The friends of a 23-year-old killed in a kibbutz after seeking refuge from the massacre at a music festival last Saturday plan to rebuild the community as a sign that “peace and love are more powerful than terror”.
Dorin Atias was due to start a shift as a bartender at 7am at the Supernova festival but decided to arrive earlier to get some dancing in before her work started.
When the rockets started flying overhead at about 6am, she reacted immediately, sensing something was not right. She grabbed two friends, dashed to her car and drove to a nearby kibbutz in Re’im where they knew they could find shelter or a bunker.
“They decided to go to safety, but no one knew there were terrorists among them,” said Inbar Saban, her best friend.
“About 10.20am her friend Eden called her sister and the last thing she heard was her saying to her sister, ‘Shani, they got me’. We still don’t know what has happened to her. She is still missing. And we pray for some information,” she said.
Atias was buried two days ago and the body of Leo, the other of the three friends, has also since been recovered.
Their friends hope Eden is still alive but have had no word. In their town outside Tel Aviv they have been mourning as a community, with more than 1,000 at Atias’s funeral.
“She was like my little sister that I chose myself at the age of 12,” said Saban.
She said Atias was the light of her family and friends’ lives and her death had “emptied so many hearts”.
But as the country’s next generation, they had to take a stance.
“As twentysomethings here … as Israel goes to war, it teaches you something: you have to move on, you have to keep alive for everyone who has died.
“We must do it for Dorin and for everyone who is murdered because it is insane that innocent people who went to dance and innocent babies that live near Gaza have been murdered. We have nowhere else to go. We must protect this land. The souls of everyone are so precious,” she said.
Survivors in Atias’s friendship group have told of horrific atrocities as hundreds fled the music festival last Saturday morning.
“The stories are so terrifying and I don’t think the media knows the whole story. We have around 16 to 20 people here who managed to survive and we are hearing terrible stories from our friends.
“One of my friends hid under an ambulance. And then she felt heat and she saw that the terrorists had burned the ambulance with all the other people hiding inside.”
Other friends told her they had to hide among dead bodies for 10 hours to escape. “It is just unbearable to even think human beings are capable of doing stuff like this,” said Inbar.
Atias’s friends are setting up a funding page for a lasting memorial.
“We decided to do something for good in her name, to build up the kibbutz again.
“It is in dark times like these that we have to show humans chose peace and love, we must be the power of light in times of darkness. It keeps people together. This is the legacy of Dorin, all the light she brought to so many people,” said her friend.
