International Israeli trance music festival attacked by Hamas, at least 260 dead

One of the first and most high-profile attacks carried out this weekend as part of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict was at an outdoor music festival near the Gaza Strip.

The Supernova music festival was a psychedelic trance festival primarily for young people. Hamas launched their attack in the early hours of Saturday morning, shooting into the crowd and taking as many hostages as they could. Over 260 bodies have since been recovered at the site with that number expected to grow.

The very first iteration of the festival, Supernova featured international artists such as the UK's Man With No Name and French DJ Aladin, and was billed as the Israeli version of Brazil's renowned Universo Paralello psytrance festival. It's been reported today by Billboard magazine that all but one of the overseas acts have now left Israel. According to a now-harrowing description posted on the event's website before the weekend, the festival was to be a "safe envelope for finding inner calm, peace, harmony."

Estimated to have had over 3,000 attendees, the event coincided with the seven-day Jewish holiday Sukkot, which celebrates the fall harvest and encourages togetherness and community. Many festival-goers saw the festival as a way to celebrate the holiday, as the night of the festival fell on Sehmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah during which you are not permitted to work.

Many festival-goers were taking the opportunity to blow off some steam, as psychedelic trance music is meant to influence the brain and body in a grounding, sometimes meditative way with its distinctive high-tempo riffs and samples.

According to first-person accounts from some of the ravers, the sound of explosions blended in with the music, making it difficult for attendees to know the full extent of what was going on as the attack began. Though some were aware of a chance of rocket fire in the area, the gunfire was an unexpected horror.

Attendees had not been given the exact location of the event until a few hours before, just that it was in a "powerful natural location full of trees" and "about an hour and a quarter south of Tel Aviv." They were also told not to bring firearms or sharp objects onto the festival grounds for security reasons, and paired with a wide-open location with very few hiding places, festival-goers were isolated and unable to defend themselves as the attack was carried out.

In the hours following the attack, the world has been reacting to the news. Some statements issued by Irish political leaders have been criticised by members of the Irish music community, including Senator Frances Black and Steve Wall.

Pop star Bruno Mars pulled out of his Tel Aviv concert scheduled for Saturday night, having performed for the first time in Israel on Wednesday.

U2's Bono also dedicated a song to the civilians killed at the festival during a concert at their residency at Las Vegas' Sphere on Sunday. "We sing for our brothers and sisters, who they themselves were singing at the Supernova Succot festival in Israel," he said in an impassioned speech. "We sing for those. Our people. Our kind of people. Music people, playful, experimental people. Our kind of people. We sing for them."

In the light of what’s happened in Israel and Gaza, a song about non-violence seems somewhat ridiculous, even laughable, but our prayers have always been for peace and for non-violence…

But our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s pointed. So sing with us… and those… pic.twitter.com/S1zfCMNtzz

— U2 (@U2) October 9, 2023