The day the music died: families gather at Nova festival site for October 7 anniversary
Bound by wrenching misery, this community of survivors amassed in the dark for this saddest of reunions, waiting until exactly 6:29am – the moment when a final song that had been playing at the Nova festival was cut off due to the incoming rocket fire.
Michael Marlowe stood at a shrine to his murdered son, Jake, almost a year to the minute since the 26-year-old’s life was cut short by a Hamas-led assault on the Tribe of Nova Festival in southern Israel.
No less in grief now than he was a year ago, Mr Marlow was among hundreds of people who gathered at the festival site on Monday to mark the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attack, when at least 360 revellers were gunned down while running for their lives.
“He was murdered by the scum,” Mr Marlow said as he stood beside his wife, Lisa, both of them having travelled from Britain to commemorate the occasion, one of many visits they’ve been forced to make since Jake’s murder.
Bound by wrenching misery, this community of survivors amassed in the dark for this saddest of reunions. They propped themselves up among a thicket of trees and waited until exactly 6:29am – the moment when a final song that had been playing at the Nova festival was cut off due to the incoming rocket fire.
In a fitting move for the occasion, attendees stood in silence as the same song played once more at an echoing volume across the surrounding fields.
This event was one of numerous memorial services for October 7 scheduled to take place across this exhausted and heartbroken country that’s still at war on its northern and southern borders, and still attempting to bring home some 101 hostages languishing in Gaza.
A formal ceremony is slated for the regional town of Ofakim, a short drive from the Nova site, with commemorations also planned for the military and police forces, both of which saw high numbers of casualties.
The southern villages that bore the brunt of the Hamas attacks, and which saw the greatest losses of life among the 1200 who were killed that day, will hold their own remembrances.
The largest event, expected to draw tens of thousands of people, is a concert being held in Tel Aviv and being organised by the families of the hostages.
As dawn light bled into the dusty, desert landscape, family members searched for photographs of their loved ones among the scores of makeshift shrines to the dead. They were decorated with pictures and candles; others had been elaborately beautified with pot plants, books, paintings and personal mementos.
Bar Arbib, 25, came for her younger brother Ofek, an off-duty soldier in the paratroopers who had attended the dance festival and shielded two girlfriends from the attack – using his body – to save their lives.
Swaddled in one of the blankets that Ofek had brought to the rave party, she spoke while helicopter gunships cruised overhead and booming rounds from nearby Gaza jolted the senses of those in attendance.
Speaking to The Australian, Bar Arbib described feeling similar emotions on this occasion that she imagined her brother would have felt at the time of the attack. “I feel the same feeling he felt when he was here – you know, even the (explosions) really help to understand how it was on this day,” she said. “He was really, really special, really special.”
Emergency alerts issued by Israeli authorities said Gazan rocket fire had been detected at 6:31am in communities situated along its border, forcing residents further south of the Nova site to once again rush for their shelters – on this day of them all.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog was one of the few dignitaries in attendance and he embraced every person he encountered. Later, he sat in front of a makeshift stage where family members took turns addressing the crowd, a line of soldiers providing a vigil from the back.
While some steeled themselves for the emotion of the day, others were consumed by the occasion. A grieving mother’s painful cries broke out during the minute’s silence, requiring medical officers to rush in and assist.
Mr Marlow said his son was a dual British-Israeli national who’d moved to Israel three years ago after watching extremists marching through the streets of London “screaming out sentences of what they would do to our women and our children”.
“It resonated with him,” he said.
Jake had been working security at the Nova festival to save money in order to marry his girlfriend. “They shot him nine times as he was being heroic and trying to shepherd people away,” his father said.
Some of the most horrendous stories of what happened on October 7 emerged from the site of the Nova festival. Numerous survivors have spoken of Hamas gunmen indiscriminately shooting people and raping women, including corpses.
A UN report issued by Pramila Patten, its special representative on sexual violence in conflict, found there were reasonable grounds to believe that multiple incidents of rape had occurred at the Nova festival site.
“Credible information was obtained regarding multiple incidents whereby victims were subjected to rape and then killed,” said the 23-page report, issued in March. “There are further accounts of individuals who witnessed at least two incidents of rape of corpses of women.”
Vicki Farage arrived with her husband, Yossi, and sons Sean and Tal to remember Noa, a 22-year-old who surfed with her father and who had been weeks away from setting off on a six-month holiday to Southeast Asia. “She spread her love wherever she was. She was like a magnet, people liked to be with her,” Ms Farage said.
When the attacks unfolded, Noa refused to send a pindrop location to her father so he could come to pick her up, fearing it was too dangerous. “She told him there’s no need to come,” Ms Farage said.
