Alert – Inside the final tragic selfie from Nova Festival shortly before October 7 Hamas massacre at desert dance event

The rockets had already started raining down when a group of friends posed for one last selfie at the Nova Festival in Israel, unaware of the horror about to unfold. 

Two – British-Israeli Aner Shapiro and Yoad Pe’er – did not survive the day as they became victims of the brutal Hamas attacks of October 7. 

Another, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was held hostage for 11 months in Gaza before being murdered by the terrorists as the Israeli army closed in on their hiding place. 

The photograph of the friends is revealed in a BBC documentary film called Surviving October 7th: We Will Dance Again, to screen on September 26, detailing the full story of what happened to the Nova festival-goers. 

Made by award-winning Israeli director Yariv Mozer, it almost entirely uses footage taken by the young people at Nova as well as video taken by the terrorists as they embarked on their murderous rampage. 

Mozer was given exclusive documentary permission to go on to the Nova site just 24 hours after the attacks. 

Smiles of innocence: Aner Shapiro – third from the left – and next to him, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, pose for a group photograph at the Nova Festival. Aner died in the attacks while Hersh was kidnapped and later murdered

A grab of a Palestinian militant at the Nova music festival in the Negev desert in southern Israel last October

The selfie was taken by a group which included Halely Ben Tzion, 21, who, like Mr Goldberg-Polin, was from a religious family and hadn’t told her parents she was going to the trance party as she sneaked out of the house on October 6. 

She was friends with Mr Shapiro, 22, an off-duty Israel Defence Forces soldier who was best friends with Mr Goldberg-Polin. 

The film shows how, at first, no one was too concerned when the rocket attacks started. On the stage was British-Israeli Noa Beer, a 29-year-old booking agent who had brought a DJ to the rave from Hungary. 

As the sun came up in the early hours of October 7, the party was in full flow. ‘The sun rises, and you suddenly see the people around you, you suddenly see their smiles and you see the dance floor moving. 

And then someone grabbed my hand and showed me the sky. It was full of rockets,’ says Ms Beer. 

At first, many of the party-goers assumed it was fireworks. Ms Beer instructed the DJ to stop his set and grabbed a microphone to shout ‘Red alert’. The party was over and people started to leave. 

But because they were accustomed to rocket attacks which normally ended as quickly as they started, many didn’t think to hurry. 

Unbeknown to the festival fans, Hamas terrorists had infiltrated Israel’s border in scores of places and were heading towards them from several directions. 

Ms Ben Tzion, Mr Goldberg-Polin and Mr Shapiro all went to the campsite to gather their things. 

‘We are at our camp, hugging each other and laughing at the situation,’ recalled Ms Ben Tzion of the moment the photo was taken. 

‘Aner, Hersh, all my friends who were there. We took a selfie, one last selfie. And then everyone went on their way.’ 

Ms Ben Tzion didn’t hurry: ‘I went behind the central stage to get a beer. I figured that as soon as the rockets would stop, that’s when we would leave, get out of there. But suddenly some guy goes ‘psst’ at me. I look at the stage and I see four guys hiding. They said, ‘Listen, girl, get under the stage, there are terrorists here’.’ 

And then she heard gunfire. She recalled: ‘We’re hearing gunshots constantly, they’re getting closer and closer. People screaming, begging, and then, bang, silence. The scream went up, ‘Terrorists! Run! Now! Everyone run!’ ‘ 

Survivors of the deadly October 7 attack attend a memorial on September 1, a day after bodies of six hostages were discovered in Gaza 

Discarded belongings and rubbish in the aftermath of the Nova festival Hamas attack

Ms Beer, whose car was in the VIP section, was one of the first to leave. But Hamas terrorists were still in front of her. 

‘We were driving on Route 232 and rockets were exploding over our heads and then two cars that were in front of me suddenly hit the brakes,’ she said. 

‘At first it looked like an accident so I opened my door to help and at that moment I heard the first bullet. They missed us by chance. 

‘I looked in the mirror and I could see the car behind me had stopped. The driver and the guy next to him were shot in the head. Every car near us had been shot off the road. People were trying to run out of the cars and there were terrorists shooting them down.’ 

Mr Shapiro and Mr Goldberg-Polin, along with Mr Pe’er and his friend Adi Kaufman, were the last into a roadside shelter where others from the festival were hiding. Then they heard the terrorists. 

‘Aner tried to calm everyone down as much as possible,’ recalls Eitan Halley, 28, one of the few survivors from the shelter. 

She added: ‘I saw Aner pick (a grenade) up and toss it out. And then they threw another one in. And every time they threw in a grenade, he just grabbed it and tossed it out. I was thinking to myself, ‘this kid is throwing live grenades’.’ 

Mr Shapiro’s luck ran out on the eighth grenade. ‘There was a really big explosion,’ 

Ms Halley said. ‘When I finally got up, I remember Aner wasn’t standing any more – he wasn’t with us.’ 

Ms Halley said that when Israeli soldiers entered the shelter to see if anyone was alive, ‘I realised I was sitting in a pile of dead bodies’.