Latest news with #NovaFestival
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Serbia's Pres. Vucic to 'Post': I asked my Arab friends to save Israeli hostage Alon Ohel
In an exclusive and wide-ranging interview at the Presidential Palace in Belgrade, President Vučić touched on Serbia-Israel relations, the Gaza war, Serbia's EXPO 2027 exposition, and more. BELGRADE - Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić revealed to The Jerusalem Post last week that he personally appealed to Arab leaders to help secure the release of Israeli-Serbian citizen Alon Ohel, who was abducted by Hamas during the October 7 massacre and held in Gaza for more than 600 days. 'I met his family several times,' Vučić said as part of an exclusive and wide-ranging interview at the Presidential Palace in Belgrade. 'I was so touched by the way they were presenting the case of their son and grandson when they were here. They were so proud and so dignified. They were doing everything in a solemn, serious way, doing everything to help.' The young dual-national was attending the Nova music festival near Re'im when Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel, and last week passed 600 days in captivity. His family revealed in April that they had received information from released hostages that Ohel was now blind in one eye. 'Alon is injured. He lost sight in one eye, and we know that his other eye can be saved,' his father, Kobi Ohel, said at the time. Taken captive on October 7 from the 'death shelter' along with additional hostages, including Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ohel sustained shrapnel wounds from some of the grenades thrown into the shelter, his mother, Idit, said. He was then physically abused and tortured, his mother said, adding that he received 'disgraceful treatment from Hamas – a 19-year-old sewed him up with needle and thread, with no pain killer.' Vučić described his quiet but determined efforts behind the scenes to gather information and plead for assistance. 'I asked some of my friends in the Middle East for help, and we got some info that he was alive,' Vučić shared. 'Of course, you never know. It is terribly difficult conveying this type of message to the mother who is waiting for her son. But I said to her, 'I cannot guarantee it, but we have information that he is alive.' And then we got official information that he was alive, that he was injured and passing through difficult times.' Vučić added that Serbia had done all it could within its limited capacity, emphasizing the importance of international cooperation in such cases. 'We will always do our best. He is our citizen, he is an Israeli citizen. He is just a young man who has the right to live. We have some friends in the Arab world too, good friends, and I am begging those people to help take care of that young guy and free him as soon as possible. I was really begging my friends for his life.' Vučić has developed excellent ties with many Arab countries during his presidency, most notably United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The Serbian leader reserved special praise for Ohel's family. 'His family is amazing—his grandparents. That was the first time I saw how Israelis and Jewish people are able to bear that type of burden on their shoulders. It was not an easy meeting at all, but this is what I saw. What can you say to a mother who is waiting for her son, and not disappoint their expectations?' Reflecting on the circumstances of Ohel's abduction, Vučić added: 'These people are civilians. Being present at a music festival, listening to the music—that was their biggest sin.' Vučić's comments come amid increasingly warm ties between Serbia and Israel. Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited Belgrade in September 2024, and earlier this year, Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Đurić made an official visit to Israel, reinforcing diplomatic cooperation between the two nations. The full interview with President Vučić, covering Serbia-Israel relations, the Gaza war, Belgrade's EXPO 2027 exposition, and more, will be published later this week in The Jerusalem Post.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
600 days into the war, hostages testimonies aren't moving needle on a deal
The hostages who have come forward with their testimonies have shown incredible bravery, but official talks between Israel and Hamas have repeatedly stalled. Several hostages freed from the Gaza Strip have recounted the horrors they faced in captivity, but 600 days after the start of the war, there is still little evidence of a concrete deal to free the remaining captives. Seven hostages freed from Gaza—Omer, Eli, Yair, Amit, Arbel, Emily, and Keith—have bravely recounted their stories. They hope their testimonies will underscore the urgent need to reach a prisoner exchange deal. But despite their efforts, negotiations remain stalled. Unfortunately, even after their testimonies became public, talks have reached dead ends, with officials blaming Hamas for the impasse. In some cases, politicians have questioned the credibility of the hostages' stories, suggesting ties to Hamas. Below are testimonies from hostages during more than 600 days of war. Here are some of the more heartbreaking stories from former hostages. Just this week, Omer Wenkert, freed in the latest deal after being kidnapped at the Nova Festival, described the cruelty he faced. 'They risked my life for fun,' he said. 'One of them brought pesticide spray, put me at the end of the corridor, and sprayed it on my face, with my eyes open. He made sure everything I touched was sprayed.' Omer also recalled being beaten with an iron rod while locked for months in a tiny cell with only a hole for waste. Eli Sharabi's story is heartbreaking. His daughters, Noya and Yahel, and his wife, Lianne, were murdered, and his brother, Yossi, died in captivity. Eli was held for a year and four months, chained and shackled 'with very, very heavy locks that tore your flesh.' He was beaten so severely that his ribs broke. But hunger, he said, was the hardest to bear; sometimes surviving on just a bowl of pasta a day until 'the stomach caves in.' After his release, he told the United Nations, 'I weighed only 44 kilos. I lost over 30 kilos, nearly half my body weight.' Yair Horn was forced to say goodbye to his brother Eitan, who remains in Gaza. He described psychological torture that included trivial demands meant to break him down, such as forcing him to eat with his right hand despite being left-handed, just to get food. Diabetic and suffering from neuropathy, Yair said that IDF bombings were among the scariest moments in captivity. 'The hostages fight for breath, my brother has no time,' he said, lighting a candle at Hostages Square. About a year ago, Amit Soussana testified that she was sexually assaulted while captive. She recounted the story to the United Nations Security Council. 'He came at me, pushed his gun against my forehead, and hit me. He dragged me to the children's room, a room full of children's posters—then pointed the rifle at me and forced me to perform a sexual act.' Sexual assault of the hostages was, unfortunately, common. N12 news site reported that Karina Aryev was also sexually harassed. Chen Goldstein Almog heard from three women who were assaulted, and Aviva Siegel told the Knesset that a separate hostage said, 'a terrorist touched her.' Arbel Yehoud came to the Knesset to deliver a message to lawmakers. 'I was severely beaten and even thrown into isolation for long days, without food fit for human consumption, and in hygienic conditions like those in concentration camps during the Holocaust,' she said. Arbel was held alone throughout captivity. Her partner, Ariel Cunio, remains in Gaza, and her brother, Dolev, was murdered on October 7. Emily Damari lost two fingers and suffered intense pain after being shot in Gaza. She recalled being taken into surgery 'with a corpse in front of me,' then waking to Hamas's doctor telling her she had lost two fingers and that her leg wound was still open with only four stitches instead of sixteen. Keith Siegel said he was forced to watch asexual assault on a female hostage. 'They made me watch it. I saw the sexual assault of one of the hostages.' He described other abuse, including spitting, and said, 'I was subjected to subhuman conditions with no air, no light, no sanitation, not enough food and water, in tunnels where I couldn't stand. They shaved our heads and pubic hair around our private areas.'
National Post
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- National Post
Jesse Kline: The young Jews who will never dance again
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. Article content Article content The Nova Exhibition, 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. Article content Article content 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. Article content Article content 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. Article content 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. Article content 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. Article content Article content 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 have languished for 599 days and counting. Article content Article content In his 1970 poem 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 live-streamed for the whole world to see. Indeed, only in the 21st century could an atrocity such as this be so thoroughly and meticulously documented.
Forbes
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Eurovision Star Survived Israel's Top Tourist Site, The Nova Festival
Israeli singer Yuval Raphael representing Israel with the song "New Day Will Rise" performs during ... More the second semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in Basel on May 15, 2025. Raphael is a survivor of the Nova Festival massacre on October 7, 2023. (Photo by FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images) Israel has dozens of important tourist attractions. They range from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim sites in Jerusalem to the beach at Eilat, the restaurants and shorefront of Tel Aviv to floating on the Dead Sea or visiting the mystical sites of Safed. Pilgrims can visit the River Jordan or the room where the Last Supper is said to have taken place. But the most visited tourist destination is none of these places. The Nova Festival site, where more than 360 mostly young people were murdered at a music festival on October 7, 2023, is the most visited destination in Israel right now. Most visitors are Israeli, but an increasing number of international travelers are coming as well. The KKL – JNF (Keren Kayemet LeIsrael - Jewish National Fund)Israeli National Parks office, operates the park in southern Israel where the festival took place. Dr. Michael Sprintsin, KKL-JNF's Forest Engineer of the Western Negev, told me the Nova Festival site gets between 4000 and 7000 visitors per day. A survivor of the festival, Yuval Raphael, represented Israel in the popular Eurovision Song contest in May 2023. She ended up finishing second with her powerful performance of a 'New Day Will Rise.' Raphael, 24, survived the Nova Festival by hiding under the dead bodies of friends, in a shelter attacked by gunmen. Memorials made by family and friends to individuals who lost their lives at the Nova Music Festival ... More in Israel on October 7, 2023. The National Park where the festival took place has become the most visited tourist site in Israel. Raphael will be one of the featured performers in a benefit concert in Tel Aviv on June 26. The show will benefit the Nova Tribe Community Association, which helps commemorate the victims, support bereaved families, and aid survivors. The Nova Festival was an electronic music and dance outdoor party held in an Israeli national park a few miles from the Gaza Strip. On October 7, 2023, the party was overrun by terrorists who brutally killed 364 partygoers and abducted another 40 to Gaza. Both of these numbers made up a significant portion of the 1200 people killed and 251 kidnapped on October 7. Tragically, several of the more than 50 hostages still being held in Gaza, alive and dead, were attendees or working at the Nova Festival. The site is an hour and a half south of Tel Aviv, along roads also attacked on October 7. At the Nova site, there are newly paved roads, benches and toilets, but no food or gift shops. To reach the Nova site, located at the Re'im Car Parking Lot near Kibbutz Re'im and the Re'im Forest, visitors can join one of the organized tour groups available online. Prices range from approximately $140 for a group tour to around $800 for a private tour. Alternatively, it is possible to rent a car. There is no ticketing or admission charge. We visited on April 30, Israel's Memorial Day, which honors its dead and the victims of terrorism. Every year, everything stops at 1100 when sirens blare all over the country. When the siren blew, we got out of our car and stood at attention. We happened to be at a concrete bus shelter where two people were murdered on October 7. A guitarist plays and sings a song by Yehuda Becher, a concert-goer at the Nova Music Festival in ... More Israel, who lost his life on October 7, 2023. At the site, grieving friends and families have set up impromptu memorials, with brief portraits of the dead written in both Hebrew and English. There are signs with photos, written memories and favorite possessions. Posters on signposts show so many young faces, seemingly so alive. There are some larger group memorials as well. I watched a guitarist play a song written by one of the dead, as a small crowd listened. With this tragic background, why is Nova a tourist site full of cars and buses in its dusty parking lot? It is a folk memorial, different than Israel's other monuments to its dead, like the black monument to those from Jerusalem killed in the war that began October 7, or the desert fortress of Masada where a handful of Jews held off a Roman legion until their deaths. Rusting armored vehicles in the Golan Heights memorialize the greatest tank battle since World War II, where at great cost a hundred Israeli tanks held off 800 attacking Syrian vehicles in 1973. Instead, family and friends have made the Nova site a shrine to beautiful young people who just wanted to dance. There is a stark empty stage where the performers played. There are scores of signs with pictures of smiling young men and women, with tattoos, with dogs, with birds, long hair and short, in bathing suits, in army uniforms, holding guitars. You feel you know them or people just like them. As an international visitor, I did not know any of the victims. But the colorful people smiling confidently at me from the signs and the posters could have been my children. For many other visitors, they could have been their brothers and sisters, their cousins or friends. Later, we talked to a waitress at a beautiful restaurant near the Dizengoff fountain in Tel Aviv. She told us she lost eight friends at Nova. Nova Millions of people have visited Europe's concentration camps like Auschwitz, Dachau and Buchenwald. But few Holocaust survivors remain to describe what happened. At Nova, the survivors are young people still in their twenties, perhaps with a lifetime of trauma ahead of them. Already, more than 50 concertgoers are believed to have committed suicide. At the site, I listened to a woman speaking in English to a group of foreign visitors. It quickly became clear she was talking about her own experience at the Nova Festival, when she and others hid in a trailer, listening to the shooting and the screams. Her husband was shot but survived. The site has some grim reminders. A steel dumpster, with a glass floor containing some garbage from October 7, was where a dozen people hid, only to be discovered and murdered. Signs commemorate a group of young people who sought shelter in a disabled ambulance, only to be killed by a terrorist anti-tank missile. A number of survivors of the Nova Music Festival are telling their stories now. Rita Yadid endured the horrific event alongside her husband and sister. As part of her healing journey, she speaks to groups and shares her story of survival, partly made possible by the bravery of her husband, Guy, who took bullets meant for her. The concert stage at the Nova Festival site in southern Israel. On October 7, 2023, the concert was ... More the site of a terrorist attack that killed over 360 people. Rita has since become a leading voice in the struggle for recognition and support for survivors. Visitors to Israel can set up a discussion or tour of Nova sites with Rita here. A number of films such as 'We Will Dance Again' have been made about the Festival and its survivors. The Nova Festival exhibit, a traveling show that shows the tents, the sleeping bags, the phones and the burnt cars of the murdered, has played in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and currently in Toronto. But nothing has the same impact as wandering among the memorials for these smiling, confident young people, who seem so alive. The site, with its blowing wind and trees growing in the desert, is beautiful and terrible. The beauty, and the rawness, is compelling. Eden Yerushalmi, 24, was working as a bartender when she was kidnapped from the Nova Festival on ... More October 7, 2023. She was murdered in a tunnel along with 5 other hostages on August 28 or 29th, 2024 after 11 months of captivity.
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Eurovision 2025: Stage Invasion During Israeli Yuval Raphael Performance Blocked
Israeli Eurovision Song Contest contender Yuval Raphael faced a failed stage invasion during her performance at the Grand Final on Saturday night. Swiss broadcaster SSR, which hosts the telecast of the Eurovision competition, confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that a crew member was hit with paint after a man and a woman attempted to get over the barrier around the stage at the St. Jakobshalle arena in Basel, Switzerland. More from The Hollywood Reporter Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson Charm Hollywood Bowl With Favorites, Deep Cuts at Outlaw Music Festival Tour Stop How to Livestream Today's Eurovision 2025 Final in the U.S. John Mellencamp Honors Republic Records at Grammy Hall of Fame Gala 'At the end of the Israeli performance, a man and a woman tried to get over a barrier onto the stage. They were stopped. One of the two agitators threw paint and a crew member was hit. The crew member is fine and nobody was injured. The man and the woman were taken out of the venue and handed over to the police,' the Swiss broadcaster said in a statement. For the second year running, the Eurovision contest was overshadowed by protests over the European Broadcasting Union's decision to allow an entrant from Israel to participate, despite calls this year for Raphael's exclusion and pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protests taking place outside the arena. Raphael, a survivor of the Nova festival massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, did a solo performance around and up and down a giant chandelier-like staircase on stage. Presenting the BBC One's coverage in the UK, Graham Norton lit up social media sites after insisting at the end of Raphael's performance: 'I'm not sure what you can hear at home. Slightly mixed reception here in the hall.' None of the disruption around the failed stage invasion could be seen on the live feed for the 2025 Eurovision Grand Final, as Raphael concluded her performance to applause from the arena audience. An earlier dress rehearsal for Raphael ahead of the second semi-final on Thursday was also disrupted as six people appeared with flags and whistles. 'Security personnel were able to quickly identify those involved and escort them out of the hall,' host broadcaster SRG said in an earlier statement. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise 'Yellowstone' and the Sprawling Dutton Family Tree, Explained
