LIVE — Surviving October 7th: The Nova Festival Massacre and What Comes After It | With Shahar Horovitz

Recorded live on October 7, 2026, three years to the day.Shahar Horovitz was 22 and had just come home from nine months of backpacking in South America when she went to the Nova music festival with about 30 of the friends she'd made on that trip. At 6:29 a.m. the music stopped. By 7:30 there were gunshots, and when she asked a police officer what to do, the officer told her: you have to run, I can't help you.She ran for hours through the fields of the Gaza envelope, lost her friends, and joined three strangers she found catching their breath under a tree. They hid in a greenhouse, called the police and were told to hide, and finally reached a farm run by a Bedouin farmer named Yunus. When terrorists came into the farm, they crawled under his office and lay there while armed men walked inches away. Yunus, hiding under a tractor, was found and told them the survivors had left. He saved eight people that day, and was later honored at the President's Residence.Shahar talks about thinking of her great-grandparents, Auschwitz survivors, while she lay under that building; going to five or six funerals in the first week; the guilt survivors carry; and why she gave herself and her friends new names in her book but kept the real names of the five friends who were killed. She also talks about recovering in New York, the stranger who called her book "biased" without reading it, the therapist who told her "you're not finished," and the text a friend sent her the day after: "You fought yesterday and you won. Keep winning."SHAHAR HOROVITZ Surviving October 7 (published in Hebrew as We Were the Sun), on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FV2SG227 We Were the Sun: https://www.wewerethesun.com/THE HONEST TAKE Podcast: https://podcast.honestreporting.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-honest-take/id1896315802Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1pCnClcM4jiggKP46YZGjG YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLuF-lEHTGTw_RrfN9EP6pdWhgjMX7Fg5HonestReporting: https://honestreporting.com HonestReporting on X: https://x.com/HonestReportingThe Honest Take is HonestReporting's weekly long-form interview show, hosted by Ben Chertoff. Every episode at podcast.honestreporting.com.If this conversation stayed with you, please leave The Honest Take a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the single biggest thing that helps new listeners find the show.