Nearly 300 reported killed by Hamas insurgents at Israeli music festival

Daniel Payne   By Daniel Payne for CNA

October 9, 2023 Catholic News Agency News Briefs 1 Print

 

A picture taken in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon on Oct. 7, 2023, shows burnt-out vehicles outside a residential building hit in a rocket attack from the Gaza Strip. / Credit: AHMAD GHARABLI/AFP via Getty Images

CNA Staff, Oct 9, 2023 / 15:00 pm (CNA).

Nearly 300 individuals were reportedly killed at a music festival in Israel amid Hamas’ large-scale invasion of the Middle Eastern country last week.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on its website shortly after the invasion began that an “outdoor music festival” was among the places targeted by Hamas forces at the start of the incursion, which launched unexpectedly on Saturday with shelling from the Gaza Strip and ground forces and paratroopers pouring into Israel.

In the hours after the invasion, reports began to surface of a major incident at the Supernova music festival being held near Kibbutz Re’im in southwestern Israel, with Palestinian forces having allegedly gunned down a huge number of attendees at the event.

The BBC reported that “more than 260 bodies” were reportedly recovered from the site. The British outlet cited the Israeli rescue agency Zaka, which responded to the massacre and was working to gather the bodies of the victims there.

Zaka did not respond to a request for comment on Monday regarding the shootings, but social media was flooded with footage of the incident, including its aftermath, some of which appeared to show a scene of wrecked and destroyed cars at the abandoned festival site.

Israeli resident Gili Yoskovich, meanwhile, told Israeli news network i24NEWS that she had been working the festival when the deadly chaos began.

“[T]errorists were coming from all over, hundreds of terrorists,” she said. “They started to shoot everywhere. And everyone started to run.”

Yoskovich told the BBC, meanwhile, that the invaders “were going tree by tree and shooting. I saw people were dying all around.”

“I was very quiet,” she said. “I didn’t cry, I didn’t do anything.”

News of the massacre was met with shock on social media and from commentators around the world. It also caught the attention of U2 frontman Bono, who at the band’s Las Vegas residency on Sunday opened a performance of the band’s iconic hit “Pride (In The Name of Love)” by urging the crowd to “join us in singing for our brothers and sisters, for those who were celebrating at the Supernova Sukkot festival in Israel.”

Shortly after the invasion on Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Israel was “at war.” The country shortly thereafter officially declared war on Hamas, with military officials promising a major offensive against the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in response to the invasion.

The music festival was held just a few miles from the Gaza border.

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Bishop’s murder draws attention to tensions in Coptic Orthodox Church

August 20, 2018 CNA Daily News 1

Alexandria, Egypt, Aug 20, 2018 / 02:48 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Last month’s murder of Bishop Epiphanius, the abbot of St. Macarius Monastery in the Egyptian desert, has highlighted tension in the Coptic Orthodox Church over monasticism, ecumenism, and reform.

Bishop Epiphanius’ body was found July 29, with injuries to his head and back that suggest that he had been hit by a sharp object.

Isaiah al-Makary, whose name in the world is Wael Saad, was charged with the bishop’s murder Aug. 11, and confessed to the murder the following day. Saad said another monk, Faltaous al-Makary (Raymond Rasmi Mansour), assisted in the crime. Faltaous attempted suicide in recent weeks, and was being treated at a Cairo hospital.

Saad was expelled from the monastery Aug. 5, for “inappropriate actions which violate monastic behavior and way of life.” The Coptic Orthodox Church said that his dismissal had been decided on before the bishop’s death.

Bishop Epiphanius’ murder has led to the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate issuing several decrees on monasticism.

Tawadros II, Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria, announced Aug. 1 that the Church’s monasteries would stop accepting new brothers for one year. Those who established monasteries unapproved by the patriarchate will be stripped of their priesthood and monastic state. No new monasteries may be founded except as a revival of old monasteries, and this is to be done under the care of a recognized monastery.

The Church has also instructed its monks to close their social media accounts, and has suspended the ordination of monks for three years. Permissions for monks to attend outside functions is also being restricted.

And on Aug. 16, the Church announced that unrecognized monasteries have one month to submit to the supervision of the patriarchate. This will allow Tawadros “to supervise spiritual, financial, and managerial aspects,” the Egypt Independent reported.

The Coptic Orthodox Church is an Oriental Orthodox Church, meaning it rejected the 451 Council of Chalcedon, and its followers had historically been considered monophysites – those who believe Christ has only one nature – by Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox, though they are not considered so any longer.

Samuel Tadros, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told the New York Times that Bishop Epiphanius was “a senior figure in a reformist Coptic movement” that has been favored under Tawadros.

“His appointment, in May, to position in which he would work as a liaison with the Catholic Church was seen as a sign that conservatives were being sidelined, Mr. Tadros said.”

Pope Francis visited Egypt last year, and signed a joint declaration with Tawadros announcing that their Churches will recognize the validity of each other’s baptisms.

Previously, the Coptic Orthodox Church had repeated baptism if a Catholic had sought to join it.

Conservative members of the Coptic Orthodox Church have reportedly resisted such reforms under Tawadros. According to a commentary by Engy Magdy in the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn’s The Tablet, these conservatives are associated with Shenouda III, the immediate predecessor of Tawadros as Coptic Orthodox Patriarch.

The dispute goes back to tensions between Shenouda and Fr. Matta El Meskeen.

Fr. Matta was tasked by Cyril VI in 1969 with reviving monastic life at St. Macarius Monastery. The monk was focused on the spiritual life, openness to the thought of other Churches, and ressourcement.

While Shenouda was a disciple of Fr. Matta early on, after he was elected Pope of Alexandria in 1971 the two came into conflict. Shenouda restricted Fr. Matta to his monastery, and discouraged the reading of his books, according to an essay by Mina Thabet in Middle East Eye.

It was during this time, in 1984, that Epiphanius joined St. Macarius and became a monk. Epiphanius was a disciple of Fr. Matta, and was involved in ecumenism.

Fr. Matta died in 2006.

St. Macarius Monastery was long independent of the Coptic Orthodox hierarchy, but Shenouda restored it under the Church’s authority in 2009, and appointed some 70 conservative monks, among them Saad and Faltaous.

In the year after Shenouda’s 2012 death, Epiphanius was elected abbot of St. Macarius, and consecrated a bishop.

The murder of Bishop Epiphanius in his cell at St. Macarius may well only heighten tensions within the Coptic Orthodox Church, especially as Tawadros continues to extend his oversight of the monasteries in the desert of Egypt.

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