Last week I visited the Nova Exhibition in Old St, London. It’s been almost three years since that dark day when Hamas terrorists rampaged through army bases, kibbutzim, and a music festival, but this exhibition feels like a fresh wound from a sharp blade. As this is a traumatic event, even as a spectator, I’ll be careful how I describe my observations. I knew what I was letting myself in for – I lived in Israel on October 7th, 2023. I watched the news in the ensuing days, as the death count grew and the extent of the horror unfolded. I worked with people in high-tech who had close family members kidnapped, starved, and killed. I listened to podcasts featuring hostage families such as Jon and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersh, aged 23, was injured, taken hostage, then eventually murdered in a tunnel, along with five others. I had watched the harrowing film, We Will Dance Again, featuring footage of the beautiful dancers at a party that so quickly turned into a pogrom. In October 2024, one year after the attacks, my wife and I visited the Nova festival site. Back then, the site was a mix of makeshift memorials, with pictures of the victims taped to poles, and the Nova festival signs still in place. I recall the silence of driving down Route 232 as we passed the roadside shelters, where people were trapped and killed. I remember the ground-shaking booms from the IDF just a few kilometres away in Gaza as we walked around the site. I remember standing in the dumpster, where festival-goers hid and were ultimately gunned down. I remember reading their last WhatsApp messages, such as, “Tell my parents I love them.” I remember reading about the ambulance, where some twenty people hid, until it was ripped apart by an RPG........

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