Content warning: This article contains descriptions of violence.
“How many of you have heard about this before?” The question hung in the air of the hotel conference room, directed at a group of wide-eyed Stanford students. Silence stretched, broken only by the shifting of feet and hesitant glances. Finally, a smattering of hands rose – roughly half the room. The subject causing such a stark divide in awareness? October 7th. The massacre in Israel, a brutal attack that claimed the lives of approximately 1,300 people in small farming villages and at a music festival. It was, tragically, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. For many Jewish individuals, the initial silence following this horrific event felt deafening, leading to a painful question: are my friends antisemitic? However, a recent experience revealed a more complex and perhaps more unsettling truth: sometimes, silence isn’t malice, but simply a void of information. This realization became starkly apparent during a trip to the Nova Exhibition in Los Angeles, an art installation dedicated to the victims of the October 7th attack.
Prior to organizing this trip, dozens of interviews were conducted in preparation for visiting the Nova Exhibition in L.A. The aim was to gauge awareness of the October 7th events amongst non-Jewish Stanford students. The responses were consistently surprising. When asked, “What have you heard about Oct. 7th?” the typical answer was a deflated, “to be honest, not much.” Some even admitted, “I hadn’t heard about it until I saw your email and Googled it.” This widespread lack of awareness was jarring.
“How is no one talking about this?” one non-Jewish girl asked, genuine bewilderment coloring her voice. “It’s so weird that Stanford didn’t send out an email about this on its anniversary,” another girl added, the pain in her words palpable. These reactions underscored a growing concern within the Jewish community: were friends and peers turning a blind eye to Jewish suffering? Was this silence born from antisemitism?
To explore these questions and bridge the awareness gap, a group of 40 non-Jewish students dedicated a weekend to an overnight trip to the Nova Exhibition. This exhibition poignantly recounts the stories of the 380 college-aged partygoers brutally murdered at a rave in southern Israel. These young lives tragically represented about one-third of the total number of people murdered by Hamas on that devastating day.
“What you’re going to see isn’t like a Holocaust Museum… this is right now,” emphasized a friend who had tragically lost a close friend at the Nova massacre. He addressed the group during a prep session a few days before the trip, setting a somber tone. He recounted the chilling realization that his friend was at the attacked party, the frantic texts, and the agonizing wait for a reply that never came. The atmosphere in the prep session, previously light with excitement about the trip and Halloween plans, shifted dramatically. A collective, silent “Oh, shit” seemed to resonate through the room as the reality of the event began to sink in.
The digital echoes of October 7th on social media presented a stark contrast to the silence in broader circles. On Oct. 7th at 5:39 pm PST, just hours after the attack, a fellow Stanford student posted, “every martyr that fought today and in every moment…. Is so deep in my heart.” Further amplifying the disconnect, another peer posted on Oct. 9th, “Power to the people! Power to the resistance!” alongside a picture of a banner in White Plaza proclaiming “by any means necessary.” In the face of such charged rhetoric, the silence from many other friends was even more pronounced.
The question became unavoidable: how could individuals seemingly justify the deaths of innocent people – grandmothers, babies, mothers, daughters? And why the pervasive silence? Was this, in its essence, antisemitism manifesting as indifference?
Reviewing over 200 applications for the Nova Exhibition trip forced a confronting realization. Within Jewish circles, there was an underlying assumption that the world was ignoring their pain from October 7th. However, the interviews revealed a different reality: many simply… hadn’t heard about it. These students hadn’t been exposed to the same graphic videos that saturated Jewish social media feeds. They hadn’t read the same news stories. Some were even unclear about the location of the massacre. “I live in L.A., and I never heard about this massacre…I want to learn more about discrimination in my own home,” one student wrote in their application. Any initial awareness of an attack in Israel had faded into the background noise of daily life.
This realization, while perhaps logically comforting, felt strangely unsettling. It wasn’t necessarily antisemitism driving the silence, but rather a profound lack of awareness. People weren’t necessarily turning away because they hated Jews; they simply didn’t know what had happened to them.
A few days later, the group arrived in Los Angeles. As the bus pulled into the parking lot of the exhibition, the therapist accompanying the trip provided grounding breathing techniques, preparing the students for potential emotional distress. The earlier levity of breakfast was gone, replaced by a palpable sobriety as the group entered the Nova Exhibition.
The exhibition powerfully recreates the story of the young partygoers at the rave who were ambushed by Hamas terrorists. It depicts a horrific scene where young people, seeking joy and connection at a music festival, found themselves trapped in a nightmare. They were murdered indiscriminately – at the bar, on the dance floor, in restrooms, in their cars, hidden amongst the bodies of friends, even within supposed safe rooms.
Emotional barriers crumbled even before reaching the main exhibition space. The introduction video in the waiting room, featuring footage of young people dancing to trance music just hours before the attack, was devastating. “You just look people in the eye, and you see how happy they are, how much fun they’re having, and how they enjoy celebrating life,” explained Nova survivor Tal Shimony in the video. Then, jarringly, security camera footage flashed on screen showing someone approaching the DJ with a chilling message: “Turn the music off; there are rockets.” The crowd, oblivious to the impending danger, booed. The screen went black, and the group was ushered into the heart of the exhibition, into the recreated festival grounds.
Stepping into the exhibition was like stepping into a ghost of a party. The space glowed with soft pink light, and an unsettling ambient mix of techno music and party sounds filled the air. Each tent became a poignant memorial, displaying donated items from the Nova lost and found. Lip gloss, a discarded hoodie, a sea of iPhones – each object whispering stories of lives interrupted. One iPhone played a chilling video: “This is crazy… we’re at a party, and we just heard sirens… nothing like this has happened to us at a festival before,” the voice recorded, the faces of two sisters flashing across the screen. The bar, dimly lit and lined with bottles, was plastered with photos of smiling faces – the faces of dozens murdered while simply ordering a drink. The “safe room,” a space meant for ten, crammed with forty desperate souls seeking refuge from rockets, became a scene of unimaginable horror, where all were killed by grenades.
The expectation was that the non-Jewish students might view this as a distant tragedy, something that happened to “others.” However, the reality was profoundly different. They did see themselves reflected in the exhibition. They saw themselves in the panicked phone calls to mothers, begging for rescue. They saw themselves in the desperate embraces of partners. They saw pieces of their own lives – a Naked eyeshadow palette, a comforting selfie sent to a girlfriend. The realization dawned: this wasn’t solely a Jewish tragedy; it was a human one.
Navigating the exhibition became an intensely emotional experience, punctuated by choked sobs, comforting hugs, and the quiet offering of tissues. One student stood transfixed before a recorded phone conversation, her face etched with horror.
“Dad, I’m calling from the phone of a Jew… I just killed her and her husband… open WhatsApp now and see all the murdered Jews…. Look how many I killed with my hands… I killed 10! your son just killed Jews, dad!”
Her mouth slightly agape, eyes filled with tears, she turned, voice trembling: “I just don’t get it… how can someone be proud of murdering people?”
Yaira Gutman, mother of Tamar Gutman, murdered at the festival, shared her story with the group in a private testimony at the exhibition’s conclusion. “We were a very happy family,” she recounted, tears welling, “… and I hope one day we will be happy again.” She looked at a family photo on the screen, taken just before the festival, a poignant reminder of what had been stolen. For months, Yaira endured the torture of uncertainty, not knowing if Tamar was dead or a hostage, until security footage revealed the devastating truth: Tamar had been murdered in cold blood while running for shelter.
Ziv Abud and Maya Iz, Nova festival survivors, bravely shared their harrowing experiences. Ziv, dressed simply in leggings and a jacket, spoke softly, recounting her survival amidst grenades in a cramped safe room, wedged between the bodies of her deceased niece and nephew, her fiancé dragged away to Gaza. She unzipped her jacket to reveal a photo of her fiancé pinned to her chest, a constant reminder of her ongoing hope for his return. Maya, who worked as a bouncer at the festival, escaped by running for 14 miles, a terrifying journey past lifeless bodies and dodging relentless gunfire.
“I just bought tickets for a music festival this morning…. that could have been me,” a non-Jewish girl sobbed into the therapist’s shoulder in the exhibition’s “Healing Room.” The shared humanity of the experience was undeniable.
“HOW????” was scrawled in bubble letters at the top of the group’s reflection sheet. Below, in cursive, “Our Thoughts & Feelings,” followed by arrows and fragmented sentences capturing the raw emotional impact of the exhibition.
“Bullet holes in the toilets”
“Unimaginable.”
“Oh I own that too”
“Hard to understand how humans can be evil… to that extent”
“Disassociation.”
“Realizing how life could be taken away in an instant.”
“This is not history, this is now.”
“Tears came out of nowhere”
“How do these survivors still have hope?”
Whether the students left with a changed perspective on the complexities of the Middle East conflict remains uncertain. (“I’m so confused,” one student admitted with a mix of laughter and despair as the dinner conversation veered into geopolitical intricacies). If anything, the experience sparked more questions than answers, which, in itself, was a significant outcome. However, one thing became unequivocally clear: October 7th was an act of terrorism, an embodiment of evil and inhumanity.
The terror of October 7th represents just one agonizing fragment of the broader, enduring conflict. Yet, as a trip leader aptly stated during a reflection circle, “At the end of the day, it’s not about a flag… it’s about the people.” For students who identified as “Pro-Palestine,” attending the exhibition was a conscious choice to center humanity, to move beyond slogans and engage with the visceral reality of human suffering. Recognizing the shared human experience is the essential first step towards moving forward.
Scrawled at the very bottom of the “Our Thoughts & Feelings” sheet were four simple, yet profoundly weighty words: “How is this ignored?” To ignore such profound evil is not merely to forget the past, but to relinquish the very humanity that binds us to the hope of a better future. The journey to the Nova Exhibition revealed that sometimes, the silence isn’t rooted in antisemitism, but in a lack of awareness, a gap in knowledge that urgently needs to be bridged. For Jewish individuals initially perceiving antisemitism in the silence of their friends, this realization, while complex, opens a pathway for education, dialogue, and ultimately, greater understanding and empathy.
Julia Segal ’25
