April 16, 2024
People visit the site of the Nova festival, six months after the deadly October 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, in Reim, southern Israel, April 7, 2024.REUTERS
Nearly 50 traumatized revelers who survived the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival in Israel have died by suicide in the last six months because they were unable to cope with the tragedy, a survivor revealed Tuesday.
“Few people know, but there have been almost 50 suicides among the Nova survivors. This number, which was true two months ago, may have increased since,” Nova festival survivor Guy Ben Shimon told a parliamentary hearing for a State Audit Commission on the treatment of the Oct. 7 survivors.
He said many of his friends who escaped the massacre could not recover from what they had witnessed, I24NEWS reported.
“There are many survivors who had to be forcibly hospitalized due to their psychological state. My friends are not getting out of bed, neither am I,” he said in Hebrew.
“I am practically unable to do anything. I had to get a dog to help me survive in my daily life. The goal for all of us is to return to work and function normally, but we cannot do it without adequate help,” Ben Shimon added.
The hearing focused on alleged failures by state entities toward the survivors of the Hamas attack on the Jewish state.
Complaints have been made about a variety of difficulties, mostly bureaucratic, that the survivors faced in getting their post-traumatic stress disorder recognized and treated, according to the outlet.
“Why should I constantly prove what I experienced? Why am I forced to go back to the details of what I experienced for them to believe me?” another survivor, Naama Eitan, told the hearing.
“I participated in a study that monitored my pulse and other parameters and revealed how bad my health is. I sleep on average two hours a night. Each morning at 7 o’clock, I relive the moments when I was hidden in the bushes with terrorists passing by me. I can no longer move on my own, I need to be constantly accompanied,” she said.
The Israeli Ministry of Health said it does not have information to corroborate the claim about the suicides.
During the attack, 364 people were slaughtered at the Nova Music Festival in the Negev desert. Some 600,000 Israelis have been waiting for psychological support since Oc. 7, i24NEWS reported, citing recent studies.
-agency report
