OPINION:
It’s not easy to confront atrocities.
No one wants to hear that terrorists brutally murdered 411 young people at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023. Shot, stabbed, beheaded and burned. That many more were raped. That dozens were taken from the festival as hostages into the Gaza Strip, where some were murdered and raped and all were mistreated.
It’s nearly impossible for most people to look that kind of evil in the eye. Our brains are used to everyday tragedies such as car crashes or bad medical diagnoses. We’re not equipped to wrap our heads around depraved massacres on the scale of what occurred at Nova. Understanding the sheer scale of the trauma Hamas caused that day is like trying to drink from a fire hose.
Yet that’s exactly why the Nova Exhibition, now in Washington, is necessary. It brings something remote and inaccessible down to a more manageable level, allowing people to feel some small measure of the desperate sadness that all of us who were there that day felt.
That brief glimpse can be incredibly painful, but acknowledging its insignificance compared with the anguish of the victims is a powerful way to learn and to honor them.
None of us came to Nova expecting violence. As an organizer of the festival, I was excited on the morning of Oct. 7. I was looking forward to another day watching my friends enjoy themselves at a celebration of unity, music and hope.
Then, standing behind the DJ, I saw the rockets rising from Gaza.
When police came to stop the music and evacuate the festival, my brain threw up defense mechanisms: This can’t be happening. Not here, not to us. We just came to dance. (These are the same defense mechanisms I see in people visiting the Nova Exhibition.)
I tried to escape in a car, but Hamas terrorists were already there. A bullet pierced my car door and hit me in both legs. My friend, sitting in front of me, was also hit.
I lay on the ground next to the vehicle for four hours, waiting for help to arrive as my friend bled to death in front of me.
I thought about loosening the makeshift tourniquet I had around my thigh, slipping away to join him rather than surviving and risking being taken captive. The only thing that stopped me was the thought of my wife, nine months pregnant, at home. She and my child gave me the strength to hang on.
No one should have to face the choices I and so many other festivalgoers faced, but everyone should know that we faced them. We dishonor the dead by ignoring how and why they died.
The Nova Exhibition’s presence in Washington, where it will be through Sunday, makes it accessible to the world’s most important decision-makers. I urge you all — congressional representatives, senators, judges, presidential staff, service members, nonprofit leaders, lawyers, diplomats — to come and bear witness.
Nothing will sharpen your sense of moral clarity like the massacre of innocent civilians. Nothing will make you appreciate the unbreakable human spirit like talking with a survivor.
Please, take some time out of your comfortable life to be uncomfortable. Deactivate your mental defense mechanisms and put yourself in our shoes, just for a little while.
If you can understand what happened at Nova, not just how and why we were attacked but also how and why some of us survived, you will emerge stronger and more empathetic. You will be better prepared to make informed choices about Israel, Hamas and violence against civilians.
Most of all, you will understand our commitment: We will dance again.
• Ofir Amir is co-founder of the Nova Exhibition, now in Washington, and a survivor of the Hamas attack on the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7, 2023.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.