In the dappled sunlight, Gal Dalal steps across the uneven ground where his brother was kidnapped by Hamas gunmen. He crouches underneath a rope slung between the trees before standing upright next to a campaign poster of his sibling, bearing the words, “Too many days in Hamas captivity - release him home!”
It’s been three months since Gal, 29, fled Hamas when they overran the Supernova music festival site next to kibbutz Re’im. As he returns to the site for the first time, the air is warm and filled with the smell of eucalyptus and greenery. But there is an unavoidable heaviness here too.
“When I came here today, it was like there was a weight on my chest,” he told The Telegraph. “I can feel what happened here. I did not think that I would feel it so physically, but I do.”
Gal, from the town of Herzliya, managed to escape Hamas’ Oct 7 rampage, running for eight hours before Israeli security forces found him. But his 22-year-old brother Guy was taken into Gaza, around five kilometres away.
The grass has grown and wildflowers have spread among the silver-barked trees at the Supernova site, where militants killed 364 people and took another 140 hostage, including Guy.
Since then, the bodies of those murdered, the burnt-out cars of people who tried to flee and the debris of the ransacked festival have been removed from the area. Memorials have sprung up in their place. In a clearing, families of the victims have created small shrines: candles in tins and plastic fizzy drink bottles, white stones, and olive branches.