I made Aliyah to Israel on June 15, 2023, after arriving on April 27, 2023, and deciding to stay after a month-long vacation. The festival was called "SUPERNOVA SUKKOT," and it would be my first-ever music festival. Back home in Canada, I was never one for parties, raves, or techno; I had only ever been to concerts. I was both excited and anxious about it. We left a friend's birthday that night to go to the festival. It was myself and my friend Dor in one car, my cousin Mordecai, his girlfriend (now fiancée) Tamara, Yael, and Ellie in another vehicle, and my friends Almog and Barak already there, picking out a spot for our camp. The festival was beginning at midnight and going until four in the afternoon on Saturday. Arriving at the festival, we stopped to get gas and water at the Kfar Azza gas station. At the station, we saw other partygoers doing the same as us. We continued along our way, arriving at the festival at 2:00 in the morning. Pulling up the uneven dirt path towards the "parking lot," which was just an empty patch of dirt filled with thousands of cars, I heard the deep bass of the music from the festival and saw the lights over the fence. We unpacked our stuff and headed to the ticketing area to get our wristbands and bags checked by security. There were two types of security: armed and unarmed, whose job was to ensure we stayed safe amongst ourselves. When entering the festival, you don't just go directly to the festival ground; you have to walk through the camp area. Walking through the trees and all throughout the wooded area, we saw everybody's camp set up, and the whole place was lit up with yellow string lights through the trees with a warm glow. To both sides of the pathway, we saw everybody in their camps joking, smoking, laughing, and drinking, having a good time with the sound of the DJ performing at the time echoing through the woods. We walked to the very back where our two friends had already set up a spot for us, unpacked, settled down, and said our hellos. Now that we were ready to have fun, we all took a half-pill of ecstasy and shared a 2L bottle of water mixed with MDMA, passing it around for the first hour or so of the night. We made our way into the festival ground and were met with the scene as follows. Ahead of us to the right was the main stage; left of it were two bars. Left of the bars was the marketplace for people who had booths set up and food stands, even a massage booth, body painting, and more. Further left was the arts tent in a large geometric purple dome. Behind that in the back half of the festival ground was the small stage called the "mushroom stage," where smaller DJs played a darker style of trance music. My friends and I spent maybe 30-45 minutes at the small stage before making our way to the main stage where they remained for the rest of the night. Because I didn't grow up with any sort of parties in my life, I didn't have the same energy as my friends, even under the influence. So I told them, "While you guys stay here, I'm going to walk around and take photos," because I had my film camera with me and I wanted to take photos of my first festival and make some new friends, which I did. Throughout the night and the following morning, I took photos with three rolls of film: Cinestill 800T, Kodak 200, and Cinestill 50D. I met people all through the night, learning their names and faces, getting their contact info so I could share these photos with them in the coming week, and making new friends. Over 25+ individuals, I learned who they were, where they were from, and I connected with them for a brief period in time. Sunrise came along, and at 6:00, my friend Ellie texted me that all the others went back to the camp to take acid, and she was waiting for me at the main stage before we joined the others for a rest before the headliner DJs came on. I was in the crowd looking for Ellie and couldn't find her while on a video call trying to find one another. Eventually, we found each other, but only because at 6:30, the rockets began. Slowly, people began to notice the rockets. The DJ came over the speaker and said in Hebrew, "Red alert, red alert," there are rockets, and the security began to usher people towards the camp and parking lot. The party was over, I could feel it. Ellie and I made our way back to our friends, and it was chaos all around, a mix of people screaming and panicking, rushing to their cars as soon as possible. Some people did leave as soon as the rockets began and for sure a few made it home okay, like my friend Son, but others weren't so lucky and didn't make it. Amidst the chaos, I remember seeing people still smiling, laughing, joking, and smoking, enjoying music from their own personal speakers under rocket fire. We got back to our camp, and my friend Yael was reading on her phone names of cities: Rishon LeZion, Herzliya, Sderot, Netivot, Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Petah Tikva—names of cities under rocket fire. But we felt safe as far as we knew because we weren't a target; there was nothing around us. They were shooting past us towards the center of the country. The biggest risk to us was maybe debris from rocket interceptions. My cousin and I discussed what to do, whether to leave or stay for a while and wait for traffic to clear. No arguing, no shouting, just a 10-15 minute discussion. Eventually, we agreed we would leave. We weren't going to just leave our belongings; we had to pack up. We didn't have much to pack, and with eight of us total, I told my cousin something along the lines of, "There are eight of us here. With or without me, it will take the same amount of time to pack up our stuff. I'm going to take my camera and take some photos and, while I'm at it, see if I can lend anybody a hand." I made my way throughout the camp area and began asking around if people needed help, rocket fire above, and taking photos of the joy I still saw, even if faint. After about 45 minutes or so, I made my way back, and as I was walking back to our camp, I heard a faint sound just almost out of earshot. If I wasn't so on edge and full of adrenaline, I might not have heard it. It was a sound I can only describe as machine gun fire. Growing up in Canada, we don't have machine guns; we have shotguns, hunting rifles, and handguns. Unless you go hunting or to the shooting range, you won't even hear those fired. My only exposure to machine gun fire was Call of Duty and film. But the sound I was hearing didn't sound like it was from within the festival ground. As somebody with many friends and family who have served in the IDF, I knew that they were trained not to fire their guns (primarily M16 and M4 rifles) fully automatic. But the sound I was hearing was the sound of fully automatic machine gun fire, and it made me even more anxious and on edge than I already was, heart pounding, and a lump in my throat. It made me feel sick. I came back to my friends, and there was no consensus among us when I shared what I heard. Again, no arguing or outright denial, but nobody had the same thoughts. Somebody suggested perhaps it was a drill at a nearby base or training, but I wasn't buying it. I wanted to leave more than ever, and thank God because our stuff was packed up. We said goodbye to Ran Shaffer, an older guy from Kibbutz Be’eri who had his camp next to ours, and made our way to the parking lot. At our car, I asked my cousin if I could drive because, out of our group of eight, myself, Ellie, and Dor were not on acid; everybody else dropped acid around 6 AM. My cousin tossed me the keys, and I became the designated driver. In this vehicle, a four-door Mitsubishi sedan about the size of a Honda Accord, it was my cousin Mordecai riding shotgun, and in the back seat, Yael, Ellie, and Tamara. While we were taking our time loading up, that's when Hamas arrived just as we finished between 07:50 and 08:00 in the morning. Since we were in the parking lot, we didn't see them arrive, but we heard them—all the screaming and gunfire. Now we all knew something else was happening. It wasn't just rockets; it was bad, and it was on top of us. I climbed into the driver’s seat, my cousin in the passenger seat, and the girls in the back. I flew down the dirt road towards the exit, swerving and trying not to cause an accident or hit somebody running past us. We made it to the exit, the same way we entered the festival ground, and I saw dozens upon dozens of cars and dozens more. Hundreds of people were trying to flee for their lives. I didn't want to wait for them, so without asking, I passed everybody in front of us not moving fast enough for my liking or not moving at all. I pushed my way to the very front, driving our car off-road, risking getting us stuck. Facing the road, I saw police and security blocking the way to our left, telling us not to go there. So I listened. I didn't realize they were there because down that way we came in Kibbutz Be'eri, Kfar Azza, and Alumim. Hamas was brutalizing anybody they came across, burning people alive and raping people. Cars were turning around and going the other way, to our right. I looked down the road further south, parallel to Gaza, and saw traffic, so I didn't go there either. I didn't realize the cause of the traffic was Hamas, way down in that direction, killing anybody they came across. So I drove us ahead into an empty field, thinking we would find one of two things: a road out or a structure of some kind to hide in or behind. Having lived in Canada forever, I knew back home almost all farms have either a road or a structure nearby, and I was hoping it would be the same here. Unfortunately for us, we didn't make it more than 30 meters into this empty, barren field before we were shot at, and my cousin's girlfriend Tamara was the first to notice and command us to get out and run. Now, when I say we were shot at, I don't mean we specifically were targeted, but us and everybody around us were shot at. Whether you were on foot or in a car, it didn't matter; they were shooting at us all. So we fled the car. Eventually, my friend Ellie and I ducked down, holding onto one another in this empty barren field, with my friend Yael and Tamara behind us doing the same. We all looked back towards my cousin Mordecai and saw the back of his head as he ran back to the car, got in the driver’s seat, and came back to pick us up. Now my cousin was driving, and I was in the passenger seat. All that was left for me to do was take photos with my camera and remaining film and take video with my cousin's phone. Driving through these fields aimlessly, so much dust in the air, we couldn't see or breathe. I eventually pointed my cousin towards a field nearby with orange trees, and I saw a space in the trees. I suggested driving towards it; maybe it was a road. Worst case scenario, we hide in the woods. We drove towards the other field, and it was a road. We stopped on the way and tried to invite others into our car, but people ignored or couldn't hear us. Driving through these fields is when I learned we were so close to Gaza, less than 6 km away. I asked my cousin, "What's the nearest border they'd be coming from?" trying to figure out what was a safe direction. My cousin answered my question with another question: "What direction is east?" I told him we were driving east, east towards the sun as the sun sets in the west. "Why east?" I asked. "Because west is Gaza," he responded. That's when I first started thinking Hamas. Driving through these fields east, we made it to a road. We went down this road towards Netivot. At this point, I began seeing bodies and carnage: cars riddled with bullets, crashed, abandoned, etc. We came to Netivot and saw a police car with a body inside riddled with bullets and what we assumed was another police checkpoint. Many police vehicles were on the road; we thought it was a checkpoint, but it was just officers helping people. Rockets fired overhead and ambulance workers over a body on the ground. None of the soldiers paid any attention to us. I suggested to my cousin that it might not be a checkpoint, so he should drive over the median past them, and if they wanted to stop us, they could because they had guns. Surprisingly enough, we drove by, no questions asked, no attention from the police, passing the city of Netivot, doing everything we could to drive towards Tel Aviv while also avoiding any signs of danger. Driving from Netivot towards Sderot, then home to Tel Aviv. But along the way, we saw numerous bodies in their cars, next to them, nowhere near their cars. Dozens and dozens of bodies. I made a conscious effort not to film or photograph them out of respect. We came to the highway, and one of the first vehicles I saw had a man in the driver's seat, dead with a hole in his face. Soldiers were on the opposite side of the highway, more cars with bodies inside them and bodies around them. We made it to a stretch of road and spotted a silver car with two figures next to it who didn't look like soldiers or police. They were wearing blue jeans, cargo pants, black t-shirts, and black balaclavas over their faces, holding machine guns. One man had his gun aimed at us, and the other was facing away towards the car beside them. The doors were all open, and we saw inside. We spotted a man and a woman in the driver and passenger seat, shot dead, very clearly. We screamed at my cousin not to stop, just to keep driving. One of the men had blood all over his hands and arms. They clearly saw us; nobody else on the road was alive. Nothing happened. They didn't shoot, they didn't shout, nothing. We made it home to Tel Aviv at 09:47 in the morning, not even a three-hour drive. That was just the five of us, though. Our other three friends, Barak, Almog, and Dor, were not with us or following us. We didn't learn what happened to them for over seven hours, but we finally learned they were alive. They survived hiding in a bush for 6.5 hours while Hamas murdered people all around them. My next concern was that everybody I made friends with and photographed at the Nova festival was dead. I developed and scanned my photos on the 9th of October and posted all over social media trying to find anybody I could. Those whose contact I had, I reached out to directly. Everybody I photographed except two individuals, Dor Avitan, 26 years old from Eilat, and Ran Sheffer, 48 years old from Kibbutz Be'eri, were murdered by Hamas. My photograph of them was the last photo of their smile and joy that exists in the world. Beginning on October 10th, I began doing media appearances, whether in person or virtual, sharing my experience and talking about the individuals I met that day and photographed, trying my best to tell the world. Throughout the month of October, every day I did interviews up to six times a day until the end of the month. November came along, and I did a speaking tour to universities and communities all over the US and Canada. I was away from November 5 - December 20. I returned to Israel on December 21 until February 21, then left again for another tour until May 15, 2024. I visited over 160 cities between the US and Canada and have spoken to over 50,000 people because I want people to understand what happened to us and give back a little of the humanity to those I met, as the way the world talks about us is as if we are not individuals anymore. It's dehumanizing. I'm trying to get a little bit of that back.