The Myth of the Nova Festival Suicides
The Hamas assault on Israel on 7th October 2023 has lead to a great many silly and absurd claims being pushed – often hard – by pro-Israel and jewish groups despite no verification having even been attempted let alone basic due diligence.
One such example of this is the claim that ‘50 Israeli survivors’ of the Hamas assault on the Nova music festival on 7th October 2023 had since committed suicide. This claim came from one ‘jewish survivor’ and in a very particular context as the much cited article from i24 News shows:
‘Following the Hamas-led massacre at the Nova Music Festival on October 7, about fifty survivors have committed suicide, revealed Guy Ben Shimon.
Ben Shimon, a survivor of the massacre, spoke on Tuesday at a Parliamentary hearing for a State Audit Commission on the treatment of the survivors of October 7.
"Few people know, but there have been almost 50 suicides among the Nova survivors. This number, which was true two months ago, may have increased since," Ben Shimon said, emphasizing that many of his friends who escaped the massacre could not recover from what they had experienced.
"There are many survivors who had to be forcibly hospitalized due to their psychological state. My friends are not getting out of bed, neither am I," he described their condition since the October 7 attack.
"I am practically unable to do anything. I had to get a dog to help me survive in my daily life. The goal for all of us is to return to work and function normally, but we cannot do it without adequate help," Ben Shimon added.
The parliamentary hearing focused on alleged failures of the state bodies towards the survivors of October 7. There were complaints about the difficulties, notably bureaucratic, that the survivors faced in getting their post-traumatic stress disorder recognized, as well as in receiving the needed care.’ (1)
Despite the fact that this story was much cited and reprinted without any real critical analysis; (2) reading the above and noting that it is a claim by one ‘survivor’ named Guy Ben Shimon, that this claim is by Shimon’s own admission entirely anecdotal and also that this claim is made in the direct context of hearing about the alleged lack of support for ‘survivors’ of the 7th October 2023 assault.
This then informs us that what is actually happening here is that Shimon is trying to leverage this ‘50 suicides’ claim as a way to get ‘more support’ (read: more money) from the Israeli government for his and his friends ‘ongoing care and support’ and that is all it really it is. It is a classic ‘Big Lie’ used – exactly as Adolf Hitler explained it was used by jews in ‘Mein Kampf’ – to try and make a case by making so outlandish and large a claim that no one would reasonably question its veracity. This is incidentally also referred to as Chutzpah in jewish culture.
However other jews being more attuned to jewish ways than non-jews tend to be immediately called Shimon out on this outlandish claim in the form of Israeli Health Ministry coming out and publicly denouncing the claim.
As the ‘Jewish Chronicle’ explains:
‘The claim, which was then widely reported by several media outlets, was refuted by Israel’s Health Ministry, which said in a statement: “Figures of the number of suicides and the number of those institutionalised among survivors of the Supernova festival are not known to the Health Ministry and the medical system and are not correct.”
Dr Gilad Bodenheimer, director of the ministry’s mental health division also insisted that the figure was “not correct” and said this was “made clear during and at the end” of the Knesset hearing.
During the hearing, Bodenheimer said: “We know of only a few cases of suicide. We must be cautious with numbers that could do public damage.”
The ministry checked with groups who that have been treating Supernova survivors, as well as with the Tribe of Nova Foundation, which was set up following the massacre, and found no basis for the claim, according to Bodenheimer.
Reut Plonsker Fridman, a clinical psychologist at the Health Ministry, stressed that while the number was almost certainly not correct, the survivors “need a lot of help”’ (3)
Put another way: Bodenheimer and Plonsker Fridman are telling us – in polite terms – that Shimon is spouting nonsense and that while there have been several suicides of Israelis who were caught up in the 7th October it was ‘nowhere near’ that number with the additional implication that directly attributing them to the events of 7th October is difficult to do/not possible.
Plonsker Fridman also identified the source of this claim as a way of not calling Shimon a liar directly – which would be impolitic – when he stated that it was actually a rumour going around which Shimon was ‘simply repeating’ not an actual statistic based on hard data just Chinese whispers.
So, no; there haven’t been lots of suicides – let alone 50 – attributed to ‘trauma’ from the events at the Nova music festival in Israel on 7th October 2023.
References
(1) https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel-at-war/survivor-testimonies/artc-oct-7-festival-massacre-survivor-reveals-about-50-survivors-later-committed-suicide
(2) For example: https://nypost.com/2024/04/16/world-news/nearly-50-attendees-of-israels-nova-festival-died-by-suicide-since-oct-7-hamas-terrorist-attack-survivor-says/ and https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13314721/traumatised-israeli-nova-festival-suicide-october-7.html
(3) https://www.thejc.com/news/israel/nova-suicide-figure-50-israel-health-ministry-not-correct-survivors-help-mental-health-xzvlidnc; see similar commentary here: https://www.algemeiner.com/2024/04/16/about-50-survivors-nova-music-festival-committed-suicide-survivor-tells-israeli-lawmakers/