Two days after Nova festival survivor Roei Shalev died by suicide, his father on Sunday issued an appeal to the nation, calling on authorities to treat the crisis facing survivors of the massacre as a “national emergency.”
Shalev, whose girlfriend Mapal Adam was murdered in front of him as he tried to shield her at the festival on October 7, 2023, was found dead Friday night in a burnt-out car on Route 2 near Netanya, hours after he wrote a post on social media explaining that he “couldn’t take it anymore,” and asking for forgiveness. He was 30 years old.
His close friend, Hilly Solomon, was also killed during the Hamas attack on the festival. Shalev’s mother, who was reportedly very close to Adam, died by suicide two weeks after October 7, 2023.
“Please don’t be angry with me, please. No one will ever understand me, and that’s okay because you can’t understand. I just want this suffering to end. I’m alive, but inside everything is dead,” Shalev wrote on social media on Friday night.
Shalev’s death came just three days after the two-year anniversary of the murder of his girlfriend and friend.
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“We need to flood the issue, treat it as a national emergency,” his father, Ronen Shalev, said in an interview with Ynet published Sunday.
People visit the site of the Nova music festival, where hundreds of revelers were killed and abducted by Hamas and taken into Gaza, as Israel marks the second year anniversary of the attack, near Kibbutz Reim, southern Israel, Oct. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
The country needs to “push for and establish a proper and professional system specifically to treat the Nova families,” Shalev said. “I call them the Nova families because it’s something very broad – it’s entire families, including the survivors, the parents and the siblings who are paying the price.”
Shalev explained that the festival was attended by some 4,000 people, and that it was not a small event.
“It’s 4,000 shattered families, 4,000 survivors who are somehow clinging to life – with treatment, without treatment, with support, without support – but clinging to life with great difficulty,” he said.
Speaking about his son’s struggle in the wake of the traumatic event, Shalev said: “First of all, he didn’t get enough treatment. He probably didn’t want it enough. This issue needs to be brought onto the public agenda, especially the awareness that survivors need to be encouraged to want to receive treatment.”
“Many simply don’t want to get treatment,” he continued. “They think they’re okay, that they’ll get through it.”
The abandoned site of the Supernova music festival, near Kibbutz Re’im, where Hamas terrorists murdered and abducted numerous partygoers, October 12, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
“They don’t understand how much they need it,” he insisted.
“There needs to be a lot of education and support,” Shalev said. “Also for the parents, so they know how to explain it to the kids – so that they get the treatment.”
“The treatment helps,” he added. “These treatments save lives.”
Shalev went on to explain that he had no indication that his son was considering taking his own life: “He was a child full of life, the happiest in the world… We didn’t see this coming.”
“We knew he was in a bad mental state in the last four days,” Shalev told Ynet, especially after the memorials for the second anniversary of October 7.
However, Shalev insisted, “I never imagined it would get to this point.”
Police and rescue forces at the scene where Roei Shalev was found dead inside a burned car near Udim, October 10, 2025. (Tal Gal/Flash90)
“The Defense Ministry informed us that he is being recognized as a victim of hostilities, which is good,” Shalev added, but said there is more to be done for other survivors and relatives of victims. “I look at other families, and there are quite a few who lost someone, and they should all be automatically recognized, including the ones who died by suicide.”
“The problem is the second circle: Those who die by suicide afterwards, the parents who take their lives,” he said. “Roei’s mother also took her own life because of the events [of October 7], and still hasn’t been recognized. We’re fighting for her to be recognized too.”
Shalev’s mother died by suicide two weeks after the October 7 attacks. According to the Kan public broadcaster, she, too, set her car alight.
People visit the site of the Nova music festival, where hundreds of revelers were murdered and abducted by Hamas and taken into Gaza, as Israel marks the second year anniversary of the onslaught, near Kibbutz Re’im, October 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
More than 370 people were slaughtered during the Nova festival massacres, when Palestinian terrorists crossed from Gaza into Israel in the early hours of October 7, 2023, attacking the music festival and several nearby communities, with acts of extreme brutality and sexual violence.
Dozens were kidnapped and taken to Gaza, with many of them still held two years after the attack that sparked the war.
Last year, 22-year-old Nova survivor Shirel Golan died by suicide after a year-long struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, her family said.
A ceasefire was reached last week to halt the conflict, and the remaining 48 hostages — 20 of whom are alive — were set to be returned to Israel by Monday.