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.