Israel, three years after October 7: A nation's traumas and blind spots

At the site of the Nova music festival, near the Reim kibbutz, in southern Israel, on October 5, 2026. OHAD ZWIGENBERG/AP On this land where the blood of the victims of October 7, 2023, was spilled, just a few kilometers from Gaza, where the blood of Palestinians is still being spilled, Mazal Tazazo, 36, carefully recounted the hours of anguish she experienced during the terrorist attack launched that day by Hamas. She had come to dance at the Nova festival , and in the early morning, the celebration turned into a massacre. In this natural setting, 378 people out of 3,500 participants were murdered, one by one, by Hamas fighters. Forty-four others were taken hostage and brought to Gaza, dead or alive. The site also became the epicenter of the sexual violence committed that day by Hamas. Wounded in the head, Tazazo hid under eucalyptus leaves and branches for hours. She pretended to be dead among the bodies of her friends, then concealed herself at the back of an abandoned car before being evacuated with other survivors. "A miracle," she said with a smile that her eyes contradicted. Paid by the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry, she comes to the site, which has become a memorial, three times a week to recount the circumstances of the attack to visitors. "People have to wake up!" she said on Monday, October 5, to a group of Indian influencers seated in a semicircle and surrounded by hundreds of photos of victims, their faces showing their stolen youth. "People in Europe, they don't understand that they give our enemies the legitimacy to hate Jews, to hate Israelis," she insisted a little later, in the shade of the eucalyptus trees, expressing both the absolute violence of the October 7 terrorist attack and her incomprehension at the loss of support from much of public opinion. You have 80.09% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.