suing the government, police and army for failing to protect them on October 7.
His lawyers Anat and Gilad Ginzburg argue that the festival location near the Gaza border wasn’t properly approved and that they were not evacuated in time.
‘I have one thing to say, my heart is with the hostages. They need to come home. It’s not right what is happening.
‘As someone who experienced sexual assault and violence, I put the violence aside, because the sexual assault was something that has stayed with me for so long.’
A woman holds a flag and a poster with pictures of festivalgoers killed on October 7, 2023
He also said it was difficult to see pro-Palestinian demonstrations after experiencing what he did on October 7 at the hands of the Hamas gunmen.
‘It’s hard for me to see the pro-Palestinian demonstrations happening around the world. That’s one of the reasons it’s good that I’m talking about it here.
‘It’s hard for me to see these pro-Palestinian demonstrations, these denials. They denied the Holocaust at first too, and it’s seeing how people are capable of doing something and then denying it with such confidence.
‘[It’s] as if we weren’t here, we didn’t do anything, nothing happened, [like being told] you’re imagining things.’
