JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A 23-year-old survivor who was shot during the Hamas attack at the music festival in Israel on Oct. 7 shared his harrowing story with News4JAX.
“I’m on the ground. Two of my friends are dead. I don’t know what I can do. I was looking at the road. The terrorists were doing crimes in front of my eyes; taking people out of their cars and shooting them in front of my eyes,” Yuval Siman Tov said.
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Siman Tov and several of his friends were among thousands of people who attended the Re’im Music Festival for what he remembered as an “amazing and fun” experience that took a turn for the worse.
Everything was fine until Hamas terrorists launched a missile attack on Israel from Gaza.
RELATED: ‘We saw black souls. No mercy’: Survivor of Hamas music festival attack describes terrifying escape
“A policeman, after one minute, went to the stage, grabbed the microphone, and told everyone they had 15 seconds to move out. Go home as fast as you can,” Tov said.
He said he and his friends immediately ran to their car and drove away, but they had no idea hundreds of armed terrorists had already crossed the border. He said the terrorists were on motorcycles, in trucks and on foot.
“One of the first bullets hit my friend in the stomach,” Tov said.
The gunfire badly damaged their vehicle, causing it to stop working. His friend who was shot did not survive. He and the other friend got out of the disabled vehicle and started running.
“We looked left, and we saw terrorists. We looked right and saw terrorists, 100 meters shooting at us. We said, ‘Okay, we just need to run away.’ We ran for another 10 seconds, and I couldn’t handle it anymore,” Tov said.” I couldn’t handle the situation. So, after 10 seconds of running, I decided to fall and embrace death. I didn’t know what to do, so I pretended to be dead.”
Playing dead saved Tov’s life because he said the terrorists walked right past what they thought was his dead body. He said once it was clear, he got up and ran away.
But he realized he had been shot twice in the back and was on the verge of bleeding out.
“Yes. I didn’t feel anything because I was just running and trying to get from any scary place I got into,” Tov said.
Tov eventually made his way to a shelter, where a family took care of him as they hid for hours. The following day, he was able to go to a hospital to be treated for his injuries.
Six months after that attack, pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli protests have erupted at college campuses across the country. We asked Tov if he thinks protestors have forgotten about the October attack and are only focusing on Israel’s retaliation.
“They didn’t see anything with their own eyes. They saw images of the people of Gaza, and they saw images of people in Israel, so I can’t blame them. They decide what piece of ideas or images they want to believe. It’s their choice. But I saw it with my own eyes. I saw crimes in front of my eyes,” Tov said.
Tov will be traveling to Sarasota for an Israel Unity event that will feature a documentary movie called “Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre.”
The producer of the film, Naom Pinchas, said the video clips used in the movie come from cell phones of people who attended the music festival.
Other video clips in the movie come from videographers who were also at the festival and bodycam videos recorded by the terrorists. It also features video-recorded comments from other survivors.
Pinchas said the world needed to see what really happened when Hamas terrorists unleashed their attack. He had the job of sifting through countless video clips of people being killed or already dead.
“I had the responsibility as a human being, an Israeli, and a filmmaker to watch everything. That’s how I felt. I needed to know everything to do my job well in this case, no matter how harsh it was,” Pinchas said. “We as a global society, not just Israeli or American society, need to acknowledge these things can happen and we need to do everything in our power to make sure these events do not happen again anywhere in the world to anyone.”