Nearly 50 traumatized attendees who survived the Hamas attack on the Nova music festival in Israel committed suicide in the last six months due to their inability to deal with the tragedy, a survivor revealed on Tuesday.
Guy Ben Shimon addressed a State Audit Commission hearing concerning the treatment of survivors, highlighting what he claimed were failures of Israeli state entities in adequately caring for the victims of the attack. “Few people know, but there have been almost 50 suicides among the Nova survivors. This number, which was true two months ago, may have increased since,” Shimon said.
Shocking Revelations
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Shimon said that several friends who had survived the massacre struggled to overcome the trauma of what they had witnessed, I24NEWS reported. “There are many survivors who had to be forcibly hospitalized due to their psychological state. My friends are not getting out of bed, neither am I,” he said in Hebrew.
“I am practically unable to do anything. I had to get a dog to help me survive in my daily life. The goal for all of us is to return to work and function normally, but we cannot do it without adequate help,” Ben Shimon added.
The hearing’s main focus was on supposed official agencies’ disregard for the survivors of the Jewish state’s attack by Hamas.
According to the publication, complaints have been made over a range of challenges, primarily administrative, that the survivors encountered when trying to get their PTSD diagnosed and treated.
Truth vs Denial
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State-owned Kan 11 TV reported that authorities have contested the claims. In January, the Health Ministry maintained that there had been no increase in suicide rates since October 7.
“Why should I constantly prove what I experienced? Why am I forced to go back to the details of what I experienced for them to believe me?” another survivor, Naama Eitan, told the hearing.
“I participated in a study that monitored my pulse and other parameters and revealed how bad my health is. I sleep on average two hours a night. Each morning at 7 o’clock, I relive the moments when I was hidden in the bushes with terrorists passing by me. I can no longer move on my own, I need to be constantly accompanied,” she said.
The Israeli Ministry of Health said that it lacks information to substantiate the claim regarding the suicides.
During the attack, 364 people were killed at the Nova Music Festival in the Negev desert. According to recent studies cited by i24NEWS, around 600,000 Israelis have been awaiting psychological support since October 7.
