Nova festival survivor Roei Shalev dies two years after girlfriend’s murder
Roei Shalev, who was shot trying to shield his girlfriend from Hamas gunmen at the Nova festival, has died by suicide after posting ‘I cannot bear this pain anymore’.
Israel has been gripped by sorrow and shock following the suicide of Roei Shalev, a survivor of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on the Nova music festival, in which his girlfriend was murdered before his eyes.
Mr Shalev’s body was found on Friday night (Saturday AEDT) in his burned car north of Tel Aviv, hours after he had posted a message on social media expressing his intention to end his life.
“I cannot bear this pain anymore. I am burning on the inside ... I just want this pain to end,” he wrote on his Instagram account. “Please don’t be angry with me, please. No one will ever understand me, and that’s OK because you can’t understand. I just want this suffering to end. I’m alive, but inside everything is dead.”
His girlfriend, Mapal Adam, and his best friend, Hili Solomon, were murdered before his eyes at the Nova music festival in southern Israel. The three had been trying to hide under cars as Hamas militants launched their unprecedented assault on southern Israel.
Two weeks after the massacre, Mr Shalev’s mother took her own life. According to the Kan public broadcaster, she, too, set her car alight. According to Israeli media reports, she had been very close to Adam and was devastated by her death.
Adam’s sister, Maayan, a television presenter, on Saturday said: “Roei was murdered on October 7 and died yesterday. I have no words and it will take time to find them. I hope these two kids are hugging and smiling right now.”
Before Mapal Adam was shot, she was texting her sister. “Don’t tell Mom,” she wrote. “I’m scared, Maayan. There’s a massacre, there’s a massacre. Bullets are hitting me in the head.”
Mr Shalev called Maayan and said he would protect her sister. He lay on top of her and was shot in the back as he tried to save his girlfriend. The two had moved in together the previous week.
“Roei lay next to the dead love of his life for about two hours, until the army arrived and rescued him. She was hit by a bullet that penetrated her ribs and went into her heart – I say her heart was so big that it was impossible to miss it,” Maayan Adam said last year.
She added: “Sometimes I find some comfort in the fact that she died in the arms of the man who loved her, in one moment. He (Mr Shalev) assured me she didn’t see the terrorists at all, that she looked at him and closed her eyes. He told me she was brave when she died.
“I’m not sure he’s telling me the truth. I’m sure she was so scared. But unlike so many other families, we know what her last words were.”
Several secular opposition politicians – many of whom, unlike most ruling coalition members, remain active on social media during the Jewish Sabbath – reacted with dismay to the news on Saturday and called for greater mental health support for survivors of the October 7 attacks.
“It is time for the state of Israel to treat those suffering from mental health issues as heroes – not as statistics,” Avigdor Liberman, leader of the hawkish Yisrael Beytenu party, wrote on X.
Yair Golan, head of the left-wing Democrats party, wrote: “Roei could not withstand the pain but others are still here fighting, coping, trying to live. We must give them all the help we can so they don’t feel alone.”
More than 370 revellers were massacred when Palestinian militants crossed from Gaza into Israel in the early hours of October 7, 2023, attacking the music festival.
Readers seeking support and information about suicide prevention can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14
AFP
