I just finished reading The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival and Hope in Israel's Borderlands by Amir Tibon. Tibon is a writer for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, who lived with his wife Miri and two young children in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, which was attacked by Hamas on October 7, 2023. He chronicles the horror of the attack and the bravery in response. These chronicles are interspersed with descriptions of what led up to October 7, including the conduct of Benyamin Netanyahu and his allies, which, in Tibon's informed telling of the history, contributed so much to the tragedy. The book also provides insights into the larger dilemmas that those living in the region face, reaching back to the creation of Israel in 1948.
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"Early yesterday morning, Roi was murdered. The quiet of the spring morning dazzled him, and he did not see those waiting in ambush at the edge of the furrow. . . . Let us not cast the blame on the murderers. Why should we question their burning hatred for us? For eight years, they have been sitting in the refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes, we have been transforming the lands and the villages, where they and their fathers dwelt, into our estate."
Dayan did not use this rare recognition from a high-ranking Israeli government official of the price paid by the Palestinians in 1948 (and thereafter) as a plea to find a way to peace. Rather, Dayan concluded that the "young Roi who left Tel Aviv to build his home at the gates of Gaza, to be a wall for us, was blinded by the light in his heart and he did not see the flash of the sword. The yearning for peace deafened his ears and he did not hear the voice of murder waiting in ambush. The gates of Gaza weighed too heavily on his shoulders, and overcame him." pp. 27-28.
Tibon goes on to report that in "Nahal Oz, not everyone liked the speech. Some of the young kibbutzniks found it too dark. They wanted to believe that one day, maybe in the distant future, there would be peace between their community and the communities in Gaza." (p. 28)
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At the end of the book, Tibon relates his visit, some months after October 7, to the Nahal Oz's cemetery. He says that as "an Israeli citizen, I supported the war effort, at least in the early months of the fighting. I was angry over what Hamas had done and scared of how Israeli weakness in the face of that attack would be perceived by our other adversaries in the region. But as a human being, I find it extremely difficult to countenance the level of destruction caused by my own country inside Gaza. And as a resident of Nahal Oz who still holds out hope that my family will one day be able to return here, I have to ask myself what will result from all this violence -- peace and quiet or more violence?" (p. 288-289)
Tibon concludes by hearkening back to Dayan's 1956 eulogy for Roi Rutberg -- and the reaction to it (both then and now) from so many people of Nahal Oz:
"They had come to build their homes on the border knowing that war might interrupt their lives at any moment -- but they had never seen conflict as an inevitability. They wanted to believe that one day, there could be peace with the people on the other side. Some of them still believe it, even after everything that happened on October 7 and its aftermath.
"Gaza's gates still weigh on our country, as heavily as if Dayan had delivered his speech only yesterday. But as I walk out of the cemetery, I realize that there's more to the story. These gates don't just weigh on our shoulders, as Dayan said back then; in the years and decades to come, they will weigh even more heavily on our souls." (p. 290)
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I could end this blogpost now, but I want to note that I found particularly striking two very personal passages from Tibon.
The first describes the November 2021 rise of the Netanyahu/Ben-Gvir-Smotrich coalition:
"Netanyahu and his Far Right, ultrareligious partners returned to power with a stable majority. For the first time since his criminal trial began three years earlier, he had decisively won an election.
"On election night, Netanyahu announced that he intended to lead a 'fully right-wing coalition,' consisting of Likud, two ultrareligious parties, and a new party led by Ben-Gvir, which had won fourteen seats -- an all-time high for the Israeli Far Right. This unprecedented result was an even greater shock than Netanyahu's return to power.
"The next morning, for the first time since we'd moved to Nahal Oz, Miri and I spoke about the possibility of leaving -- the kibbutz, and perhaps even the country -- for good. We were scared of what this new, extremist government would bring and the kind of future that our daughters would have in a country where a man like Ben-Gvir could hold power." (p. 235)
[From afar, three years earlier in 2018, I expressed similar concerns after an earlier Netanyahu coalition enacted the "nation-state" bill, which, I believed, had put Israel on a potentially fatal path.
[And the fears I had were even greater by early 2023.]
In the second, in late July 2023, Tibon recalls that hours after the Netanyahu Government convinced the Knesset to enact a bill which started the process of dismantling the Israeli judicial system, he met a close friend and neighbor "while we were both walking our dogs in the neighborhood. He looked devastated. 'We've taken our children onto a ship, and now it's out in the deep ocean, and the captain is drunk,' he told me, in an attempt to explain his feelings. 'I want to get my children off the ship. And I'm scared that it might be too late." (p. 247)
A little more than three months later, on October 7, Kibbutz Nahal Oz was overrun.
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So where do we go from here? What is the future? As we grapple with these unavoidable questions, reading The Gates of Gaza is essential. It also might be useful to read the words of the late Leonard Fein, who made up this story after the Six Day War, but before the First Intifada. And maybe this short 2021 letter to The Washington Jewish Week, as well.
