The Re'im music festival massacre was a mass shooting carried out by Palestinian Hamas terrorists on 7 October 2023 amid a large-scale surprise attack on Israel during the Sukkot holiday.
The Supernova Sukkot Gathering, held in the western Negev desert at Kibbutz Re'im (three miles from the Gaza-Israel border), was supposed to be a psychedelic trance music festival celebrating "friends, love, and infinite freedom." The peace festival attracted Israelis aged 20 to 40, with around 3,500 people attending the event.
During the early morning hours of 7 October 2023, the musical festival was among the first targets of Hamas' surprise attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip. At 6:30 AM, after cutting the electricity, 50 Hamas gunmen arriving in vans and paragliders sprayed gunfire in all directions, while truckloads of militants fired at escaping cars and gunmen blocked the roads. The wide open terrain left few places to hide, and many attendants hiding in nearby trees were shot down by the terrorists. Hamas terrorists paraded the naked and battered body of 22-year-old German-Israeli tattoo artist Shani Louk and chanted "Allahu Akbar" while spitting on her body. Other footage of the attack revealed Hamas' murder and hostage-taking of concertgoers. The ZAKA volunteer first-responder group retrieved at least 260 bodies from the party grounds, while several more partygoers were taken as hostages and brought back to Gaza to be filmed in Hamas propaganda videos and used as hostages before Israel launched a retaliatory invasion of Gaza, Operation Iron Swords. By 18 November, the estimated death toll had risen to 364.