The day Shani Louk died
A woman became the face of the invasion of Israel
In the early morning of October 7, 2023, a 23-year-old woman named Shani Louk was in Urim, Israel, near the Gaza strip. She was at a trance music festival, dancing.
She’d likely been up all night, among some 3,000 attendees, when the song developed an unexpected bass line. Five minutes later, the music stopped, as they realized rockets were exploding around them.
Then Hamas militants were rushing upon them in trucks, throwing grenades, and shooting guns. The rave became a massacre. Shani was seized, brutally raped, and killed by a shot to the head.
Her body was selected as a ‘symbol’.
As piles of massacred bodies were left, hers was thrown into the back of a pick-up truck and driven around, to cheers. One man grabs her blood-soaked hair, while another man spits on her.
An Associated Press photographer was taking photos, having been embedded with Hamas, and knowing of the attack beforehand.
The gruesome presentation seemed intended to horrify.
Shani’s limbs are dislocated. The video suggests a pool of blood around her groin.
A video was taken and uploaded to Telegram. Within hours, she became known globally.
In Germany, her family recognized her.
She was a tattoo artist.
She was Jewish, on her father’s side. Her mother is German, a Christian. Shani had a 5-year-old son. She was German, and had been in Israel as a tourist to attend the festival, put on by Tribe of Nova, and meant to champion universal love.
The ad for the festival read:
“You will create a safe envelope for finding inner calm, peace, harmony, mental balance, release of tension or unnecessary worries, rest or just relax having fun with special people…”
Shani’s sister posted to X an appeal, in Arabic, to imagined captors: “Ask the gunmen to protect her safety and dignity, and remember that she is innocent and that she holds #German citizenship.”
As the reality settled in, Shani’s mother made a video, asking that her daughter’s body be returned to her.
As more images were released by Hamas, the theme of the day was sexual violence.
There were parades of naked and beaten Israelis. After the first day, the number of murdered was estimated at 600, the wounded at 2,000.
As Israeli military re-asserted control, they found many women missing, apparently taken to Gaza. What was the strategy? One commenter offers: “this is a revenge driven Bronze Age style raid of enemy territory for women and weapons.”
But the theater and extremity seemed to invite retaliation—as if it was intended to provoke an emotional response. The New York Times later reports that it:
“…viewed photographs of one woman’s corpse that emergency responders discovered in the rubble of a besieged kibbutz with dozens of nails driven into her thighs and groin.
The Times also viewed a video, provided by the Israeli military, showing two dead Israeli soldiers at a base near Gaza who appeared to have been shot directly in their vaginas.”
For what purpose?
That would be sheer surmise, but a typical one involved Israel and surrounding countries being in view of normalizing diplomatic relations with surrounding Arab nations.
As Elon Musk puts it:
“This attack seems aimed at derailing the Arab-Israeli peace accord with Saudi Arabia. If there is enough outrage among the public of both sides, it will be harder to get the deal done.”
Political theater—using humans as props?
Shani’s story was told throughout the day.
When her Instagram channel was located, photos from it flooded the internet. How pretty she was, many noted, as they watched her globe-hopping to music festivals with her boyfriend.
Her social media became an art gallery to roam through for a world in search of meaning.
She’d been generally dreamy.
There’s no political talk. She was into being in nature as a spiritual experience. She’d written, in English, on July 3rd:
“In the nature is more easy for me to connect to my spirit the universe and my god, the sea the trees have they’re own unique singing and so we pray together, God will give you all you ask for💗🙏🏽”
As one person commented on her Instagram: “One day you are having fun at the festival, the next day the whole world is watching your lifeless body behind the pickup on the internet…”
The massacre at Urim was found.
Reports from survivors filled in details. The invaders had seemed to know where to be to achieve maximum carnage. It’d been a lot of teenage Arab males—intent on sexual tortures. Not just violent rape, but making the male attendees watch it.
Then the men were killed, as many women were taken to Gaza.
So far, 260 bodies have been found at the site of the festival.
More conservative people focused on the female details.
Amiri King, an American comedian, looked through her life, saying:
“There is NOTHING on the planet that could anger me enough or compel me enough to hurt an innocent girl.”
But those in sympathy with the Palestinians often felt the partygoers, regardless of gender, had invited their fate.
“Don’t come to a warzone to dance,” one comment reads.
Shani’s Instagram feed did have, in years past, suggestions of pride in Israel’s existence. That set up a range of hostile readings.
That she wasn’t behaving like a proper Muslim woman was noticed. She was just some “rave prostitute,” one guy thought.
It isn’t an easy task, many warned, to kick occupying forces off stolen lands.
Support for the massacre, on these terms, was common.
Indeed, the invasion was seen as a bold and welcome extension of ordinary ‘progressive’ politics. It wasn’t just talk anymore, as the idea went. Najma Sharif, the well-known writer, posted on X words that became famous:
“what did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? losers.”
For those in sympathy to Israel, aggressive military response was called for.
“Finish them,” declared Nikki Haley, American presidential candidate.
The raw video of the pickup truck video was circulated widely to invite such a response.
The regular idea on the political right became that horror images had to be seen, and a new idea of ‘evil’ understood as a global reality.
For the invaders, it had been a suicide mission.
Their actions were likely to bring about their own deaths, and that of their people as well. Violence was sure to rain down on Gaza, to the point, even, of the city being leveled.
Hamas, it seems, was willing to sacrifice everyone. 🔶
Added: Shani’s decapitated head has been found.
