EXCLUSIVE — The killing of a 26-year-old man by Hamas has left a family in mourning while seeking retribution against the Islamic terrorists that took his life at a nightmarish music festival in southern Israel.
Avidan Tordjman, an Israeli who spent the first four months of his life in France, was one of the estimated 260 attendees murdered at the Oct. 7 Supernova Sukkot Gathering near Kibbutz Reim, a community near the Gaza Strip. Idan Rakovsky, Tordjman’s brother-in-law, described him in a Wednesday interview with the Washington Examiner as “a beautiful, tall person” with an “unbelievable smile.”
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“The elderly in the kibbutz loved him, and they came to us after the funeral to tell us how they remember him and how much he helped them,” Rakovsky, also 26, who like Tordjman served in the Israel Defense Forces, said. “And kids and children and babies loved him, and he was just the coolest uncle, and they loved playing with him. He used to buy them gifts and presents, and he was just this person who could connect with people.”
The events that unfolded at the Re’im music festival were part of the deadliest terror attack against Israel in its history, a Hamas-led operation that has culminated in at least 1,400 Israeli fatalities and at least 200 hostages being taken to Gaza, according to Israel’s government. At least 30 Americans have been killed and 13 are missing, the State Department says, while Hamas alleges over 3,000 Palestinians are dead.
Meanwhile, disinformation has been proliferating on social media and news websites in the United States in connection to the conflict, such as the conspiracy boosted by Hamas on Tuesday that an Israeli rocket killed 500 people at a Gaza City hospital. Israel’s military released an intercepted call Wednesday in which two Hamas terrorists discussed how the strike was the result of a failed Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket, while President Joe Biden said Defense Department officials shared intelligence with him supporting it came from the Palestinian side.
‘I love each one of you’
On the morning of Oct. 7, Idan Rakovsky and his wife, Prielle Rakovsky, awoke to the sound of blaring sirens at Masu’ot Itzhak kibbutz in Israel. The newlyweds live in Toronto and traveled to the Jewish state to introduce their 3-month-old baby to Israeli family. They also planned on celebrating Simchat Torah, a Jewish holiday for the end of Sukkot.
The Rakovskys retreated to their safe room, a routine not unfamiliar to Israeli citizens given the country faces perpetual threat from Hamas and other terror groups. They closed the door and windows — and stayed for three hours.
When the pair emerged from the room later that morning, a message was waiting in their WhatsApp family group chat. It was from Tordjman, who was at the festival alongside an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 attendees.
“I love each one of you,” Tordjman told his family.
A family member then called Tordjman. The 26-year-old answered and whispered on the phone that he was hiding underneath one of the stages at the festival. “There are terrorists who are shooting all over the place,” Tordjman said in the call.
A relative of Tordjman heard on the other line how he was trying to calm others also trapped under the stage. “Don’t you worry. Nothing will happen. We’re safe here. Everything will be OK. I’m with you,” Tordjman said to the others.
“He tried to be a leader, and he took leadership in these moments,” Idan Rakovsky, a teacher in Toronto, told the Washington Examiner.
But they weren’t safe. An hour after the call began, an explosion occurred. The call disconnected.
Later, the family was told by a woman at the festival that she covered herself with Tordjman’s blood once he died to fake dead and to conceal herself from Hamas.
‘Containers filled with bodies’
By Saturday evening, Tordjman had gone radio silent. His family also failed to get in contact with Tordjman’s friends at the festival, including 26-year-old Obed Abargel, who also died at Re’im. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just declared war.
Idan Rakovsky drove Sunday morning to a police station in the southeast city of Lod, where law enforcement instructed the public to bring DNA samples to help track missing persons. He brought Tordjman’s comb.
“I reported him missing, and they opened a file,” Idan Rakovsky said. “We just didn’t know what was going on. We were very, very worried. Sunday was horrible because every two hours in the world, there were different reports on the news that groups of people were found at the party, or they were hiding in a bush or hiding in a trench somewhere. Israel was in total chaos.”
Because Tordjman held dual citizenship, his father, Michael, contacted the French authorities and got in touch with Meyer Habib, a parliament member in France. Officials said French President Emmanuel Macron’s team was reviewing the matter.
The family connected with a person from the festival who was taken hostage in Gaza but escaped by foot to Israel. The person alleged they saw Tordjman in Gaza. But they were on drugs and delusional, an unreliable source in an unprecedentedly chaotic moment.
Tordjman’s father decided to drive with family to Shurah, a rabbinate military base in central Israel where bodies from the festival were brought following the massacre. In the days after the festival attack, families have been waiting impatiently outside Shurah to find their loved ones.
“There were containers filled with bodies brought there by trucks,” Idan Rakovsky said. “People went to the festival to party. They were beheaded and shot. Women were raped. They tied people together and burnt them alive. I don’t think Jewish people had experienced something like that since the Holocaust.”
Shurah didn’t let the family in, however.
But on the outskirts, the family found Simcha Rothman, an Israeli legislature member. Rothman took father Michael in his car to chat privately, though he didn’t have answers. Later, a female soldier came outside and informed the father that Tordjman was dead.
“That’s how my father-in-law discovered that his son was murdered,” Idan Rakovsky said.
‘We’re never going to give up’
The funeral was last Tuesday afternoon in southern Israel. That same day, the Israeli military said it regained control of the Israel-Gaza border and received its first plane from the U.S. carrying weapons. The IDF emphasized that “all options are on the table,” not ruling out a ground offensive into Gaza.
“We are fighting for our existence,” Idan Rakovsky told the Washington Examiner. “We’re fighting Nazis.”
“We’re protecting our existence, and we will do whatever it takes,” he added. “We’re not going to give up on this. We’re never going to give up.”
Stories about the deadly festival have continued to surface online as survivors detail their experiences fleeing Re’im as Hamas began mowing down festivalgoers. The terrorists came on motorcycles and in trucks and were equipped with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles.
Israelis hid under dead bodies. Lee Sasi and nine other attendees did so “for seven hours straight,” according to images she sent to a friend.
“It was like animal slaughter,” Sahar Ben-Sela, another attendee, said last week.
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As for Tordjman, his family is still searching for answers over his cause of death.
“We promised ourselves 80 years after the Holocaust as a Jewish people that we have only one country that will protect us, and we swore this would not happen again,” Idan Rakovsky said. “It happened again.”
