Re’im | Portal
Tears filled the eyes of 30yearold May Hayat as she returned to the grounds of Universo Paralello, an electronic music festival that was attacked by the terrorist group Hamas a month ago.
She worked as a bartender at the event, which took place near Kibbutz Re’im in Israel, just a few kilometers from Gaza’s security fence and one of the October 7 attack sites. The Islamist terrorist group killed 260 festivalgoers and took hostages at the event. In total, around 1,400 people were killed and 200 kidnapped that day.
Last Monday (6), Hayat, who lives in Tel Aviv, returned to the place for the first time, hoping that this setting would help her deal with the trauma and eliminate the tears that, according to her, came only once in the city has flowed into the past. last month.
The festival scene was completely different from the day of the attack, after all of the victims’ bodies and much of the debris had been removed from the site. Back at the scene of the massacre, Hayat became frightened every time he heard a loud noise and even lay down on the ground to protect himself from what appeared to be rocket fire from Gaza.
Hayat said Hamas began firing rockets around 6:30 a.m. on October 7, while young people were still dancing at the party. When Hamas fighters reached the festival, gunfire began some on foot, others on motorcycles.
She and a man managed to hide in a hole, but they were discovered by terrorists. “At that moment I just spoke to God. ‘There’s nothing I can do anymore, it’s in your hands now,’ I thought. I thought they were going to rape me,” she says.
The man who was with her was shot, but Hayat managed to escape because one of the two gunmen holding her took pity on her, she said. “He simply told me to leave while the other terrorist argued with him and said he wanted to kill me. I could see them arguing about whether to kill me or not and I ran away,” he says.
So she hid under a stage. “As I lay down, I saw that they were shooting at people to make sure they were all dead,” she said. “So I took the blood from the body that was lying next to me they shot him in the head and rubbed it on my face and just stayed still to look dead.”
His suffering ended hours later when Israeli soldiers arrived. “It took me a few minutes to realize that it was the army I heard coming. So I screamed for help and they came to save me,” he said.
Hayat disputes the idea that Hamas is an organization that acts in selfdefense. “They are terrorists, they want to kill us. They also killed Israeli Arabs here. Anyone living in Israel is a target.”
“At some point they will reach other countries,” he added. “I hope you wake up before this gets you.”
Hayat is one of many Israelis grappling with the events of Oct. 7, which sparked a war to destroy Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Since then, local authorities estimate that more than 10,000 people have been killed in Israeli attacks on Palestinian territory, around 40% of them children.