Remembering the October 7 attacks and "The Moment Music Stood Still"

Perhaps nowhere was the horror of the recent Hamas LED attack in Israel more evident than the site of the Nova Music festival. Hundreds were killed, dozens taken hostage. An exhibit in their honor recently arrived in Manhattan, just steps from the 9/11 memorial. Martha Teichner takes us inside. It almost feels like trespassing, disturbing a crime scene as you make your way through the exhibit in New York. And that’s the point. What you see, all the innocent, ordinary stuff, was what was actually left behind, strewn on the sand after the October 7th Hamas attack on the Nova Music Festival, where more than 360 people died and more than forty were taken hostage. You’re allowed to touch, but nobody does. We had this exhibit in Tel Aviv, in Israel, and they brought all of those stuff. So hopefully we can go there like the survivors, and and find our stuff, you know? So what you see here means that people couldn’t find their stuff, meaning they’re dead. Yeah, for 23 year old Daniel De Vere. An inconceivable end to a joyous all night holiday weekend celebration where kids, most of them were kids just went to dance on Saturday last October 7th at 6:29 AM. As the sun rose, the music suddenly stopped and the killing started and the kidnapping and the sexual assaults. Hamas recorded the carnage and the chaos as people ran for their lives. Many of those videos are in the exhibit. I remember thinking to myself, just shoot me. I can’t run anymore. And I remember saying to myself, no, no. Danielle hid in a tree as camouflage. She covered herself with the new green scarf she had just bought, so powerful to me. As she tells us about what happened, her hands tell us more. It saved my life. I think the events of Nova are not only being forgotten, they’re being ignored. Entertainment industry entrepreneur Scooter Braun was instrumental in bringing the exhibit to New York. Right here. All these red circles, these are the actual bullet holes. They just started shooting into them one by one and killing the people inside. This is real. This happened. What do you want the message to be presenting this exhibit? I definitely don’t want it to be political. I I don’t think this is a how can it not be political? Because it’s about music. Why are musicians not screaming from the top of their lungs? That music should be a safe place. Just stop for a minute and ask yourself on either side to kids dancing to deserve to die. And the answer is no. So just give it an opportunity and have empathy in your heart for all sides. A hard ask given that just a few miles away, pro Palestinian protests have paralyzed at least three New York City college campuses, with dozens of others in turmoil nationwide, mutual empathy A casualty, and anti-Semitism on the rise. At the Nova exhibit, there is heavy security. That’s or, yeah, my beautiful daughter and her radiant smile. I miss that smile very, very much each day since it opened a couple of weeks ago. Hani Ricardo stands in the room filled with photographs of the festival dead Yuval and Moshe. They were supposed to get married in in February to tell the stories behind the smiles. They were radiant people. They were happy people and they were butchered and massacred and raped and mutilated by monsters. Her anger and pain are fresh and raw. It was a wake up call for the Jewish people. We had to go to Gaza. We had to take care that we won’t be massacred again, but at the great cost of 10s of thousands of lives. I don’t appreciate any loss of lives. But if a terrorist hide behind them, what can we do? These lives are her concern, honey. Ricardo wrote a song for her daughter. We asked her to sing it. I don’t think I can. It’s too hard because it says how can I go on without you, the one I loved the most and I I I go on every day. We have to stand tall and we have to go on living because this is the world that these radiant people left us.