We’ve all been chilled by the photographs and videos of the devastated Israeli communities along the Gaza border, with their pockmarked buildings, shattered windows and blood-soaked sidewalks. And we’ve felt and shared the grief of residents who’ve spoken about hiding in bomb shelters, avoiding terrorists and watching their neighbors gunned down on October 7.
But in her new book, 10/7 Human Stories, Lee Yaron refuses to confine their stories to the morning of or the morning after. Focusing on 100 survivors, she pays tribute to the broad range of victims — from left-wing kibbutzniks to radical right-wingers, Bedouins, Israeli Arabs, Thai guest workers, elderly Holocaust survivors and first responders — by bringing them fully to life.
For Yaron, that also means exploring how the 100 view both the conflict with the Palestinians and Israel’s political turmoil, exposing a tragedy much greater, much longer and much more embedded in Israel’s self-image than the October massacre.
A reporter for Israeli newspaper Haaretz for the past decade, Lee Yaron is currently the paper’s climate correspondent. She has also written and directed theater productions created to bring attention to marginalized communities both in Israel and throughout the Middle East.
Sponsored by The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation Authors’ Series, honoring Theodore and Caroline Newhouse and Susan Newhouse