Partygoers at the Supernova Psy-Trance Festival who filmed the events that unfolded on Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: Yes Studios

Israel’s yes Studios announced on Monday that its gripping documentary featuring self-shot and mostly exclusive real-time footage to chronicle the Hamas terrorist attack at the Supernova electronic music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, is now streaming globally on Amazon’s Prime Video.

Titled “#NOVA,” the documentary is entirely comprised of video and audio footage filmed by festival attendees themselves, for example on their cellphones, that detail minute-by-minute how the deadly massacre unfolded. Hamas terrorists infiltrated the music festival in southern Israel, murdering more than 350 people and kidnapping 44 others. Fourteen of the hostages have since returned home to Israel alive while 17 were killed in captivity.

Among the 251 total hostages abducted from Israel by Hamas terrorists during their deadly Oct. 7 rampage across southern Israel, 59 are still being held in captivity in the Gaza Strip. Monday marks 18 months since the attack.

“‘#NOVA’ is one of our most talked-about and controversial films, and always attracted a huge amount of interest when we held exclusive screenings at selected international venues,” Sharon Levi, managing director of yes Studios, said in a released statement on Monday. “We are therefore honored that this extraordinary documentary has just arrived on Prime Video, making it readily available to meet the significant ongoing global demand that we know still exists.”

“We may be exactly 18 months on from this terrible day, but with 59 hostages still being held and the images from the Oct. 7 attacks still etched on our collective memories, #NOVA remains an important, unique and must-see film,” Levi added. “Not only does it document the brutal start of the war, but it also captures different viewpoints without a conventional news agenda or, indeed, any narrative filters. Instead, the self-shot, real-time footage presents a truly authentic account of what happened.”

“#NOVA” was produced by Kastina Communications for yes Docu, with Dan Pe’er directing. Yes Studios is the documentary’s international distributor.

Pe’er volunteered to help survivors immediately following the Oct. 7 attack at the music festival, which was held in Re’im, Israel, close to Israel’s border with Gaza. The event was attended by more than 3,500 people. Pe’er collected videos and audio clips from festival survivors related to the attack and arranged the footage chronologically before approaching Kastina Communications to create “#NOVA.”

The documentary aired in Israel in December 2023 on yes TV. Guy Lavie, vice president of documentaries at yes TV, previously explained that “#NOVA” features “solely real-time footage, much of it exclusive — and with no testimonials nor commentaries,” capturing “the genuine emotions and horror endured by thousands of music lovers, their families, and indeed our whole nation.”

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The London School of Economics and Political Science. Photo: Wiki Commons.

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is rated as one of the best universities in the UK and globally — and the school often extols its academic mission and motto: rerum cognoscere causas (“to know the causes of things”). 

It is curious, then, that the LSE does not feel obliged, let alone willing, to share the knowledge presumably obtained at a book event it hosted about Hamas.

Readers may not be aware that the LSE recently hosted a discussion with an author about her book Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters. The discussion quickly attracted criticism and censure when it was announced.

First, LSE’s webpage for the event carried the blurb of the publisher, OR Books. The blurb claims that “the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has been subject to intense vilification. Branding it as ‘terrorist’ or worse, this demonization intensified after the events in Southern Israel on October 7, 2023.”

It is difficult — and incredibly radical – to sustain the idea that Hamas has been demonized.

Of course, this is no surprise for OR Books, which features a book called Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn, no fewer than six books by David Finkelstein, and — what else — a “Free Palestine Reading List.”

But the LSE has a reputation to maintain. Thus, following criticism, the LSE replaced the event’s description. Unfortunately, their promotional text remains problematic in other ways: it claims that the book set out Hamas’ “transformation from early anti-Jewish tendencies to a stance that differentiates between Judaism and Zionism.”

Efforts by Hamas members to slay the “Yehudis” surely refute this.

As the event neared, protests and counterprotests arose. The LSE was determined that the event go ahead, because “free speech underpins everything we do.”  What is more, “Students, staff and visitors are strongly encouraged to discuss and debate the most pressing issues around the world.”

However, perhaps anxious about security and reputational implications, the LSE decided that this “public” event would only be available to LSE staff and students. Indeed, there would not even be a livestream of the event. To date, the LSE has not put up a video of the event. So much for visitors being invited to “discuss and debate the most pressing issues.”

The LSE has somehow arrived at the worst possible decision. On the one hand, it chose to go ahead with hosting an event that could, on one reading of UK terrorism legislation, have allowed its speakers to commit the offense of inviting support for a terrorist organization. That the book was co-written by a Quaker who saw fit to promote the book on the “Nonviolence International” YouTube channel is certainly ironic, but this does not erase the fact that Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization in the UK.

On the other hand, this is not a victory for academic freedom. The Jewish Chronicle, while criticizing the event, said that freedom of speech was fundamental for universities, and thus the LSE should proceed with the event (if only to reap the whirlwind later by losing out on state funding). Yet even here, the LSE has failed. By keeping the event closed only to LSE students and staff, and by refusing to put up a video of the event, the LSE is deliberately not sharing whatever was said at the event.

If, as The Jewish Chronicle remarked, light is the best disinfectant to bad ideas, then that cannot happen here — where everything that was said remains in the dark, away from public scrutiny. Again, the LSE said this was an opportunity for visitors to come and share in the process of debate. But the LSE instead kept it a closed debate, never to be televised. The LSE locked the door and has thrown away the key.

While we do not yet know the consequences of their decision — whether other talks supportive of Hamas will now be hosted, or if Jewish students will be at further risk of harm on university campuses — we can point to the LSE’s decision as having played a part. To quote their motto, we will “know the causes of things.”

Asher Abramson is a lawyer based in Edinburgh, UK. He is a BA International History graduate of the London School of Economics.

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Bashar Masri, a prominent Palestinian-American businessman and founder of Rawabi, the first planned Palestinian city in the West Bank, poses during an interview with Reuters in Rawabi, Oct. 5, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Rami Ayyub

American families of victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel filed a lawsuit on Monday against a prominent Palestinian–American businessman, Bashar Masri, charging that he provided assistance in constructing infrastructure that allowed Hamas terrorists to carry out their cross-border rampage.

The lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for Washington, DC, is thought to be the first case of a US citizen being accused of providing major support for the attacks that triggered a wider Middle East conflict and upended the region.

Masri’s office called the lawsuit “baseless.”

According to a statement announcing the lawsuit, properties Masri owned, developed, and controlled, including two luxury hotels and the leading industrial zone in Gaza – the Gaza Industrial Estate – “concealed tunnels underneath them, and had tunnel entrances accessible from within the properties, which Hamas used in terrorist operations before, on and after Oct. 7.”

“Defendants facilitated the construction and concealment of those tunnels and even built above-ground solar panel installations that they then used to supply Hamas with electricity to the tunnels,” it said.

The Oct. 7 attacks killed some 1,200 Israelis, including more than 40 Americans, and the Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists also kidnapped over 250 hostages. Israel responded to the surprise invasion with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and decimating Hamas in Gaza.

The lawsuit, which targets Masri and his companies, was filed on behalf of nearly 200 American plaintiffs, including survivors and relatives of victims.

“Our goal is to expose those who have aided and abetted Hamas and to try and bring accountability to individuals and companies that have presented a legitimate and moderate image to the Western world but have actively and knowingly helped Hamas,” Lee Wolosky of the Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP law firm, lead attorney representing the plaintiffs, said in the statement.

It said GIE was originally established with the help of US taxpayer funding via the US Agency for International Development to promote economic growth in the region.

It said of that “as a result of defendants’ deception,” Hamas‘s tunnel network was built with the help of infrastructure and energy projects financed by international institutions, including the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation.

A statement from Masri’s office called the allegations against him and his businesses false and said he would seek their dismissal in court. It said Masri had been involved in development and humanitarian work for the past decades and “unequivocally opposes violence of any kind.”

“Neither he nor those entities have ever engaged in unlawful activity or provided support for violence and militancy,” it said.

A March 10 article in the Jerusalem Post cited unnamed diplomatic sources as saying that Masri had served as a close adviser to Adam Boehler, US President Donald Trump’s envoy seeking release of hostages held in Gaza, and had flown on Boehler’s private jet as he shuttled across the region.

It called Masri “a seasoned entrepreneur” who “shares a business-minded approach with Trump, making him a natural fit in the administration’s economic vision for the region.”

The State Department and White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment when asked about the newspaper report.

In a Reuters interview in October 2020, when he was 59, Masri spoke in favor of Gulf Arab ties with Israel, condemned by Palestinian leaders, saying they could be an opportunity to apply fresh pressure to halt Jewish settlement in occupied land.

When speaking to Reuters in 2020, Masri said Palestinians must not give up hope. “Our enemies want us to give up hope. If we give up hope, they have exactly what they want, and there will be no Palestine, and no Palestinian people,” he said.

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