Shani Louk, symbol of Nova festival massacre, laid to rest

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18 may 2024

The father of Shani Louk, who was murdered by Hamas following the October 7th attack on the Nova music festival in Israel, has spoken of his relief at the return of his daughter's body.

Nissim Louk told Sky's Middle East correspondent Alistair Bunkall that he is "relieved" to be able to bury her now, after months of not knowing where her body was.

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17 may 2024

The parents of Shani Louk, the 23-year-old tattoo artist killed by Hamas and paraded half-naked through Gaza like a trophy, described identifying their daughter’s body seven months after she was murdered by terrorists — hours after her remains were recovered in Rafah by Israeli soldiers.

“The body that we have now is complete and beautiful and looks like she’s alive actually,” said Shani’s father, Nissim Louk, telling The Post Friday that the condition of her body was “a miracle.”

“I think she’d been in one of the tunnels which was very, very cold…that’s why the body is complete and beautiful and the skin is still the same color, you still see the tattoos, it’s amazing,” he said told The Post as part of a conversation with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

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Shani Louk (2001-2023) was born on 7 February 2001 in Israel to an Israeli father and German mother, Ricarda Louk, who had lived in Ravensburg, Germany, and moved to Israel in the early 1990s. Louk and her family moved to Portland, Oregon, U.S., in the early 2000s, and she attended kindergarten at Portland Jewish Academy.

Louk later became a resident of Tel Aviv, where she worked as a freelance tattoo artist, and also had a following as an Instagram influencer. According to Louk's aunt, she held pacifist views and obtained an exemption from military service in Israel, which she said was facilitated by her dual citizenship.

Killing and parading of body

Events during the Re'im music festival massacre

On 7 October 2023, as a component of the initial incursion in the Israel–Hamas war, Hamas militants crossed into Israel from the Gaza Strip. They carried out a massacre at the Supernova Sukkot Gathering music festival. The event was an open-air psychedelic trance festival, conciding with the final day of Sukkot (6 October) and Simchat Torah (7 October), and took place in the western Negev desert, approximately 5 km (3.1 mi) from the Gaza–Israel barrier, near the Re'im kibbutz.

Louk was at the festival, accompanied by her boyfriend, a Mexican citizen. After the Red Color rocket warning alarm was sounded, and the attack began, Louk spoke on the phone with her mother, saying that there were few places to hide and that she would try to find one. She was killed while attempting to reach safety and was reported as missing at the time.

Viral video

Hours later that day, a video emerged showing Louk's body, partially clothed, with a significant head injury and blood-matted hair, being paraded in the streets of Gaza City by Hamas militants in the back of a pickup truck; they were exclaiming "Allahu Akbar", and were joined in the cheers by the people in the crowd surrounding the vehicle, some of whom spat on the body. The video went viral, becoming one of the first viral videos of the Israel–Hamas war. It was released in a wave of videos of Hamas members parading hostages and bodies. Photographs were also taken and circulated online.


The body of Shani Louk in the back of a Hamas pick up truck with Hamas fighters in Gaza

According to security experts interviewed by Agence France-Presse, the release of the video, along with other videos showing dead or captured civilians, has the character of deliberate and sophisticated propaganda aimed to induce feelings of "helplessness, paralysis, and humiliation" in the population, and that viral spread of such materials causes amplification of narratives desirable to Hamas. In a New York Times column, Nicholas Kristof discussed the video as an example of the causes of psychological trauma and anger experienced within Jewish communities in the aftermath of the attacks. According to commentator Bobby Ghosh, Hamas released propaganda videos quickly, wanting to be the first to score psychological warfare gains; however, the video showing Louk did not demoralize Israeli society, and instead her "treatment at the hands of [her] captors drew widespread revulsion and reprobation, and if anything, strengthened Israeli resolve to exact retribution."

Despite Hamas being banned on Twitter as a terrorist organization, some of its propaganda videos have circulated there after being reposted from other platforms. Journalists discussed the video showing Louk together with other Hamas-related content that was being shared, in the context of the European Commission's warning to Twitter owner Elon Musk about permitting spread of illegal content. On 12 October, the European Commission initiated an investigation against Twitter for dissemination of "violent and terrorist content" and other forms of illegal content.

Associated Press photograph

Before the scene from the viral video, as the pickup truck was returning to Gaza Strip, it was photographed by an Associated Press freelance photojournalist. The image, showing the vehicle carrying Louk's body and the attackers, was included (and featured as the first) in the series of 20 photographs from the war taken by the Associated Press's team of photographers which won the "Team Picture Story of the Year" prize at the 2024 Pictures of the Year International competition.

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Emotion on Israeli tv. Arab Israeli anchorwoman Lucy Aharish with a Jewish Israeli family whom family members were murdered and kidnapped on 7 October in Southern Israel.