‘I was captured by Hamas and watched them kill my friend – the UK needs to hear my story’

‘When I opened my eyes, I found myself surrounded by eight terrorists in civilian clothes, with knives, hammers and wooden bats.’

May Hayat had run for her life, hidden in a pit and escaped an ambulance moments before it was blown up, but Hamas still caught her.

The bartender’s dream night at a music festival in the Israeli desert with her best friend had descended into chaos, horror and death, before her captors let her go.

May is one of several survivors who came to London to share their stories as part of an immersive exhibition about the atrocities that took place at the Nova Festival in southern Israel, on October 7, 2023. 

Some 413 people were killed and 44 taken hostage to Gaza from the annual outdoor trance festival, all while terrorists conducted massacres in nearby Kibbutzim, including Be’eri, Kfar Aza and Nir Oz.

May, now 32, and her best friend Liron Barda had just finished a night working at a bar in the festival when Hamas attacked.

Speaking at the Nova Exhibition in London, May recalled: ‘We suddenly saw people running, but the music was still playing. We didn’t understand what was happening until we saw the rockets in the sky.’

The military wing of Hamas launched a barrage of rockets at 6.30am on October 7th as cover for their ground invasion from Israel.

Militants blasted through the border fence in numerous locations while others headed towards the festival via paragiders.

The event was quickly shut down and festivalgoers were told to evacuate, but it was already too late for many.

At 7am, May, who was still at the festival, got a call from a friend who had tried to flee.

‘She yelled, “May, I see terrorists, I see dead bodies, I see blood. I need help.”‘

That was the first time May had heard about the terrorists.

Many partygoers who encountered Hamas on the roads out of the festival returned to the bars with gunshot wounds.

While Liron tried to help some of the injured, May texted her family goodbye.

The bartender hid in a police command post on the festival alongside 50 others terrified of the approaching Hamas fighters.

Then a police officer came in and told the group: ‘You need to pray as hard as you can and run for your lives.’

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That is exactly what May did.

‘I started to run and the bullets started to whistle about me. I was telling myself “It is your life, you need to run faster.”’

May went to hide in an ambulance in an open field alongside dozens of others, but her inner voice told her it would be a ‘death trap’.

Moments after she decided to get out of the vehicle, Hamas fighters fired an RPG at the ambulance and murdered 18 festivalgoers.

By this point she met a fellow partyer Avi Dadon, and the pair were picked up by another man and driven across the fields.

May said: ‘When we got to the road, I saw a lot of dead bodies, burnt bodies, body parts, burnt cars and smoke all over.

‘The terrorists started shooting at the car. We did a U-turn, and we went back to the open fields.’

May and Avi hid in a hole in the ground for 15 minutes until they were dragged out by Hamas fighters.

‘They pulled me out first. When I opened my eyes I found myself surrounded by eight terrorists in civilian clothes, with knives, hammers and wooden bats.

‘One of them was a 14-year-old child.

‘Then they pulled out Avi. He was on his knees. He begged them; he offered them money.

‘When I saw their reaction, I realised that is what they were looking for. They wanted us to be afraid. So I told myself I had to be strong.’

When one of the terrorists began to make advances on her and grabbed her hand, they noticed a childhood scar on her arm that she had covered with a tattoo.

The Hamas fighters pulled away, but told the pair they were being taken hostage.

After walking for two hours, the group stumbled across the bodies of two dead women.

There, as Avi lay on his knees, May said she saw ‘three of the terrorists grab his hands, as one of them stabbed his neck’ in front of her eyes.

Avi was killed on the spot, but May was dragged further towards Gaza.

However the terrorists’ plan was spoiled when the car the terrorists wanted to take did not start.

May talked with the group’s ringleader all the way back to the Nova festival grounds, where he eventually decided to let her go.

She puts her safety down to her tattooed scar – from an accident with boiling water as a child – which she once used to hate.

May claims: ‘According to their beliefs [of Hamas terrorists], a scar like this means a strong woman. If something happened to her because of them, the 72 virgins they are promised will not come looking for them in heaven.’

The barman hid under a stage until she eventually rescued by the army, but her friend Liron never made it home.

She was one of the 378 people massacred at the music festival, while another 44 were taken hostage.

May travelled to London to share her story with visitors of the Nova exhibition.

The UK capital is the 10th city to host the immersive experience documenting how the terror attack unfolded on October 7th.

The exhibition – visited by Sadiq Khan, the Archbishop of Canterbury and others – is scattered with belongings from participants and shows film as their nightmare unfolded.

There are burned-out cars and shot-through toilet cubicles, as well as a table of shoes belonging to those who fled.

May believes it is crucial for Brits to hear her story, and those of dozens of other victims and survivors.

She told Metro: ‘London is the place where most visitors did not know what happened to us.

‘We need to commemorate this day and our friends, who cannot share their stories.’

The exhibit was extended for a longer-run in London due to high demand and welcomed visitors for the last time on Wednesday, July 15.

London has been at the centre of antisemitic attacks against Jewish people and community sites, including when two men were stabbed in Golders Green in April.

May said she had heard the situation in the UK was ‘not good’, but added: ‘We are people of light. Light always beats darkness. That is why we are here and I am not afraid of them.’

That was the message conveyed by Ofir Amir, 42, one of the co-founders behind the Nova Music Festival who is now one of the key organisers of the exhibition commemorating what happened.

Ofir fled the festival in a car as Hamas attacked, but was hit by a bullet in both legs.

For four hours, Ofir lay unable to walk, talking to his wife on the phone – who was nine months pregnant – while hisfriend died beside him

Ofir told Metro: ‘Our lives changed on October 7th. We do not feel responsibility for what happened but we felt we felt we had to do something so no one will deal with this trauma alone.’

A week later Ofir and his friends opened a healing centre for the victims of the attack.

He then began planning for a memorial, which opened in Tel Aviv two and a half months after October 7.

It then evolved into an international exhibition that has toured the world for two and a half years.

‘We just cannot stop, there is no other option,’ Amir said.

‘There is so much hate and denial on social media. We can show the world what happened to us and educate.’

The survivor said that the story needs to be told more than ever as antisemitism rises across the world.

He added: ‘Before we came to the UK, people said you have to be careful there, it is dangerous there.

‘But people said this about Toronto, Berlin and Paris. It is dangerous everywhere.

‘The message is not about a country or religion or about taking sides, it is about what happened at a music festival.

‘People need to see what happens when you feel the hate and when you don’t fight antisemitism.’

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