IDF soldiers dance with Torah at Nova festival massacre site

Hundreds of people, including IDF soldiers, danced with a Torah scroll singing ‘The Nation of Israel lives’ on Tuesday, at the site of the Supernova music festival massacre near the Gaza Strip.

The event marking Simchat Torah came a day after the remaining 20 living hostages were released from Gaza, two years after the Oct. 7 attack.

The Simchat Torah holiday celebrates the conclusion and beginning of the annual cycle of public Torah readings.

The desert site, which has been turned into a vast memorial area, had been thronged with bereaved families on the second anniversary of the Gazan slaughter last week.

Nearly 400 people were slain at the dance party during the massacre, or about one-third of the some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, murdered during the Hamas-led invasion.

Separately, scores of people celebrated the Simchat Torah holiday at the site of the destroyed police station in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, where some 20 police officers died battling Hamas terrorists two years ago.