A personal story that contextualises October 7

The armory of Kibbutz Kfar Aza on the Gaza border was stripped bare when I walked into it three months after 7 October 2023. One thing that remained was a box containing a battle dressing from the US military, dated June 30, 1943.

This is how prepared they were, the little Israeli communities living against the most notorious and one of the most dangerous borders on Earth. They had saved a piece of leftover American military equipment from 80 years before.

Ha’aretz journalist Amir Tibon was a member of one of those kibbutzim. He has written the story of his personal ordeal of October 7, as member of Kibbutz Nahal Oz in the Gaza envelope. He interweaves his story with the history of the Kibbutz, of Israel, of Zionism, and of the Israel-Arab conflict.

Tibon’s book is essential reading, not only because he unfolds for us how the catastrophe happened within history, but also because he shows us how one family survived and endured.

Tibon’s rescue on October 7 became legendary within hours. His father, retired general Noam Tibon, drove from Tel Aviv to mount a one-man rescue mission of his family when the IDF failed to do so.

Against the Tibon story of victorious heroism is the notorious story in the same kibbutz of12-year-old Ariel Zohar, who went for a run on that Saturday morning and returned to find his whole family had been murdered.

Tibon opens the book with the familiar sounds of rockets flying in from Gaza. He and his wife knew what to do, because this had happened so often before: they ran into their safe room. Israeli communities around Gaza have lived like this throughout their existence, in and out of safe rooms, or shelters, or flat on the ground, until the rockets pass, like a storm, then returning to what they were doing.

That Saturday, 7 October, the rockets didn’t stop. As Tibon and his wife Miri sheltered in their safe room, their children's bedroom, the electricity was cut, their cell phones ran low. Their infant children slept through the barrage.

Tibon doesn't explain why anyone who had the choice, would choose to bring up infants in a place like Nahal Oz that has endured continuous violence from the time it was founded by young Jewish soldiers in the yellow desert, on the rubble of kibbutz Be’erot Yitzchak that had been leveled by the Egyptians. These sands had no prior Palestinian settlements and were within the borders allotted to Israel by international agreement. The violence at Nahal Oz was not the result of legal illegitimacy, but because of its proximity to Gaza. Refugees with a high birth rate live rocket-distance from their old homes.

Soon after Nahal Oz was founded, a leading member was ambushed, dragged to Gaza and mutilated. Moshe Dayan came to eulogize him. The general told the mourners not to blame the murderers, but to open their eyes to the “sea of hatred and desire for revenge” swelling in those displaced by the nakhba of 1948. Israelis building homes at the “gates of Gaza” must be prepared and armed, because their lives would be a buffer between Israel and Gaza, Dayan warned in 1955. A human armory. From Dayan’s eulogy comes the title of this book.

Sixty years later, Tibon came to Nahal Oz as a reporter from Tel Aviv. It was the summer of 2014, during an outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas, the masters of Gaza. During the conflict, the kibbutz was evacuated and its fields were crushed by tanks. After the members started returning to their homes, but before the war ended, a four-year-old child was killed by a mortar. The community was devastated, and most young families left.

But Tibon had been impressed with the kibbutz’ beauty and the vision of the man who had showed him around. When a new wave of idealists rebuilt the kibbutz, Tibon and Miri were amongst them. They had two children and raised them in the serenity of a rural village sharing a fence with Gaza out of which rockets periodically rained.

Nahal Oz and the neighboring kibbutzim were left-wing; their members are believers in making every effort for peace with Palestinians. In the era of Oslo, they celebrated imminent accord at a party with their Gazan neighbors. In the years before 7 October, kibbutzniks met Gazans at the fence and drove them to Israeli hospitals for treatment.

The Gaza envelope communities kept their safe rooms up to date and their armory far from homes. The risk from misuse of arms was greater, they were told, than from the other side of the Gazan fence. Gaza envelope kibbutzniks looked for peace and trusted the IDF to handle security. On 7 October their hopes and trust and dreams were shattered, along with their homes and lives.

Tibon’s history of Palestinian Gaza and its Jewish envelope are gripping reading. He covers the cycles of violence on both sides of the fence: the Gazans’ hope and determination to end Israel so they could return to their homes and fields; and the Jews’ determination to protect what was granted them by international agreement.

The book details the rise of Hamas and its meticulous planning for the destruction of the Gaza envelope as a doorway to the Jewish state, and their extraordinary success in the face of a feckless Israeli government, a misguided IDF and peace-loving kibbutzniks.

Tibon also describes his father’s mission to rescue his family on 7 October with gripping intensity: the battles his father fought on the way, the unpreparedness of the IDF, who were “waiting for orders” long after their commanders were murdered, and their bases were gone. The bravado and spunk of the IDF had been replaced by professionalism and regular order, which served them poorly on 7 October. Nahal Oz’ little security team battled alone with superhuman courage and stamina against an enemy superior in every way. Because of their particular strength, Nahal Oz’ losses were far less than the losses at Be’eri or Kfar Aza. Only those border communities able to protect themselves survived; the IDF made precious little difference till the end.

Everything about this book is superb, except the parts where Tibon is “I”. In the stories of his father’s rescue mission, and the recycling conflict, he is at his journalist best. But when he describes the hours inside the safe room, with his wife and two infants, listening to Hamas murder his neighbors, he is expressionless.

He is also resistant to recording the atrocities committed by Hamas and the Gazans who flooded through the gates opened by Hamas. When Tibon describes being refugee in his own country, not taken care of by the still-feckless government, but by the goodness of fellow Israelis, he is also without emotion. He says he didn’t want to write the book, and he clearly doesn’t like divulging the personal within the public catastrophe of 7 October.

But these are minor reservations in what is an essential document in the history of Israel, of Gaza, of the Jewish people, and of 7 October. The central question I asked after finishing Tibon’s account, is whether any parent will bring their children back to this kibbutz. Tibon doesn’t answer the question. The blood of his neighbors isn’t dry yet.

Dayan’s eulogy at Nahal Oz remains as true today as in 1955. There are almost ten times as many people in Gaza now than there were then. If families return to Nahal Oz, October 7 has shown they can rely only on themselves for protection.

The rest of Israel relies on these idealists too, as human armor against Gaza. Tel Aviv is an hour’s drive away.