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Survivors of the Nova massacre on Oct. 7 work through trauma at unique Israeli therapy center

KIBBUTZ HAZOREA, Israel — Fifteen young men and women, seemingly oblivious to their surroundings and to each other, dance around a bucolic field, twisting their bodies to trance music blasting through their headphones.

Beyond their earphones is silence, except for the constant rumble of fighter jets taking off from Ramat David air base in the nearby Jezreel Valley.

Yet the aircraft and the dancers are connected. 

Some of these jets are heading south toward Gaza, to bomb the hideouts and munitions storehouses of Hamas terrorists who on Oct. 7 killed 1,200 Israelis — including some 360 attendees of the Nova music festival that took place that morning in a field near Gaza. In recent weeks, survivors of the massacre at the Nova rave have been coming to this retreat center at Kibbutz Hazorea to try to overcome their trauma.

“This is the first time I’ve danced since that day,” said Noa Maman, 21, of Yokneam. “It’s been very hard for me.”

About 60 people have participated so far in the trauma recovery program being run by Free Spirit Experience, a nonprofit group that in normal times uses its facilities at Hazorea (and another one in Cyprus) for treatment programs for young Jewish adults from Israel and abroad suffering from anxiety, depression, or drug or alcohol problems.

Free Spirit repurposed its trauma treatment program within two weeks of Oct. 7, launching the first of its three-day therapeutic workshops for Nova survivors on Oct. 23. Since then it has held six more, each with five to 15 participants and at no cost to attendees.

“We had a staff member whose cousin was injured in the festival; Each of us knew somebody who was there,” said Free Spirit’s managing director, Rami Bader. “We talked about the trauma these people might have and decided to use our resources to help them.”

Using yoga, pottery making, dancing, acupuncture, carpentry and even ice baths, survivors of the massacre gradually come out of their shells and begin to talk. The idea is to give participants a sense of safety and community to share and talk about their emotions. Some are able to open up in group therapy sessions; for others it happens over communal activities like preparing meals.

“When we have our first group meeting, some have been waiting for the opportunity to tell their stories, but not all of them,” Bader said. “By the end all of them share, but not because we pushed them. Many times, it’s not even us. We just sit there and they share among themselves.”

Trauma survivors who seek help early on have a chance to build resilience rather than develop PTSD, experts say. 

“We know that post-traumatic stress disorder can develop a few months after the trauma, or years after,” Bader said. 

Omer Ovadia, 24, lost three of his best friends in the Nova attack. He has memorialized them with a tattoo on his right forearm bearing their names: Dvir, Lia and Sahar.

Noa Maman, left, and Ido Cohen, both 21, attended a three-day therapy program at Kibbutz Hazorea in northern Israel for survivors of the Nova party massacre by Hamas attackers on Oct. 7, 2023. (Larry Luxner)

“It was about 6:30 a.m. when Hamas started to shoot rockets,” Ovadia recalled. “Immediately, they stopped the music and everybody ran to their cars. We started driving, but after seven minutes terrorists came running after us with RPGs and grenades, running after everybody. We quickly left the car and started running east, toward Patish. I remembered my army survival skills, so we zigzagged left and right, kicking up dust so they couldn’t see or shoot at us.”

By 3 p.m, over eight hours after the attack began, Ovadia and 20 others — all hungry, thirsty and filthy — arrived at Patish. Dozens of others in their group, including his three friends, didn’t make it. Some of his friends were taken captive to Gaza. 

The trauma starting to hit him that evening. 

“I was sitting in a car and started to cry, realizing what we had been through,” Ovadia said. “Even now I still don’t know the depth of the trauma.”

Tamir Rotman, a psychologist and Free Spirit’s clinical director, said survivors of massacres often feel extremely agitated, tortured by flashbacks and unable to leave home. He tries to help them find stability and a sense of normalcy. 

“The huge factor is alleviating guilt and self-criticism,” Rotman said. “It’s very typical for people who go through extreme situations to feel survivor’s guilt. For example, some will say, ‘I pushed my friends to come, but I survived and they didn’t.’ Or ‘Why didn’t I fight back?’ These are normal mechanisms that our brain uses to try to gain some control over the situation.”

Many participants in Free Spirit’s program say that being in the sheltered environment at Hazorea has helped them find some relief. Maman said it took her two months just to gather the strength to spend a night away from home and come to Hazorea. She still hasn’t been able to return to her job.

“I’m not working at all now. I can’t focus my attention on anything specific for more than a few hours because it takes too much energy,” Maman said. “I’m exhausted. My head is always taking me back to that day.”

Omer Ovadia, 24, displays a Hebrew tattoo honoring three friends — Dvir, Liav and Sahar — who were killed on Oct. 7, 2023, by Hamas terrorists at the Nova music festival near Gaza. (Larry Luxner)

She added, “After what happened, it was really hard to trust other people and open up like this. But this experience has given me hope. There are good people with good intentions, and there’s a future for humanity.”

After several sessions, Bader is trying to raise the funds necessary to keep the program going. Each three-day workshop costs $40,000, and Bader says Free Spirit needs to raise $200,000 because its other revenue-generating programs are on hold due to the war. (Supporters can contribute online to support the program at freespiritexperience.org/donate.)

Free Spirit has moved its regular therapy programs treating anxiety, depression, and alcohol and drug issues to its site in Cyprus. That program, which caters to Jews from around the world and includes Jewish components, aims at fostering wellbeing and a sense of purpose through communal activities and therapeutic care. A similar philosophy guides Free Spirit’s unique Oct. 7 trauma program.

Ido Cohen of Yokneam decided to try Free Spirit after struggling to recover from his Nova experience on his own. 

When the attack began on Oct. 7, Cohen, 21, a project manager at a human resources firm who makes trance music in his spare time, thought the booms he was hearing were coming from the show stage. Then he saw rockets exploding in the air and everyone rush for the exits. Sleep-deprived and high on ecstasy, Cohen said, he and his friends had trouble finding their car. As soon as they began driving they heard gunshots and saw other cars with bullet holes and shattered glass littering the road.

They started running through the fields, hiding in trenches and inside bushes amid explosions and gunfire. Six and a half hours would pass before they reached a dirt road where a vehicle took them to safety at Patish.

Cohen said his life hasn’t been the same since.

 “I was a heavy weed smoker before this attack,” he said. “After Oct. 7, I stopped smoking. I stopped eating. I stopped living. I didn’t leave my house for two weeks. It was pure hell. I don’t think it’s a question of time. This will be a part of my life forever. I just need to accept it.”

Recovery can take a long time. Ovadia has come back to Free Spirit for three rounds of therapy, finding each time a greater degree of confidence and optimism about the future. He says he believes it will take him a year or two to recover emotionally.

“I have no doubt that in the end I’m going to be fine,” Ovadia said. “And I’m sure I’ll be stronger.”

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The post Survivors of the Nova massacre on Oct. 7 work through trauma at unique Israeli therapy center appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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The BBC Documentary That Paints Every Israeli as an Extremist

The Jewish community of Beit El in Judea and Samaria. Photo: Yaakov via Wikimedia Commons.

Louis Theroux first visited the West Bank in 2011 to film a documentary titled Louis and the Ultra-Zionists, part of his long-running series for the BBC. Back then, he at least seemed to possess a trace of journalistic curiosity. Even the title signaled a degree of editorial caution — framing his subjects as a small, ideological fringe rather than representative of Israeli society as a whole.

At the time, Theroux made an effort to clarify that he was profiling a narrow segment of Israelis. He showed legally purchased Jewish homes (sold by Arab landowners, no less) and acknowledged the regular — and at times deadly — terror attacks faced by Israeli civilians living in the area, often requiring military protection. There was condescension, certainly. But there was also context.

Fast-forward to 2024, and the curiosity is gone — though the bemused, slightly smug expression remains. His new BBC documentary, Louis and the Settlers, drops even the soft qualifiers. No “ultra.” No nuance. Just “settlers.” And with that, Theroux makes it clear: half a million Israelis living in the West Bank are one and the same — extremists who, we’re told, want every last Palestinian removed from the land.

This time, the documentary doesn’t begin with questions. It begins with conclusions. And Theroux uses a brief, unrepresentative snapshot of life in the West Bank to draw sweeping indictments of the entire Israeli state.

The message is unmistakable: Israel is the problem. Settlers are the villains. And Palestinians are passive, blameless victims of a colonial project.

Within the opening minutes, Theroux plants his ideological flag. He refers to the West Bank as “Palestinian territory” and describes every Israeli community within it as illegal under international law — a sharp departure from his more qualified approach 14 years earlier.

And while his personal views seep in throughout the film, they become crystal clear during one exchange at a checkpoint, where an Israeli soldier casually refers to their location as “Israel.” Theroux shoots back: “We’re not in Israel, are we?”

And just like that, the BBC and Louis Theroux have redrawn Israel’s borders. No Knesset debate needed.

Erasing History to Blame the Massacre

The timing of this return trip is no accident. The film comes in the shadow of the October 7 Hamas massacres — the day 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered, families were burned alive in their homes, and children were dragged into Gaza. And yet, Theroux barely mentions it.

The few passing references to October 7 serve not to inform the audience — but to imply that Israel may be exploiting its own dead to justify further expansion. It’s not an investigation. It’s an accusation. And it allows him to skip over thousands of years of Jewish history in order to frame the current war in Gaza as a convenient cover story for Israeli “aggression.”

Take Hebron, for example. Theroux tells viewers that “in 1968, the year after [the West Bank] was occupied by Israel, a community of Jewish settlers moved in illegally. They now number some 700.” He fails to mention that in 1895 — decades before the modern state of Israel existed — Hebron had a Jewish population of 1,429.

Jews have lived in Hebron since antiquity — it’s where, according to Jewish tradition, Abraham purchased the Cave of the Patriarchs. Modern records date the community back centuries, despite discrimination under Ottoman rule and bans on Jewish prayer at holy sites. In 1929, Arab rioters carried out a massacre, wiping out Hebron’s Jewish population. Dozens were murdered; the rest were expelled. Under Jordanian rule from 1948 to 1967, Jews were banned from the city entirely. When they returned after the Six-Day War — not as colonists, but as a displaced community coming home — Theroux picks up the story there and calls it “illegal.”

On the Six-Day War itself, Theroux offers no context. No mention of the Arab armies preparing to destroy Israel. No mention of Israel’s preemptive strike against an existential threat.

According to The Settlers, Israel simply “occupied” — full stop.

Palestinian Terrorism? Not Even a Footnote.

Theroux visits Evyatar, a small Jewish community near the Palestinian town of Beita, and uses it as a stand-in for the entire West Bank. Beita is depicted as a symbol of peaceful resistance: a proud, ancient Palestinian village standing firm against violent settlers backed by IDF soldiers.

It’s a neat story. Too neat. Because missing from the story are years of organized, violent riots from Beita — complete with Molotov cocktails, burning Stars of David, and Nazi swastikas. All carefully omitted to preserve the narrative: Palestinians peaceful, settlers aggressive. Facts that don’t fit? Left on the cutting room floor.

Meanwhile, Israeli nationalism is treated as something sinister and unsettling — a moral aberration to be examined. The notion that Jews might want sovereignty or security is met with thinly veiled suspicion. Yet Hamas’ goal of a Jew-free Palestine, explicitly laid out in its charter, is never mentioned. Nor is the Palestinian Authority’s “pay-for-slay” policy, which literally incentivizes terrorism by rewarding those who murder Israelis — including women and children.

These aren’t fringe details. They’re central to understanding the region. And Theroux knows it. He just doesn’t care.

The BBC’s Complicity

That The Settlers aired on the BBC — a publicly funded broadcaster once seen as a gold standard of global journalism — says plenty. Not just about Louis Theroux’s agenda, but about the institutional direction of the BBC itself. This wasn’t a rogue filmmaker sneaking bias past the editors. This was bias built into the foundation — signed off, packaged, and broadcast under the banner of credibility.

There is, of course, no problem with scrutinizing Israeli policy, and no issue with questioning the settlement enterprise or highlighting the tensions in the West Bank. But journalism — real journalism — demands context. It demands precision. It demands at least a passing familiarity with the full scope of the story.

Theroux offers none of that. He arrives with a predetermined script and casts his roles accordingly: Hero. Villain. Victim. Oppressor. And when reality refuses to cooperate? It’s left out.

Louis Theroux didn’t return to Israel to understand it. He returned to flatten it. To reduce its complexity to a morality play — and to ensure everyone knows the antagonist is.

The Settlers isn’t a documentary. It’s a hit piece. And the BBC handed him the camera — then applauded the performance.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

The post The BBC Documentary That Paints Every Israeli as an Extremist first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Indian Army Kills Islamist Terrorist Linked to 2002 Murder of Jewish-American Journalist Daniel Pearl

Jewish-American Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped and murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan in 2002. Photo: Screenshot

The Indian government announced on Thursday that its military forces had killed “Pakistan’s most wanted terrorist,” who was connected to the 2002 murder of Jewish-American Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl.

On Wednesday, India launched “Operation Sindoor,” which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) claims is targeted at dismantling “terrorist infrastructure” in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

The operation came after Pakistani terrorists killed 26 Hindu tourists in Kashmir last month amid escalating tensions between the two countries.

In a post on X, the BJP confirmed that during this week’s operation, the Indian army killed Islamist terrorist Abdul Rauf Azhar, who was involved in numerous terrorism plots, including the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight, the 2001 terror attack on the Indian Parliament, and the 2016 Pathankot Air Force base attack.

Azhar’s involvement in the 1999 hijacking led to the release of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born al-Qaeda member with close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence services, who later was involved in the kidnapping and subsequent murder of 38-year-old Pearl, who was covering the war on terror as a journalist when he was abducted.

In a statement on X, Pearl’s father, Judea, addressed initial reports regarding Azhar’s death and his connection to his son’s murder.

“I want to clarify: Azhar was a Pakistani extremist and leader of the terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammed. While his group was not directly involved in the plot to abduct Danny, it was indirectly responsible. Azhar orchestrated the hijacking that led to the release of Omar Sheikh — the man who lured Danny into captivity,” he said.

In 2002, the Jewish-American journalist was abducted and killed by a group of Islamist terrorists connected to Azhar’s militant network, which had ties to al-Qaeda and Jaish-e-Mohammed, a terror group aiming to separate Kashmir from India and incorporate it into Pakistan.

On Jan. 27, 2002, an email was sent to several Pakistani and US media organizations, which included several photos, stating that Pearl was being held in “inhumane” conditions to protest the US treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners in Cuba. Photo: Screenshot

Originally stationed in New Delhi as the South Asia bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, Pearl later moved to Pakistan to investigate terrorism following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City.

After kidnapping Pearl at a restaurant in Karachi, southern Pakistan, the Islamist terrorists, who identified themselves as the National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, accused him of being an Israeli spy and sent the United States a list of demands for his release.

However, Washington did not meet their demands, and Pearl was ultimately executed after being held captive for five weeks.

His wife, Mariane Pearl, gave birth to a baby boy, Adam D. Pearl, in Paris later that year. On the Daniel Pearl Foundation website, she said, “Adam’s birth rekindles the joy, love, and humanity that Danny radiated wherever he went.”

The post Indian Army Kills Islamist Terrorist Linked to 2002 Murder of Jewish-American Journalist Daniel Pearl first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Jewish Jewelry Shop Owners Brutally Assaulted in Tunisia Days Before Annual Pilgrimage

A Jewish jewelry shop owner in Djerba, Tunisia, was brutally attacked by a man wielding a machete. Photo: Screenshot

A Jewish jewelry shop owner in Djerba, Tunisia, was brutally attacked by a man wielding a machete just days before the Tunisian island was set to host its annual Jewish pilgrimage, which is expected to draw thousands of visitors.

On Wednesday morning, two Jewish men — owners of a jewelry shop in the center of the island, located off Tunisia’s southeast coast — were physically assaulted by a man carrying a large knife.

Although the attack was halted when one of them screamed — alerting members of the local Jewish community who subdued the assailant — one of them was left severely injured.

According to local media reports, the attacker had surveyed the island the day before, visiting several stores to identify those owned by Jews. Local police arrested him shortly following the assault.

After the attack, one of the owners was admitted to the hospital with severe injuries. The 50-year-old Jewish man had his fingers severed during the assault and underwent surgery to reattach them.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar condemned the attack and expressed his wishes for a swift recovery to the victims.

“This attack comes two years after the previous deadly assault that claimed Jewish lives and the lives of security personnel during the Lag BaOmer celebration,” the top Israeli diplomat wrote in a post on X.

“I call on the Tunisian authorities to take all necessary measures to protect the Jewish community,” Saar continued.

Djerba is home to the majority of Tunisia’s Jewish community, numbering about 2,000 people, and is also where the renowned El Ghriba Synagogue, one of North Africa’s oldest synagogues, is located.

The attack comes just a week before Jewish pilgrims are expected to arrive on the island for the Lag B’Omer holiday, when thousands gather annually for three days of festivities. The annual pilgrimage to El Ghriba Synagogue, scheduled for May 15 and 16 this year, draws visitors from around the world.

The synagogue has been targeted in multiple terrorist attacks over the years, including in 1985, 2002, and 2023.

Two years ago, a shooting at the synagogue claimed the lives of two Jewish cousins and three police officers. Aviel Hadad, a 30-year-old Israeli goldsmith, and Ben Hadad, a 42-year-old Frenchman who had traveled to join the festivities, were among the victims.

The post Jewish Jewelry Shop Owners Brutally Assaulted in Tunisia Days Before Annual Pilgrimage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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