One last kiss goodbye for Hamas’s October 7 victims: Heartbroken mother says emotional

The heartbroken mother of a beautician killed by Hamas terrorists as she tried to flee the Nova festival today kissed her daughter’s picture at a memorial service for those killed in the massacre.

Overcome with grief, Rachel Amar bent down to plant a kiss on the photograph of her daughter Marsdas Amar’s beaming face at the memorial set up at the Nova Music festival site where more than 360 youngsters were killed by terrorists.

Marsdas was one of scores of screaming revellers who tried in vain to flee the festival as they were pursued by the black-clad gunmen. But as she and her friends tried to escape in their car, they were ambushed and shot dead by Hamas terrorists.

Today, her mother said an emotional goodbye to her ‘beautiful’ daughter along with scores of other heartbroken families whose relatives were either killed at the festival or kidnapped and taken into Gaza where they remain.

During the emotional memorial service, a young Israeli soldier was so overcome with grief that she crumpled to the ground and knelt in front of the pictures of her relatives Tair and Hodaya David – two sisters who were killed as they tried to flee the festival.

Tair, 23, and her sister Hodaya, 26, had been dancing with their friends on October 7, not noticing the black-clad paragliders descending on the fields surrounding the festival with their grenades and machine guns. 

But the young revellers soon heard the sound of air raid sirens and saw the rockets streak overhead as gunfire came closer and closer.

Tair and Hodaya had been on the phone to their father, Uri, as they tried to flee the festival. They hid in a ditch and were holding hands, Uri said, before the line cut out. He later learned that they were killed by the Hamas terrorists.

At the memorial today, families were overcome with emotion and consoled each other as they stood next to the photographs of their loved ones who will never come home to them. 

Marsdas’s mother kissed her daughter’s picture after paying tribute to her in which she said ‘nothing will return to being the same without you’. 

Rachel wrote on Facebook: ‘Everyone who knew you loved you and will continue to love you. My incredible girl, my baby, my youngest child, nothing will return to being the same without you, my love.

‘Instead of marrying you off I am putting you in the ground with great sadness. Dear grandpa will watch over and protect you.’

It’s been three months since Hamas unleashed the horrors on Israelis across southern Israel on October 7 – but for the families who have been left behind, the grief will never leave them. 

Marsdas’s friend, Milana Lutchenko, wrote on social media that ‘nothing will be the same without you’. 

She continued: ‘The joy won’t be the same joy, the sadness won’t be the same sadness, the experiences won’t be the same experiences. The difficulties will not pass in the same way.’ 

According to police, 364 people were shot, bludgeoned or burned to death at the Nova festival in a stretch of tree-dotted brush near Kibbutz Reim. Another 40 people were taken hostage by Hamas back to the Gaza Strip 2 miles away.

Video from that day taken from a terrorists’ truck showed how the gunmen ruthlessly slaughtered their victims as they tried to flee the festival on foot or in their cars. 

It was on one road that the gunmen, drawn to the sound of crackling gunfire up ahead, saw hundreds of screaming youngsters running across the next field from the Supernova festival where they had seen their friends shot dead by Hamas terrorists. 

Without hesitation, two gunmen raised their assault rifles and began firing shots one after the other at the fleeing revellers. Within seconds, dozens of other terrorists jumped out of their pickup trucks and began taking potshots too. 

Some fire from a machine gun-mounted truck, while one gunman jumps onto the bonnet of a slain victim’s abandoned car to shoot over the trees at the screaming revellers, mowing them down one by one with their hail of bullets.

The sickening sound of gunshots continues for 40 seconds – the terrorists unrelenting in their savagery. Apparently deciding that there were no more victims to shoot, the gunmen are seen turning back to their trucks before the video cuts out.

Survivors have told how they ran through that open field as the terrorists mowed down their friends and other revellers with bursts of automatic gunfire. Many of the victims were shot in the back as they ran. 

What was supposed to be an all-night rave quickly turned into the scene of a massacre during one of the bloodiest days in Israel’s history.

As the young revellers danced, they didn’t see the black-clad paragliders descending on the fields surrounding the festival with their grenades and machine guns. But they soon heard the sound of air raid sirens and saw the rockets streak overhead.

And then the gunfire started. And then the screams.

Many of the revellers, including Maya Alper, 25, jumped into their cars and raced to the main road. But it was at the intersection that she saw crowds of panicked festivalgoers, shouting at the drivers to turn around.

They heard more gunshots and then saw panicked men and women staggering down the road just in front of her fell to the ground in pools of blood.

It was at this moment, hundreds of the young revellers sprinted for their lives. But as the latest video released today shows, eager Hamas terrorists lay in wait ready to unleash a hail of bullets at their fleeing bodies.

‘We were hiding and running, hiding and running, in an open field — the worst place you could possibly be in that situation,’ said Arik Nani, from Tel Aviv, who had gone to the festival to celebrate his 26th birthday.

‘For a country where everyone in these circles knows everyone, this is a trauma like I could never imagine.’

As the carnage unfolded before her, Alper pulled a few disoriented-looking revellers into her car from the street and accelerated in the opposite direction.

One of them said he had lost his wife in the chaos and Alper had to stop him from breaking out of the car to find her. Another said she had just seen Hamas gunmen shoot and kill her best friend. Another rocked in his seat, murmuring over and over, ‘We are going to die.’

In the rear-view mirror, Alper watched the dance floor where she had spent the past ecstatic hours transform into a giant cloud of black smoke.

Festival-goers who managed to make it to the road and parking lot where their vehicles were parked found themselves trapped in a traffic jam, with the terrorists stalking the cars and spraying those inside with gunfire.

Alper told how she saw a gunman shout ‘God is Great’ just metres away from her as she drove. She and her new companions sprinted out of the car and sprinted through the open field towards bushes on the other side.

Alper felt a bullet whiz past her left ear. Aware the gunmen would outrun her, she plunged into a tangle of shrubs.

Peering through thorns, she said she saw one of her passengers, the girl who had lost her friend, shriek and collapse as a gunman stood over her limp body, grinning.

‘I can’t even explain the energy they (the terrorists) had. It was so clear they didn’t see us as human beings,’ she said. ‘They looked at us with pure, pure hate.’

Videos show the gunmen executed some of the wounded at point-blank range as they crouched on the ground. Some of the militants even rifled through the vehicles of their victims, grabbing purses and backpacks.

Within the festival site, the gunmen, brandishing AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, opened fire on those still there. Others waited near bomb shelters, gunning down people who were seeking refuge.

Israeli communities on either side of the festival grounds also came under attack, with Hamas gunmen abducting dozens of men, women and children — including elderly and disabled people — and killing scores of others in the unprecedented surprise attack.

For over six hours, thousands of festivalgoers hid without help from the Israeli army as Hamas militants sprayed automatic gunfire and threw grenades. Dashcam footage from an abandoned car shows how a reveller was spotted as he hid.

Cowering on the ground behind a vehicle, he is approached by a terrorist and executed. Moments earlier another terrorist had fired at an injured reveller before marching him off at gunpoint.

Chilling video showed the terrified revellers hiding in the undergrowth, desperately trying to avoid the hail of bullets from Hamas gunmen.

Survivors of the attack posted clips showing them crawling under bushes and recording hushed farewell messages to their loved ones as they watched victims get slaughtered.

Many lay petrified for more than five hours as the killing carried on around them, only emerging when they heard security forces speaking in Hebrew.