Oct. 7 Survivor Who Lost Boyfriend at Music Festival Vows to Talk About Painful Memories

By Ayaka Kudo / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent

1:00 JST, October 11, 2025

TEL AVIV — Noam Ben-David was seriously injured and lost her boyfriend in an attack by the Islamist group Hamas in Reim, Israel, on Oct. 7, 2023. She told The Yomiuri Shimbun that although her physical wounds have healed, she still suffers from the mental trauma.

In the early hours of the morning, Hamas members crossed from Gaza into Israel. One of the places attacked was an open-air music festival in Reim, just 5 kilometers from the Gaza border, in which 383 people were killed. The incursion sparked the war between Israel and the Islamic militant group in the Gaza Strip.

Ben-David, 29, and David Newman, then 25, were at the music festival. A friend of theirs looked up at the sky and remarked on what the friend thought were fireworks, but they were actually rockets fired from Gaza.

Shortly after they began to flee in a car, they heard gunfire. They frantically got out of the car, ran across an open field and hid inside yellow trash containers with 14 other people.

Newman sent his location to a friend in the Israeli military and covered Ben-David with a trash bag. The sounds of grenade explosions and gunfire gradually drew nearer. A young woman next to her trembled in terror and wet herself, Ben-David said.

“When we got inside and we put our heads down … we were surrounded with terrorists. They just got to the area. I heard a girl from the outside screaming, please don’t take me,” Ben-David said, adding the militants were speaking Arabic.

The woman next to her also began crying, making Ben-David fear that her voice would be heard and reveal their location. She received a message on her phone from Newman, who was near the container door. “David texts me [help is] going to be here in 15 minutes,” she said, adding that he told her to help those around her to get relaxed.

The next moment, the container door opened with a shout, “Allahu Akbar” (God is greatest), and Newman was shot in the chest.

Ben-David heard his final breath. She was shot in the waist but rescued by the military about 15 minutes later. Of the 16, only four survived.

According to Ben-David, Newman was a positive and cheerful person, and was like the sun, always trying to help others. Thanks to the location information he sent, about 200 lives were saved.

Ben-David still regrets not being able to hug her boyfriend while he was dying and tell him goodbye. “We always promised each other, like you’re going to die for me. You love me and you’re going to die for me, like [that’s] something that couples do, right? And he died for me,” she said.

Ben-David said she feels guilty for surviving and can still see the scene inside the container in her head when she closes her eyes.

She feels distress at slogans that seem to deny the existence of Jews being chanted at demonstrations around the world. She said she wants them to stop inciting conflict and violence at demonstrations, and wants everyone to be able to live together without anyone having to lose their life.

She also said she does not want people to forget why the war started and believes she was spared to bear witness to that day.

Ben-David added she is prepared to confront her painful memories in order to keep telling of the senseless acts that took so many lives.