Festival boss after Hamas massacre: "We’re going to dance again"

Thomas Mohr: Starting today, up to 50 hostages out of 240 in custody are being released. Do you have information about who the people are, that finally can be handed over to their loved ones? Forty hostages have been taken alone from the music festival area.

Rami Shmuel: I know who’s going to be released today are only little babies, children and a couple of women. Maybe also some Thai workers, that were working on the fields. This is all I know about the civilians and the hostages that are going to be released in the next hours. 

The festival area is, of course, the largest crime scene in Israel's history. Bodies of more than 360 young people, guests, personnel - all gathered for a peaceful and joyful day - were found dead. Many got raped, shot, slaughtered on their escape, running for their lives, and some could hide for hours and uncertain if they ever would survive that horror. You have been on the premises until minutes before the attack and then returned afterward. What did you witness when you arrived again at the festival area?

When I arrived back to the festival area, I saw an unforgivable sin. Human bodies all over the place, on the ground, on the field. Naked women, butchered, slaughtered, executed. Young people, that had their head cut off. Burned up, like a torch – like garbage. Women that have been abused by monsters. I saw burned up cars with people inside. Safe zones, that turned out to be a death zone. After these monsters showed up, everybody that tried to escape from this safe zone got shot immediately.

They came with one purpose and one purpose only: to butcher and to kill. To kidnap, to rape, to humiliate young people whose only crime was, that they wanted to dance and to be happy for a couple of hours. What my eyes saw, the whole world should know. The whole world should be shocked by this act of terror by the Hamas organization. There were hundreds of bodies, you know we searched the ground for around thirteen days after the first attack on October 7th until we manage to bring back as many as we found - of our friends, colleagues and the audience.

Mr Shmuel, did you or do you personally know victims of that horrific attack?

There were friends of mine, festival security guards that have been working with us for years, DJs and audience members from all over Israel.

You know, this act of terror caught us off guard. Nobody could expect that there are monsters living among us that would kidnap little babies, the elderly, women... To negotiate a release of these monsters that took lives is unbelievable. The world should stand united with Israel against those monsters because this is not only our fight. The world should know that. And the world should realize that these monsters should not exist anymore. Because on October 7th, Israel took the attack. But let's go back in history. What happened in the other parts of the world? The United States took a horrible attack by a terrorist organization on September 11th with the twin towers. History teaches us, this kind of organization, this terror of radical Islam, should not have a place between us, and we should hunt them down.

After October 7th, Israel is conducting a large scale offensive to destroy Hamas. And since then, Israel is criticized for the deaths of many thousands of civilians in the Gaza Strip. Is this criticism in your eyes valid? Given the huge number of civilian Palestinian casualties there?  

No, I tell you one thing: I don’t think there is any army more humane than the Israeli Defense Force. Hamas is targeting its own people by taking them and making them a human shield. Even if though we are at war, still, the Israeli government is sending them supplies and making a humane effort to help them. And making the humanitarian effort to help the civilians, warning them to clear an area that is going to be attacked. And what Hamas is doing is standing between the civilians that want to escape from the area that Israel is attacking now. When civilians tried to escape from the North to the South, as the Israeli government asked the civilians of Gaza to do, the Hamas organization hunted them down and painted them as victims of the Israeli Defense Force.

Mr. Shmuel, what is the political situation in Israel right now? Benjamin Netanyahu has been under political pressure before. Right now, he is prime minister of a joint war cabinet including the opposition. Is the pressure on Netanyahu growing, what is your assessment?

I think we should not be dealing with politics now, I think there was a big underlying error in analyzing the information about the attack from Hamas on October 7th by the Israeli government and Israeli Defense Force, but I think right now Israel is in the middle of war and this is not the time to deal with politics.

The civilians will not forget October 7th. And we will come demanding answers from everybody, including our Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I think we should now let go of politics and give them courage and support to win this war, to provide the citizens with what we need and what we want.

Will there ever be a new, a joyful, a fantastic music festival like it was before October 7th?

I want to believe that what Hamas did on October 7th is only making us stronger, only unites us, and only motivates us to do bigger festivals, bigger shows – we’re going to dance again, nobody can stop that, not even Hamas. And I think the main cause is to bring back all the hostages, all the civilians, all the soldiers that Hamas kidnapped from Israel. And I think after that and after the return of our kidnapped, Hamas will realize that they deal with the wrong people.