In an unassuming industrial district littered with warehouses and big box stores in midtown Toronto lies a powerful reminder of the deadly consequences of antisemitism and why Israel is at war.
The
, which is on display until June 8, provides visitors with an in-depth look at what took place at the Nova music festival in southern Israel on October 7.
After passing through security, guests are shown a lively video filled with scenes of young people dancing without a care in the world. In interviews, those who attended the event speak of the transcendence of music, the power of community and the vibes that can only be experienced when 4,000 bodies are all gyrating to the same beat.
Though the short video remains upbeat, it is clear by the end that something ominous is on the horizon: as partygoers gather to catch a glimpse of the sunrise, the skies above are suddenly filled with incoming rockets.
From there, visitors are taken into a dimly lit, smoke-filled room with black curtains on the walls and what appears to be a dirt floor. Inside, large television screens play looping videos of Hamas terrorists tearing down the border fence and streaming into southern Israel, where they drive around in white pickup trucks, shooting at everyone they see.
Guests then walk through a recreation of the Nova festival campsite, featuring the types of tents used by campers, along with recreations of the booths that merchants used to sell their wares. Each one is accompanied by a TV screen featuring testimonies of those who survived and videos from that day shot on the cellphones of those who did not.
Phones scattered throughout display text messages that attendees sent to their loved ones before they were slaughtered in cold blood or shoved into a vehicle and taken to the Hamas tunnels underneath Gaza, where some of them
for 599 days and counting.
In his
on Black liberation, recording artist Gil Scott-Heron said that, “The revolution will not be televised.” But in the case of Hamas, its “revolution” was
for the whole world to see. Indeed, only in the 21st century could an atrocity such as this be so thoroughly and meticulously documented.
Videos throughout the exhibit feature bodycam and cellphone footage taken by the terrorists themselves as they fire at unsuspecting cars and hunt partygoers like prey, all while expressing glee over their murderous handiwork.
Others show groups of youngsters running in fear to try to escape the weapons fire in the distance, or individuals lying in bushes, recording what they surely suspect may be the last words they ever speak.
The point is further driven home with video testimonies of first responders. In one, a paramedic recounts how he saw women who had been shot in the crotch at close range, people stabbed multiple times postmortem, bodies that were burned to a crisp and partygoers who were tied up, their eyes frozen open in terror as their young lives were snuffed out.
After wandering through the extensive campsite, guests funnel into a large room intended to recreate the atmosphere of the Nova festival dance floor, replete with giant speakers blaring trance music, a tiki-style stage glowing under a black light and large vertical screens showing images of people dancing around an altar intended to represent ancient healing traditions, all under a sprawling purple canopy.
The tour continues with a recreation of a bar littered with half-empty bottles of alcohol and overturned Coke fridges in the background. One woman told the story of how she hid in an ice cream cooler, listening to the sound of gunfire as terrorists murdered others who had found similar hiding spots, with only the thought of returning home to her young daughter to keep her going.
Next to the bar sits the burnt out husks of vehicles, similar to the ones that blocked Route 232, the only road in or out of the Nova site, in both directions, leading to it being dubbed “the death road.”
Behind them are recreations of the small concrete bomb shelters scattered throughout the festival grounds, which turned into death traps. Screens show cellphone video of the terrified people huddling inside, along with footage of a terrorist lobbing a grenade into one of them, extinguishing dozens of lives in one fell swoop.
Another part of the sprawling exhibition features the personal items of those who attended the festival, evoking images of the piles of shoes that can be seen at Holocaust museums like Yad Vashem.
It’s hard to avoid finding similarities between what took place on October 7 and that other dark chapter in history. “I wasn’t around during the Holocaust, but to me, this was a holocaust,” said a rescuer in one of the videos. Another survivor noted that, “I’m a third-generation Holocaust survivor. Now my daughter is a first-generation Nova survivor.”
The end of the tour explores the aftermath of the massacre, showing how young people who were once full of life are now scarred for life.
At certain times throughout the day, live talks are given by Nova survivors. When I visited last Wednesday,
her harrowing story of escaping the Nova festival and the post-traumatic stress that has haunted her ever since.
The Nova Exhibition provides an emotional reminder of the pure hatred that Israel is up against, and why it cannot, under any circumstances, allow Hamas to survive and commit similar atrocities in the future.
This is not to say that what happened at Nova excuses every action the Israeli government has taken since October 7, particularly the withholding of humanitarian aid over the past couple months.
But it does show why steps need to be taken to prevent Hamas from using aid to fund its terror operation, and why calls for Israel to immediately “stop its military operations in Gaza” — as
issued last week by Canada, France and the United Kingdom demanded — are wrongheaded and dangerous.
As fate would have it, at pretty much the exact time my wife and I walked out of the Nova Exhibition into an ominous rainstorm at 9 p.m. last Wednesday, another Jewish couple — young Israeli Embassy employees who were reportedly about to get engaged — left the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., only to be
by a suspect who yelled “free Palestine!” when being arrested by police.
Two more promising young people who will never get the chance to grow old. Two more families who will have to carry the pain of losing their loved ones to such vile hatred around for the rest of their lives.
Sometimes the word “antisemitism” gets thrown around a little too frivolously, but what happened at the Nova festival on October 7 and in Washington last Wednesday are sobering reminders of the deadly effects of the world’s oldest hatred.
National Post
jkline@postmedia.com
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