By Stephen Silver
The University of Pennsylvania has often been a nexus of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since Oct. 7, with bitter battles going on everywhere from the quad to Congressional hearing rooms. That was again the case on March 31, when the university’s Hillel hosted a pair of survivors of the attack on the Nova Music Festival, while protesters gathered outside.
Appearing at the event were the Israeli-born actress and activist Noa Tishby, along with the two survivors, Noam Ben David and Moran Stella Yanai. Noam, a musician and artist, was shot during the attack, while her boyfriend, David, was killed. Moran, a jewelry designer and artist, was taken hostage and held for 54 days before she was freed during the first cease-fire.
The event, which filled the second-floor auditorium at the Penn Hillel building, marked the first stop on a tour of colleges called Voices of October 7th, which was scheduled to stop at The Ohio State University, the University of Michigan and the University of Texas in the ensuing days.
“Oct. 7 is such a defining moment, it’s such a life-defining moment, for anybody who has been through it on the ground,” Tishby said, by way of introducing the two survivors to tell the stories of who they were before the attack.
Ben David may be familiar to those who saw the documentary “We Will Dance Again.” She shared how much she loved attending events like the Nova festival.
“This community is wonderful,” she said on the panel. “You feel accepted, you feel welcome, no matter what is your skin color, what gender you are, what is your identity, what you believe in. It doesn’t matter. You’re welcome. We just came to enjoy the music, to give hugs, to smile at each other. It’s the most welcome and wonderful place.” Yanai described herself, prior to the ordeal, as “a very, very optimistic person, a peace seeker, an artist. I really got to a point that there is no ugly and bad.”
The two realized something was wrong at around sunrise, which Ben David described as what is normally “the most wonderful time in every party.”
She shared the harrowing story about how she survived, by hiding in a trash bin, while her boyfriend David Newman and several others were murdered in front of her.
Yanai, who is half-Egyptian, half-Moroccan, and “very much Jewish,” shared that she happened to be wearing an Arabic necklace, which helped her evade capture multiple times throughout the day before she was ultimately captured.
“All I thought in that moment, being literally touched by 13 men, was how much faith can a person have at that point?” Yanai said of the moment when she was captured. “How much strength a person needs to believe that nothing will happen to you, that [they] will survive that situation.”
After Ben David shared her story of hiding on that day, Tishby compared the story to a story from her family, when her grandmother’s older sister hid from the Nazis during the Holocaust.
The two survivors and Tishby talked about how upset they have been by the rise of anti-Israel protests following the Oct. 7 attack. Last year, Yanai engaged in a viral debate with a leader of the UCLA student encampments.
Indeed, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian, about 75 protesters gathered outside the event, having marched to the campus from 30th and Market streets. Philadelphia and Penn police officers blocked off 39th Street Walk near Hillel. The protesters were not visible near the building either when the event was scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. or when it ended at around 8 p.m.
Tishby noted from the stage that about three times as many people were inside to attend the event than were outside protesting.
Among the crowd, it was clear there were a number of Israelis in attendance, who could be heard speaking accented Hebrew, and when Tishby asked if people in the crowd had ever been to the Nova festival grounds, several hands went up.
There was a time when it would have been hard to imagine Noa Tishby making an appearance at Penn. The actress and activist, who has been a visible pro-Israel activist in the last year and a half, has frequently been sharply critical of events at the university, including when Penn hosted the Palestine Writes festival in September 2023, and then after Oct. 7, when an encampment appeared on the campus and when then-Penn president Liz Magill appeared before Congress that December.
Stephen Silver is a Broomall-based freelance writer.
