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The Gates of Gaza
A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel's Borderlands
by Amir Tibon
ebook
0 of 1 copy available
Wait time: About 6 weeks
A gripping first-person account of how one Israeli grandfather helped rescue two generations of his family on October 7, 2023—a saga that reveals the deep tensions and systemic failures behind Hamas's attacks that day.
On the morning of October 7, Amir Tibon and his wife were awakened by mortar rounds exploding near their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, a progressive Israeli community less than a mile from Gaza City. Soon, they were holding their two young daughters in the family’s reinforced safe room, urging them not to cry as gunfire echoed just outside the door. With his cell phone battery running low, Amir texted his father: “The girls are behaving really well, but I’m worried they’ll lose patience soon and Hamas will hear us.”
Some 45 miles north, Amir’s parents had just cut short an early morning swim along the shores of Tel Aviv. Now, they jumped in their Jeep and sped toward Nahal Oz, armed only with a pistol but intent on saving their family at all costs.
In The Gates of Gaza, Amir Tibon tells this harrowing story in full for the first time. He describes his family's ordeal—and the bravery that ultimately led to their rescue—alongside the histories of the place they call home and the systems of power that have kept them and their neighbors in Gaza in harm’s way for decades.
Woven throughout is Tibon's own expertise as a longtime international correspondent, as well as more than thirty original interviews: with residents of his kibbutz, with the Israeli soldiers who helped to wrest it from the hands of Hamas, and with experts on Gaza, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the failed peace process. More than one family's odyssey, The Gates of Gaza is the intimate story of a tight-knit community and the broader saga of war, occupation, and hostility between two national movements—a conflict that has not yet extinguished the enduring hope for peace.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 24, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780316580984
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780316580984
- File size: 12903 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from December 15, 2024
Amid unthinkable carnage, a family evades Hamas gunmen. On Oct. 7, 2023, Tibon and his wife, Miri, awoke to the "shriek" of mortar fire, which they and their two young daughters had grown accustomed to as residents of kibbutz Nahal Oz, a small Israeli community near Gaza. But after hurrying to their house's concrete safe room, they heard distant automatic gunfire, which drew closer and confirmed their worst fears: "Hamas was coming for us." The self-described "left-leaning" author, a reporter for the Israeli newspaperHaaretz, combines a first-person account of the invasion with an informative history of the multiple attempts to secure Israeli-Palestinian peace, invariably destroyed by "extremists"--a term he uses for zealots on both sides. Tibon recounts how, after learning of the attacks, his mother and father, Gali and Noam, made the hour-long drive from their Tel Aviv home to their son's. Upon arrival in Nahal Oz, Noam, a retired Israeli army general, was drawn into the fighting. When an Israeli soldier was mortally wounded, Noam borrowed the man's M16 assault rifle and killed a Hamas attacker. Noam eventually reached his son's house, where, after 10 hours in the safe room, Tibon and his family were physically unharmed. Outside the house lay "five dead bodies, all Hamas terrorists." Fifteen Nahal Oz residents were killed; eight were kidnapped. Across Israel, more than 1,200 men, women, and children were killed. Tibon condemns Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a chaotic domestic response that poorly served Nahal Oz survivors. The author initially backed Israel's military response but today feels it's "extremely difficult to countenance the level of destruction caused by my own country inside Gaza," where more than tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. To his dismay, Tibon finds "no leaders in this land these days." An Israeli journalist's gripping narrative of the horrifying 2023 attacks on his community and country.COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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