A survivor of the Hamas terror attacks on the Israeli Nova music festival testified Tuesday nearly 50 attendees have committed suicide since October 7. Many others have suffered psychiatric trauma, Guy Ben Shimon said at the State Audit Commission, a UN Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry, which was established May 2021 in attempts to mitigate conflict in the Middle East. The commission is examining the treatment of Israeli officials toward the victims of the brutal, unprovoked attack by the Islamic extremist group. UN diplomats in Geneva were briefed on the investigation so far and the commission said it has mostly been focused on the war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel. In January, Israeli state media 11 TV claimed there were no suicides since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel where more than 360 people were killed by terrorists. The first attack was near Kibbutz Re'im, where terrorists gunned down people at the nearby music festival with assault rifles. Hamas took also took more than 250 hostages back into Gaza. Of the hostages, more than 40 had been at the festival, according to the Times of Israel. “Few people know, but there have been almost 50 suicides among the Nova survivors,' stated Shimon, arguing authorities could have and should have done more. “This number, which was true two months ago, may have increased since.”“There are many survivors who had to be forcibly hospitalized due to their psychological state. 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.”Several other survivors came forward to testify during the audit. "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?” said another survivor Na'ama Eitan. Eitan described her experience hiding under a tree for seven hours “while terrorists passed beside” her. She said she “called the police and asked ‘Where are you? Why is no one coming?’”“If there is quiet around me, my head is noisy and I go back there,” she testified. “If it weren't for my psychologist, I would not be here.”Of a population of approximately 9.3 million, at least 600,000 Israelis are awaiting psychiatric support in the six months since the October 7 attack. Another survivor Natalie Sanandaji said people at the music festival were "in an open field" with "almost nowhere to hide.""It felt hopeless. It really felt hopeless. There's just simply nowhere to hide, there was nowhere to go. There's stories of some people that hid in drains, in trees and fields. A lot of those people... (the terrorists) ended up finding them and killing most of them," said Sanandaji."The ones that survived were the ones that hid under the dead bodies and pretended to be dead."Chair of the three-person audit, former United Nations rights chief Navi Pillay, said Israel has prevented UN investigators from interviewing victims and witnesses. “I deplore the fact that people inside Israel who wish to speak to us are being denied that opportunity, because we cannot get access into Israel,” Pillay said.Chris Sidoti, one of the commission members, said “as far as the government of Israel is concerned, we have faced not merely a lack of cooperation but active obstruction of our efforts to receive evidence from Israeli witnesses and victims to the events that occurred in southern Israel."
