Natalie Sanandaji, a survivor of the massacre at the Supernova Music Rave on October 7, spoke to Arutz Sheva - Israel National News from the scene of the music festival where hundreds of people were murdered.
"My strongest memories are the ones where we were happy, the ones before the whole attack happened, the ones where I was dancing right next to so many of these people who didn't survive," Sanandaji said. "Memories of them smiling at me. None of us could have known what was going to happen next."
She recounted the moments the terrorist onslaught began. "One of the most terrifying feelings was when we first started running. Maybe about 20 minutes into running, we saw dozens of people running in our direction. We suddenly realized that the Hamas terrorists were coming from multiple directions. We thought that they were just behind us, but when you see so many people running in your direction you realize they're being chased after, they're being shot at. Ad you suddenly realize the Hamas terrorists are closing in from multiple directions and you now have to change directions. The direction that you were running in isn't safe. You're running towards the terrorists. That was probably one of the most terrifying feelings."
According to Sanandaji, one of the reasons she survived together with the group she was running with was that they did not stop to hide from the terrorists. "At a certain point, maybe two hours into running, we ran into some friends of ours who were hiding in a ditch, and they told us to join them and to hide in this ditch from the terrorists. A few of us started crawling into the ditch, and then one of my friends started yelling at us that this is a bad idea, and that if we stay and hide in this ditch and the Hamas terrorists find us, that we'll be sitting ducks and they'll just shoot us on the spot. So he told us our only option for survival was to continue running and that hiding is not an option."
"Unfortunately, we later found out that he was right, because our friends who stayed and hid in that ditch did not make it out alive. They were shot and killed on the spot," she said.
She explained that "It's important for me to tell the story because I want people to see a face to this story. When the whole world is dehumanizing Jews and acting like this massacre was a form of resilience to 'free Palestine,' I feel that maybe putting a face to the story will show them how human this story is. Because if they're just reading about this story in an article, if they're just seeing someone on the news talk about it who wasn't there, I don't think they're gonna feel as emotional about it. I don't think they're gonna feel connected to it."
"I hope that when they see my face, when they see that there's a face to this story, that they'll feel more connected to it. And maybe they'll change their mind about how they feel about everything that happened on October 7.
"If we let them take our joy away, the joy of living, then we've let them win. And we're not gonna let them win. Of course we're gonna dance again," she concluded.