‘Body parts are flying': Survivor recounts Hamas attack on music festival at Washington synagogue

Editor's note: This story contains graphic details that may be difficult for some to read. Discretion is advised.

Before a crowd of Jewish leaders who gathered at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C., a survivor of the massacre at the Nova Festival in Israel, bombed by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, told her story. 

Noa Ben Artzie, 25, described the terror to a gathering convened by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on Tuesday.

“We started hearing what we thought was fireworks that the music festival arranged,” she said. “When I opened the tent, I realized chaos was in front of me.”

The industrial engineering student was with her best friend and her best friend’s sister, both U.S. citizens, when the attack began. She said the three of them were enjoying the music festival when rockets began flying overhead.

“Hundreds of people were running towards me. When I looked up at the sky, I saw hundreds of rockets above me. That’s when I started panicking,” she said. 

Ben Artzie said she ended up trying to shelter in a small cement building. In a panic, dozens of others quickly piled in. 

She found herself pushed to the back. People began falling on top of her, and she said she started to suffocate.

“Next thing I know, they’re throwing five grenades inside, body parts are flying around, and all I hear around me is people suffocating, people on top of another and a lot of shots from within,” she said through trembling breaths. “That’s when I realized there was a huge body on top of me.”

Ben Artzie told the assembly of American Jewish leaders and U.S. government officials that she has been unable to learn the fate of her best friend, and her friend’s sister.