Pro-Israel art exhibit in DTLA spotlights Middle East conflict

LOS ANGELES - The growing conflict in Israel and Gaza is painful for many right here at home in Los Angeles. Miry Rabinovitch, for instance, says she's so emotionally distraught, "I just can't handle it anymore."

Rabinovitch was one of 1,400 volunteers in Downtown LA's Grand Park Sunday to show the world the atrocities of Oct. 7th — the day war broke out in the Middle East, and the day the NOVA Music Festival was silenced, which is why the live art installation was called "When The Music Stopped." 

Tomer Peretz was the artist behind the installation. Peretz was in Israel when all hell broke loose.

"We got slaughtered on Oct. 7," he said, which is why he and his team of about 10 producers created this art installation. He used drones, two of them, to hover over those playing the parts of victims and hostages — the hooded hostages, the wounded, the dead, the children.

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Many of those who played the roles Sunday said they're feeling the emotional pain of war in the Middle East.

"Oh my God I'm so afraid," said Natalie Lymor. Lymor said she's devastated with the growing antisemitism that's come out of the conflict.

"How is it we're in 2023 and I have to be afraid to walk down the street because I'm Jewish," she said. "It makes no sense because I'm Jewish, because I'm Jewish you're just going to stab me in the stomach is what I'm watching on TV."

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Rabinowitch said, "I'm a child of a Holocaust survivor, so it all came back." As a child of Holocaust victims, she said she never knew her grandparents or aunts and uncles. She has a daughter fighting in the war right now.

Leslie Grant, who played a gunshot victim during Sunday's installation, said as she laid on the ground that she felt a sense of sadness and hoped what she was doing would help bring awareness.

Sigal Byrnes was thinking of her daughter, who is fighting in Israel right now, while Soshi Strikowski was thinking of the 240 hostages still in captivity. 

Meanwhile, back with artest Peretz, who was in Israel during the early days of the war, said as he observed Sundays installation he thought of the "Hell. The Hell of Hell."