Fauda creators set to make a film about grandfather’s October 7 rescue mission
Amir Tibon's extraordinary new book about his heroic father and the future of Israel may become a movie
Jenni Frazer is a freelance journalist
Of the many heartbreaking stories to emerge from the events of October 7, Amir Tibon’s is one of the strangest. The story of how Amir’s 62-year-old father, retired army general Noam Tibon, drove helter skelter from Tel Aviv, together with his wife, to rescue his son and his family in their kibbutz, Nahal Oz, is surely extraordinary. If it weren’t all too real life, you would think it was a TV thriller.
Now, Amir Tibon, diplomatic correspondent of Haaretz, has published the story of this rescue in a book, The Gates of Gaza. It flawlessly weaves history and adventure together so the reader – although we know there was a successful outcome – is still gripped with fear for the Tibon family, trapped for 10 hours in the safe room of their kibbutz home. Just Amir, his wife Miri, and their two tiny daughters, Galia and Carmel, aged three and a half and one and a half. It is the stuff of nightmares.
Above all, this is a journalist’s book, in that everyone who can be identified by name, is: those who are killed on Tibon’s kibbutz, his friends and neighbours, the soldiers who die in the terrible firefights in which Noam Tibon was involved on his way to rescue his son. We learn all their names and mourn with him.
On October 8 last year, the Tibons, along with other survivors from Nahal Oz, were evacuated to the northern kibbutz of Mishmar HaEmek. Amir Tibon is speaking to Life from the caravan to which he and his family were relocated just two months ago.
“When I was approached with the idea of writing my family story from October 7. I realised three things,” he says “First, that I could not tell the story of October 7 at all without telling the history of what led to it. And then, that I could not tell my own family story without also telling what happened on my kibbutz on that day – because people would have a lot of questions, like what was happening to everyone else, how come we remained alive. All the questions had to be answered.”
The third thing, Tibon says, was that once he had made the decision to alternate history and his father’s epic journey to the south, he needed a way to keep the reader engaged during the historical explanations. And he does this “by telling personal stories”, to illustrate the founding of the kibbutz by the young men and women who were the first kibbutzniks and on to the kibbutz relations with their Gaza neighbours.
But he also describes, with great clarity, the political situation and the developing gulf between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest hardline coalition and the largely secular inhabitants of the south of Israel. His “wise American editor” advised him to present this contextual and necessary material in a way that “the reader will not feel like they have to eat their vegetables”. Sound advice: canny readers will treat this as a three-course meal with all the trimmings and want to do the washing-up afterwards.
Most fascinating of all is the detail of Netanyahu’s astonishing decision to allow huge amounts of cash into Gaza to be given directly to Hamas. Tibon writes: “Thus, as the Qatari envoy had continued to ferry suitcases of cash over the Israel-Gaza border in late 2018 and early 2019, [Yahya] Sinwar saw an opportunity to extend what had proven to be a mutually beneficial relationship: Netanyahu needed quiet, and Hamas needed money.” If journalism is said to be the first draft of history, then Tibon’s book is eerily prescient, given that Sinwar is now, since the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in July 2024, Hamas’ most powerful leader.
It is nevertheless shocking to read that, “in early 2020, there was a brief escalation between Israel and Gaza, but Netanyahu sent the chief of Mossad to Qatar with an urgent request to increase the monthly payments to Hamas in order to maintain calm on the border. Qatar announced it was planning to send $360 million to Gaza in the coming years.”
All too tragically, Israelis and the world learned what most of this money had bought for Hamas – tunnels in which to keep hostages and weapons to kill civilians.
The prime minister, in fact, gets a much fairer ride in this book than others might have given him. But Tibon is frank in his assessment: “I am not trying to put the entire blame on one person; this is a bigger story than one person. But obviously, in Israel, of all the people whom I blame for the failure – not for the attack, for that I blame Hamas – I put the blame on many people and Netanyahu is first and foremost. He has led this country for 15 years, and anything that happened is the result of decisions he made. He promised to protect us Israelis and our children, and he failed, in the most profound way.”
Beginning in November 2023, Tibon conducted scores of interviews, patiently piecing together the stories of those who survived October 7. “Only a handful did not want to speak to me,” he says, “and I respected that. But I think the vast majority realised it was important to tell their story, and on the emotional level most of them walked away from the interview feeling a little better. It was cathartic.”
He admits it was sometimes painful, reliving October 7 through other testimonies. “But sometimes it was helpful, and I feel overall it was my way to cope with the reality. Even more than the writing, the research was very empowering for me.”
While he was working on the book, Tibon talked to his wife Miri on a daily basis about the process. “We are that kind of family. And we also talked to our daughters.” His daughters, young as they are, have deeply impressed Tibon. “I think they understood instinctively there was real danger and that they had to be quiet, that we were not just saying it – we meant it.
“And I think that, over time, hearing our conversations, and from their friends who heard things at home, or on the news… I think they collected bits and pieces and understood much more than we appreciated. This is something that is going to stay with them for many years.
“Our approach as parents has always been to inform the kids as much as possible and not lie to them, but just to make it understandable in their terms. We never told them we were playing hide and seek for 10 hours in the dark. No. We told them there were dangerous noises and dangerous people, we had to be quiet and wait for Grandpa and the soldiers.”
No spoilers, of course… but waiting for Grandpa was the best decision taken by Amir and Miri inside their dark safe room, as gunfire ricocheted outside and who knew what was happening on Kibbutz Nahal Oz.
Noam Tibon, a man of almost unmatched military experience, was, says his son, “particularly worried about friendly fire – for his own sake as well as for ours. Among a group of soldiers in uniform, he was a civilian wearing plain clothes”. He had left Tel Aviv wearing a black T-shirt and jeans without taking time to put on IDF insignia that would identify him to other Israelis.
So, as he drew closer to Nahal Oz, he asked the group of soldiers to whom he had become attached if anyone had a spare uniform. No one did. But one soldier, “who came from a religious family, found a solution: under his shirt he was wearing green tzitzit. My father, a secular man for whom religion was limited to the celebration of traditional holidays, had never worn tzitzit, but was now happy to take it. The piece of clothing looked like a dress on him.”
Noam also wore a helmet belonging to a fallen commando, Hen Bukhris, and was armed with Hen’s M16 rifle. And in such unfamiliar garb, but so welcome, is how Grandpa appeared at Amir and Miri’s kibbutz home, calling for them to open the front door.
Even in the grimmest circumstances, the Tibons were able to make each other laugh, Amir records. “The only remaining sources of light [in the safe room] were Carmel’s glow-in-the-dark baby’s dummy. Two years earlier, as we prepared for her arrival, Miri had the bright idea of buying pacifiers that shone in the dark so we’d be able to find them more easily whenever the new baby lost one at night. Now, I thanked my wife for her foresight, and she replied drily that she’d never imagined these cheap things from Amazon would come in so handy.”
Amir’s parents “were among the last people I interviewed for the book, because I wanted to tell their story through the interactions of people they met along the way.” So, for example, we meet Bar and Lior Metzner, a couple who escaped from the massacre at the Nova music festival and were, improbably, rescued by Noam and Gali Tibon before they got to their
son’s kibbutz.
He also interviewed “Maglan troops and paratroopers” who had fought alongside his father on his way to Nahal Oz, and “a soldier my mother rescued and took to hospital in her car”. Only after doing that did he feel able to talk to his parents “and fill in the blanks” he says, adding: “I think their story is a very Israeli story. And if you know Israelis on more than a superficial level, you understand why. Israelis can be daring, very original in their thinking, [they] don’t have a lot of respect for rules, and are willing sometimes to take more risks than other people. There is also a commitment from large parts of our society to be ready to risk your life for others, obviously for your family, but also for strangers. All of that shines through in [my parents’] story.”
There are now plans in place with the creators of Fauda to make a film based on Noam’s rescue mission and on other stories from Nahal Oz.
But “the big story” right now, says Amir, “is that Israel is becoming more religious and that secular, liberal Israelis are questioning their future. It’s a story that began before October 7 with the rise of the far-right ultra-religious coalition, and their attempt to dismantle the democratic system of the country. Obviously October 7, in the beginning, froze this process.”
Now, he says, instead of mutual respect between communities, Orthodox and liberal, the government “has become more extreme and more hateful towards the liberal population of the country, and this is what is causing a lot of people to doubt their future”.
He continues: “I don’t know how it can be solved without a major political change. I don’t know a single secular family who is not considering leaving. It’s the talk of the town among liberal Israelis. Any sane government would be concerned. We can fight Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran – but we don’t want to fight other Jews.
“I want this country to succeed for everybody. And many religious people also understand that if we don’t find a way to live together, and respect each other, Israel does not have a bright future.”
The Gates of Gaza, a story of betrayal, survival and hope in Israel’s borderlands, by Amir Tibon (Scribe Publishers, a division of Little Brown} is out now, £20
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