The Nova festival documentary revives the horror of 7 October

‘Yes… But…’. It is a phrase that Jews in Britain and around the world have become accustomed to hearing since the 7 October Hamas terror attacks on Israel and the subsequent war. It is a twisted attempt to contextualise atrocities, to justify the unjustifiable. When you hear, as I have, the stories of those who survived the massacre at the Nova music festival, though, or whose family members are still being held hostage, when you see the footage from that event, you realise there is no ‘but’.

In the documentary Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre, a number of survivors of that day’s horrors tell their story. They include Gali Amar and Amit Amar. The best friends hid for hours in a festival portaloo, lying on the floor to avoid the shots aimed at head height, praying that the terrorists would not open the door. Others, some piled into small cars with strangers, thought they had escaped, only to be attacked in the shelters that line the roads going to and from the south of Israel.

I watched another survivor, Ziv, break down as she recalled hiding under a pile of dead bodies.