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Israel music festival survivor recalls Hamas attack: ‘I almost started recording a goodbye video’
Fernando Gottdank said that the “worst was still to come” because after the missiles, they realised the terrorists had begun to shoot
An Israel music festival survivor has recalled his horrifying experience after Hamas terrorists attacked the site on October 7. Theparty descended into chaos when the terrorists attacked the site, killing at least 260 people and abducting many more. Thousands of people attended the party, near Kibbutz Re'im close to Gaza. Palestinian gunmen attacked the site and shot people down as they tried to escape.
“On October 6, last Friday, me and my friends Iosi Dorin, Dany Cohen, José Guilherme Campos and Marcel Grossman went to the Festival Universo Paralello in Israel, dubbed Nova Festival, on the kibbutz Re'im in the south,” Fernando Gottdank wrote in a Facebook post.
“We arrived around 23h00, before the doors were open. One by one, group by group, people from all over the world and from Israel started to enter the festval, to mingle with eachother and set up their camps with christmas lights, tents, chairs, tables, and all kinds of inventive decorations you can expect from a music festival. This is where we befriended Rafael Zimerman, Ranani Glazer and his girlfriend Rafaela Treistmam, brazillians that heard us speaking portuguese and in typical brazillian fashion they introduced themselves and joined our little camp,” he added.
Fernando recalled that at some point, their group got separated from the three other people. All the fun, he said, soon came to a “bleak halt.”
‘I almost started recording a goodbye video’
“As we toasted, we hear a boom. We look at the sky and we se a missile going up. An interception from the Iron Dome. We looked at each other and asked: Is this for real? Is this really happening? The DJ stopped the music as he announced the red alert,” Fernando wrote. “Another boom. This one close to the party grounds. We rushed to the first thing resembling a cover and that was the outside of a metal tickets booth, and there, we stayed down.”
Fernando said that the “worst was still to come” because after the missiles, they realisedthe terrorists had begun to shoot. “We quickly get back to the car and try to drive to the opposite direction, but not even a kilometer after that, the police sign to us to turn back because there were terrorist on the other direction too,” he said.
“At this point I really though we could die, I almost started recording a goodbye video but I didn't do it because I thought that would cause panic between us. My friends also reassured me and told me "you are the co-pilot now, now it's not time to talk to the family, it's time to look up shelters and escape routes on the maps and stay sharp",” he recalled.
‘We could have shared the fate of the 260 people that got killed there’
Shortly after, the police told Fernando and his friends that it was safe to leave and that they had to evacuate the area. The terrorists were closing in. “On the way there we hear the siren two times: One time we park near a rain water tunnel and take shelter there. The second time we were already in the city so we go into a covered parking lot. We continue our way to Ramat gan were we all finally rested at Iosi's place and I stayed there for the night,” he wrote.
Fernando said it was a “miracle” that he and his friends could escape, unlike so many others who were murdered or taken hostage by the terrorists. “Now, calling it a miracle that we made it out of this unscaved is an understatement. One minute that we decide to go earlier or later and we could have shared the fate of the 260 people that got killed there, including Ranani,” he said.
Over 200 people are being held hostages by Hamas. About 50 more victims who were kidnappedare being held by other “resistance factions and in other places,” Hamas military officials said, according to New York Post. Since Hamas launched its brutal attack on October 7, at least 1,400 people in Israel and 2,808 in Gaza have reportedly been killed.
