One year ago today, jubilation turned to horror in a matter of moments for the thousands of concert-goers attending the Supernova music festival as Hamas militants turned a strip of desert in southern Israel into a killing field.
The trauma has led to unrelenting, excruciating memories and that continue to haunt the survivors and loved ones of those slaughtered.
For Kfir, the barbarism and the inhumanity he witnessed on Oct. 7, 2023, have become an enduring part of his life.
"I'm just talking about what is love and what is evil and how life is tragic. Some days I feel that I'm dead but I'm alive. A lot of thoughts running in your head and imagination you don't want. But it's real. It's with you," Kfir, 23, told the British outlet GB News.
He was celebrating with a group of friends among the 3,500 concert-goers at the festival, describing the mood and atmosphere there as carefree and lighthearted, with music and the laughter of revelers surrounding them.
A father pushing his disabled daughter in a wheelchair through the crowd brought him to tears.
"I approached them and told the dad: 'You're such a great guy. To take your daughter to a trance festival is so great,'" Kfir, who was only identified by one name, told the outlet.
Then around 6:30 a.m., as the sun was rising, Kfir and his friends heard the roar of explosions pierce the music and saw arcs of light stream across the sky.
In an instant, the music ended and sirens started blaring.
Heavily armed Hamas militants had begun their invasion of Israel at the music festival just miles from the border with Gaza, and suddenly chaos set in as thousands of concert-goers began tearing through the desert in a frenzied effort to escape.
The terrorists picked off people with rifle shots as they ran to their vehicles, tossed grenades into bunkers where scores sought shelter, and brutally raped and mutilated women in an explosion of sexual violence.
More than 360 people were killed in the carnage, and Hamas took more than 40 people hostage, dragging them across the border into Gaza where many of them remain.
Kfir made it to safety, but many of his friends did not, including the father and daughter with the wheelchair - their burned bodies were discovered near the Gaza border days later.
"To do this to people in the peak of their lives, who are celebrating only love and peace, and to do it without any possibility of fighting for themselves. With that animal spirit. We're living in a different world. Pure hate like that takes decades of brainwashing," he told GB News.
Shalev Briton also survived.
"I think it's the longest year in my life, because I passed through so much things since last October and I think the whole country, everything is changed – in some things I have to say in a positive way but most of it in a bad way," he told Sky News Australia in a recent interview.
"Every time that I see a TV show that has been made in Israel about my story, I can't believe that I was part of it, it seems like a crazy story ... but I was there, that's me," he added.
He said the trauma of the unchecked slaughter and bloodshed has become a permanent part Israel.
"[E]veryone in Israel lost someone or know someone who lost someone ... and heard some stories," he said.
"I think the whole moral status of the country, of the people, is changed every time, every day in relation to what happened in the way with Gaza and what happened with Israel," Briton added. "Everything is very fragile now."
He says he finds it difficult to come to grips with the reality that Hamas is still holding Israelis captive in Gaza.
"I cannot accept that the people that were on the same ground that I was at the same party ... some of them executed inside of Gaza and some of them are still being held right now in Gaza," he said.
Eilat Shalev was dancing with her husband Shai when the Hamas militants closed off the roads leading to the festival.
She got separated from her husband when the militants fired on their car, and she ran into a nearby orchard.
"I grabbed the first tree I saw on the left side. I hid with my hands on my head and my face in the earth, just praying to God that God will rescue me so I will live and return to my kids," Shalev told the Associated Press.
After a bullet came within inches of hitting her in the head, she said she played dead for hours before heading back to the road, where Israeli security forces brought her to a police station.
Her husband was pronounced dead five days later.
Shalev said she and her four children - ages 12 to 23 - still struggle with his loss.
"As the days go by, one day and another day and another day, it's actually getting worse. It doesn't get better," Shalev told the AP. "Missing him gets stronger because you understand more and more that he's not coming back. He's really not coming back."
Originally published on International Business Times.
