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October 7 was the moment the music died. Rockets in the sky, death squads on their way. Hamas’ invasion of Israel had begun. The partygoers at the Nova Music Festival, a trance party just five kilometers from the Gaza Strip, were sitting ducks. Terrorists gunned them down as they fled for their lives, burned people alive in their cars as they tried to escape, and lobbed grenades into concrete shelters to blow them limb from limb. Unknown numbers were r*ped, even gang r*ped in the most horrific of conditions. By the time the massacre was over, 379 people had been slaughtered including 15 police officers. And another forty-one were abducted, taken into the Gaza Strip — more than 33 are still trapped there, six months later. 

Lahav Deri escaped by the skin of his teeth. He was at the festival with his two younger brothers, who also survived — one of them, only just. And when he got home, battered and bruised, he did the most Israeli thing possible — he grabbed his gun and went to help his reserves unit, still battling terrorists committing massacres across the country’s south.

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