Almost a decade ago, Amir Tibon moved with his wife to Kibbutz Nahal Oz on the Gaza border. They arrived in the wake of a lengthy war that had brought tragedy to the kibbutz, and took part in its healing as they started their own family.
Nine years later, when a much deeper catastrophe struck Nahal Oz, Tibon’s family was at its center, and their story spread across the world. Tibon has since retold their ordeal of hiding in a safe room on Oct. 7 as Hamas terrorists killed and abducted their neighbors, and of how his parents — Gali and Noam, a retired Israeli major general — drove to the kibbutz to rescue his family and others along the way. To many, the story encapsulated the tragedy of the attack and the day’s moments of lifesaving heroism.
Now Tibon, a journalist for Haaretz, is living as an evacuee with his family in Kibbutz Mishmar Haemek in northern Israel. There, he woke up every morning before 5 a.m. to write “The Gates of Gaza,” a book that traces the history of Nahal Oz and the region, interspersed with his account of the harrowing events of Oct. 7 and the surrounding failures of the Israeli government and military. His father is also a public figure and has been an increasingly outspoken critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since Oct. 7.
Tibon spoke with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about his memories of Oct. 7, his experiences since then and what he hopes readers will take away from the book. The interview took place in two parts, first in late August and then following the discovery of the bodies of six murdered hostages in Gaza, including that of Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Tibon had been in touch with Goldberg-Polin’s family in the months after Oct. 7.
Join JTA for a live and virtual event with Amir Tibon and journalist Susan Glasser, Sunday, Sept. 22 at 7 p.m. online or in person in Washington, D.C.
The Interview
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How has the past week been for you?
This has been the worst week since Oct. 7. I feel like we failed. Anybody who knows people who were kidnapped personally, the fear that this is going to end terribly is much worse than it’s ever been before. [Netanyahu] saw what happened to these young people, all of whom could have been saved, and instead of changing his approach and realizing [it] will cost all the lives of the hostages, he doubled down.
In some cases, the families of the hostages are your neighbors from Kibbutz Nahal Oz on the Gaza border. What brought you there, and how has your perspective on the kibbutz changed since Oct. 7?
We moved to Nahal Oz immediately after the 2014 war [against Hamas in Gaza] and during that war there was a crisis in the community, and it suffered from a loss of population. We wanted to do something different, something significant and also were in search of community. Moving from Tel Aviv, where we lived at the time, to a small community on the border ticked all those boxes.
I still believe in the mission of life and maintaining community on Israel’s borders. I’m not sure this is a priority for the state of Israel under the leadership of the current government, because under this government, we have basically lost two strips of border that were inhabited by dozens of communities [on the Gaza border and in northern Israel].
Can you take me back to how you were feeling on Oct. 7? What feelings have stuck with you from that day?
For us, the date is still Oct. 7 because of the hostages. As long as that issue isn’t resolved, we think we are still on Oct. 7, until we get back our friends who have been kidnapped from the kibbutz on Oct. 7.
How much do you think other Israelis share that feeling?
I think it’s a sentiment that is shared widely in the country but not everybody feels it as strongly as people who have a personal connection. I think a lot of people agree, I would even say a majority agree with these two sentiments: that this is a major failure that we have basically lost these two border strips, that it goes against the founding principles of Zionism that we have allowed this to happen. And that, as long as we are waiting for the hostages, we cannot really say we’ve overcome the tragedy and the trauma of Oct. 7.
I think people who don’t feel this personally, they don’t think about it every day and feel it every day.
How have your kids been over the past 10 months? And how are your parents, who came to rescue you on Oct. 7?
My girls love being here right now in Mishmar Haemek. Most of the children from Nahal Oz are doing, I think, quite well here. It’s a wonderful kibbutz and it’s a very generous community…
Like a lot of people, [my father is] worried about the situation in this country. And he’s trying to do good, to help in all sorts of ways.
And, you know, he’s a person who spent most of his adult life serving in the military. And I think for him, the failure of the military on Oct. 7 is not just something that impacted his family, but something that he felt really impacted his whole sense of, you know, what it is to be Israeli.
We always, in the family, knew that he was a very trustworthy person, and my mom too, and this has only strengthened that. I think what has changed is that we used to trust the military and the government. We never had appreciation for this specific government. We knew they were untrustworthy.
But the institutions of this country — you know, the military, the intelligence agencies, ministries — everything collapsed on Oct. 7. This has been a crisis for us as a family, because we’re a family that is invested in the state of Israel, believes in the state of Israel. You know, it’s hard to see what is happening. It really creates a sense of a loss of not just confidence, but of something you deeply believe in.
What has surprised you most about the past 10-plus months?
What has surprised me a lot, it’s a very painful surprise, but if you would have asked me 10 months ago, at the end of August, would Benjamin Netanyahu still be the prime minister of Israel and would 108 Israeli hostages still be in the hands of Hamas, I would say no way on both, right?
And sadly, the hostages are still in Gaza and he’s still prime minister. The two things are of course related to one another.
What gives you hope right now?
There was a very, very hopeful and positive moment at the end of November.
We got back about 100 hostages in a deal that was orchestrated by the Biden administration. And we also specifically received five hostages out of the seven from the kibbutz.
I wanted to believe that even though the fighting continued and we didn’t immediately get a continuation of the deal, I wanted to believe that it would maybe be a few weeks, a few months and we would get there. And now it’s been almost nine months since the collapse of that deal and, you know, we’re stuck.
I think that was the last moment of real optimism. Of course, there were moments of joy when we had hostages released in military operations… Those were the moments that I really felt optimism and joy. Unfortunately, it’s rare at the moment.
What was it like to write a book about Nahal Oz while you were living somewhere else?
I returned to the kibbutz several times, already in December, to collect materials for the book in the archive of the community. The archive building was not damaged on Oct. 7 — only from the outside — but everything inside was not damaged, and I went there to collect materials.
It was a very interesting experience to sit there while the kibbutz is being bombarded by mortars from Gaza and while the IDF is operating in the neighboring kibbutz. It was a really, really painful experience, but at the same time, I felt that it was important to be there.
Today, there’s about 20 people living in the kibbutz, but when I went during December, nobody was living there. It was only soldiers. And you’re in this ghost town, it’s deserted. You have people working in agriculture, pretty much, that’s it. It’s bombarded, it’s empty. The scars of Oct. 7 are seen everywhere, and inside this situation you’re sitting in this archive room reading the kibbutz’s little community biweekly newspaper that was sent to members of the community in 1967 in the weeks leading up to the Six Day War.
Was it difficult to interview members of the kibbutz for the book?
I actually felt that it was therapeutic for the people I interviewed. I interviewed people who went through very difficult things on Oct 7. I interviewed a member of our local security team who fought terrorists for an entire day, got dehydrated and almost died. I interviewed the mother of one of the hostages.
I felt that the interviews actually were good for them, were actually kind of helpful in digesting this.
What do you wish other Israelis knew about your experience?
I want people in Israel to read this book and realize that the history of Kibbutz Nahal Oz and the other border communities did not begin on Oct. 7. These were places where people lived and dreamed and struggled and overcame, and built homes and communities and families long before Oct. 7. I don’t want Oct. 7 to be the one and only day that is associated and affiliated with my community and other communities like it.
What do you want American Jews to take away from the book?
That’s a complicated question. I want American Jews to read this book and first of all, feel confident that it’s important to keep telling this story and to keep standing up for the truth here, because I know there have been a lot of lies and deception and attempts to rewrite history, to minimize what happened, to justify what happened. And I want this book to be helpful in that regard, to tell the truth about what happened.
At the same time, I also hope that people in the American Jewish community who have a tendency to always look away from the failures of Netanyahu and the Israeli government will realize that if they keep looking away, their children and grandchildren will not have a safe place in this world if, God forbid, antisemitism raises its head to the levels we’ve seen in the past.
The state of Israel is in terrible danger. The state of Israel is the insurance policy of every Jew in the world, I really believe it. If we don’t fight to keep this country safe, strong, properly managed, prosperous and democratic, the Jews of the world will lose their insurance policy.
Where do we go from here?
This is the money time for the American Jewish community and American elected officials.
Anybody who is putting up obstacles to bringing back our people should pay a price, and the American Jewish community needs to start speaking up.
Biden is the only leader in the world trying to get the hostages out. If Trump spoke in favor of a deal it could actually make a difference because Netanyahu would understand that there is pressure for a deal on both sides, Republican and Democrat, and this is something that American Jews can play a role in. Trump, Biden and Harris care about the American Jewish community to some degree.