Her lungs felt like they were about to burst, but Dvash Holi knew she could not stop running.
Hamas terrorists were “shooting anything that moved” and desperate survivors were playing dead under piles of murder victims.
She tried to ignore the pain of each footstep on the desert scrubland, the crack of machine gun rounds ricocheting around her, the pools of blood in the open door wells of shattered cars – and the sight of felled bodies tumbling next to her as she frantically pressed on.
Less than half an hour earlier, the 21-year-old had been preparing to greet a new day after a night spent dancing at Israel’s Supernova outdoor music festival.
Dubbed “a journey of unity and love” Dvash had been looking forward to the concert. She arrived at the site in Re’im, in the Negev desert, with 10 of her friends in plenty of time for the official 10pm start on Friday, which marked the beginning of the week-long Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
Once there, they teamed up with another group of 20 friends. Little could anyone have known how a third of that extended group would never return home to their families and loved ones, their lives brutally snuffed out by Hamas’s murderous assault.
Dvash calls it a “holocaust story”.
Her world had imploded by 6.30am, after hundreds of terrorists crossed the Gaza strip border. It began with the event marshals urging people towards shelters after the rocket attacks began.
“We weren’t really worried about bombing. We’d seen it before. It happens every few months,” she said.
But she was soon to discover this was different, as hundreds of armed gunmen arrived, intent on murder.
“We were working out how to get to shelters. As we moved, we started to see the dead bodies. Cars were shattered, some were burning. There were dead bodies everywhere,” Dvash said. But it was when she spotted Hamas gunmen firing from paragliders that she started to run.
Dvash had turned 21 just two days before and is fit. Her fitness would save her.
“I ran in the field. People around me were falling down. I thought every second was going to be my last,” she said.
“I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t even look back. If I did I’d get shot.
“We did try to stop and help, but they kept firing at us. I realised we couldn’t stop for a second. They were shooting anything that moved – cats, dogs, people, even things that didn’t move.”
Her voice, which had been eerily calm and collected, trembled as she recalled the fate that befell some of her friends.
“Some tried to hide under dead bodies. They put the bodies over them – they surrounded themselves with a hundred dead bodies – and covered themselves with blood to make it look like Hamas had already got them,” Dvash said.
“Many of those who died did this, people I knew. My friends. No one made it. Hamas just shot everyone again, living or dead, to make sure. It was a holocaust story. I ran for 22km – that’s almost half a marathon.”
She hopes that speaking about last week’s events will help her overcome the inevitable trauma of what she experienced. At least, this is the advice from her mother, a British-born therapist.
“I went there with 10 friends and met 20 more. Ten of them did not make it back,” Dvash said. “My mother told me the sooner I can talk about what I witnessed, the less trauma I’d suffer. But some of my friends cannot talk about it at all. They are broken.
“Some of them seem barely alive. They are intact physically, but it’s as if they are dead inside. I’m not sure they will ever recover from things they saw and experienced there.”
But Dvash is determined to remain optimistic. “We need some time to recover and get things back together,” she said.
“But we will never stop partying – and never stop dancing. They won’t break us.”
