Shirel Golan survived the Nova massacre but died by suicide. Online denial may be to blame

Many survivors of Oct. 7 have spent the past year testifying about what happened to them. They find meaning in speaking for those who no longer can — those who were murdered or abducted, as well as those who were silenced by their trauma.

But many of these survivors, especially young women who witnessed or experienced sexual violence at the Nova music festival, have told me over the past year that they feel like they are screaming into the void as they try to counter anti-Israel propaganda and misinformation online.

This weekend, we witnessed the tragic toll that can result from these survivors having to relive the most horrible day of their lives over and over again, from them being stuck in an endless loop of trauma. Shirel Golan, who was rescued by a police car as she fled the Nova site, died by suicide on her 22nd birthday, after twice being hospitalized with acute symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder including disassociation and withdrawal.

The brutal atrocities committed on Oct. 7, especially against the thousands of young people attending the Nova festival, were beyond imagination. I do not know how anyone experiences these horrors and moves on. Adding to the trauma of witnessing their friends hunted down, tortured, raped and murdered by terrorists, these survivors are also facing a world that refuses to believe their accounts.

Online, female hostages who have shared how they were sexually assaulted when in Hamas captivity have faced denial and mockery. “She is lying through her teeth and reading through a script,” read one of the more charitable replies to Amit Soussana’s testimony of being groped and forced to perform a sexual act on her captor.

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Shirel Golan died by suicide on October 20 at her residence in Porat, northwest Israel, close to Netanya.