New "October 7" center in Sderot
It is one of three conversations from that day that can be heard through earphones at a new October 7 Education Center in the southern city of Sderot, which was presented to the press late last month. The center aims to create an immersive experience using screens and other multimedia technology. Key to the experience are the virtual reality headsets through which one can digitally meet five survivors and heroes from the massacre at the Supernova party near Kibbutz Re’im, which saw 364 revellers murdered and 44 kidnapped to the Gaza Strip.
The horror of the day — in which some 1,200 mainly civilians were massacred by Hamas gunmen along the Israeli side of the Gaza border and more than 250 were abducted to the coastal strip — is explored through shocking personal accounts and real-time recordings, such as young Daria Karp’s report of her father’s murder.
Dvir Karp, 46, and his girlfriend Stav Kimhi, 35, were murdered by Hamas terrorists while protecting Karp’s children. Daria and Lavi were rescued after nine hours and reunited with their mom, Re’ut, 24 hours after the nightmare had begun.
The multimedia education center commemorating these chilling moments is housed in a large room rented from the Sderot Municipality. It is located across the road from a hill that affords clear views to the border with Gaza just 750 meters (half a mile) away, to Beit Hanoun beyond, and even to Gaza City on the horizon, where smoke billowed from IDF bombing.
The hill, which will soon have elevator access, is the first stop on a visit to the education center, which opened in April. A few thousand people have already visited, with a goal of 40,000 visitors per year. Multiple screens adorn the center’s walls. Some provide information gathered by the Kan news organization about the geography and timeline of the events of October 7 and the civilians and soldiers who fell on that day or were abducted to Gaza.
Another line of screens, like a row of windows, is used to present an account of what happened as realistically as possible, combining video clips, phone recordings, news broadcasts, and the sounds of rockets, gun battles, and more. (Nothing graphic is shown.)
Another set of images applauds the heroism of the IDF since October 7 and the remarkable response of civil society to the tens of thousands evacuated from the southern and northern borders during the early days of Israel’s military response to Hamas in Gaza and the terror group Hezbollah in Lebanon. According to Ilan Turitz, who manages tours and educational content, this aims to strengthen viewers’ resilience.
Chilling tales
The VR project was spearheaded by Stephen Smith, who ran Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation for over a decade. In one presentation, Mazal Tazazo, now 35, described how she and her friend, Daniel Cohen, excitedly planned for weeks for the all-night rave, but how the party turned into a nightmare as Hamas terrorists invaded, under a rain of missiles, spraying revelers with gunfire and raping many before murdering them.
In minute detail, she takes the viewer to the place by the road where she, Daniel, and Daniel’s friend Yohai Ben Zecharia hid in the grass, relating how she was smacked in the back of the head with a rifle butt and left for dead, and how she regained consciousness to see that Daniel and Yohai had been slaughtered. As the gunmen set the grass on fire, she managed to flee, bleeding heavily, to an empty car to hide until she was rescued by “an angel,” Itay Aharoni, who had also been at the party. Her friends’ bodies were so badly burned that it took a week to identify them.
At the press event, police detective Remo Salman Elhozyel, now 38, a Bedouin Arab, who was helping to guard the party, related how he drove back and forth in his car for three hours rescuing terrified revelers, spending 15 hours overall battling terrorists in the area. A married father of three, he is currently on leave from the police force, receiving trauma treatment.
Targeting Gen Z overseas
The center is run by ISRAEL-is, founded in 2017 to train young Israelis to share their personal stories with others of their age overseas and improve the state’s image. It began by training thousands of young Israelis who had just completed their compulsory army service before embarking on the traditional big trip overseas. It has since added programs for new IDF recruits, training in pro-Israel social media, visits by young delegations to mainly US university campuses, tours of October 7 locations for Israelis and overseas visitors, and more. Both Nova survivor Tazazo and police detective Elhozyel act as overseas emissaries.
Turitz explained, “We hope that visitors don’t just witness the story of October 7, but that they feel it, carry it, and realize that by adding their voice, they can help write the next chapter, one of resilience, unity, and enduring purpose.” He said the center could accommodate groups of up to 50 at a time, split between visiting the hill and the center.
Asked how a relatively few Israelis could convince overseas social-media savvy Gen Z youngsters to change their minds in the face of a torrent of information telling them Israel is committing genocide, Yotam Ivry, the CEO, just three months into the job, talked about nuance. (According to the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry, more than 66,000 Gazans have been killed in the ongoing Swords of Iron War. The figure cannot be confirmed and does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.)
“We bring Israelis to tell their personal stories. We show that the situation is more complex than what they [the young people overseas] see. We try to open hearts. It’s not political. We don’t send them with messaging instructions. They must say how they feel. It could be a young person from Ariel [a large West Bank settlement], Tel Aviv, or a Druze village; people are often surprised to meet an Israeli Arab.,” said Ivry.
One trick ISRAEL-is uses is to arrive at an overseas campus and set up a table with VR sets, giving no hint about an Israeli connection. Passing students are encouraged to put on the VR sets. “After watching, they’ll ask, ‘Why didn’t you tell me it’s about Israel?'” said Ivry. “We will respond, ‘Why do we need to,’ and try to start a conversation.”
He added that ISRAEL-is trainees had visited 290 mainly US university campuses in 2025 and had connected in-depth with around 30,000 individuals, both in Israel and abroad. The goal, he went on, was to have such interactions with 150,000 people over the next three years and 800,000 over the coming decade.
The visits are currently organized by overseas Jewish organizations, such as Hillel and Chabad, as well as Christian ones, including Passages. Ivry said Israel was working to broaden partnerships in a bid to reach both young Jews and non-Jews who “don’t want to hear,” adding, “We are not focusing on the extremes. We think most people are open enough to listen. And we do see a real change (after conversations).”
Nova survivor Tazazo, whose parents immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia, recalled trying to meet with a group of black women in the US. “Young people are frightened of being rejected for being anything other than pro-Palestinian,” she said. Police officer Remo Salman Elhozyel described a more positive experience from his visit to Toronto last year.
“I met a group of people from a Middle Eastern background and started talking Arabic,” he related. “One of the women said she couldn’t believe I was an Arab from Israel. She saw the footage on the VR set, took off the headgear, in tears, and said, ‘I’m sorry.'”
Sue Surkes