The Gates of Gaza

A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel’s Borderlands

By Amir Tibon (Little, Brown and Company, October 2024)

Genre: Non-Fiction

Via: Library

Pages: 290 + extensive Notes and an Index

It’s complicated. Intense. Tragic. Indeed, the depth and breadth of the decades-long conflict in the Middle East are difficult – and maybe impossible – to fully grasp unless you live there. That’s one of two main messages that come through loud and clear in this first-hand account of the October 7 massacre by journalist Amir Tibon.

Twelve chapters plus an Epilogue bring us into the heart of the October 7 and the history of the region. The author’s first-person narrative focuses on how the author, along with his wife Miri and their two young daughters, hid in the family’s safe room inside their home during Hamas’s murderous rampage across southern Israel. It’s hair-raising. To put it mildly.

Tibon and his family lived in the Nahal Oz kibbutz, located about a mile from the Gaza Strip and outside Iron Dome protection. It’s also the story of Tibon’s father, Noam, a retired Israeli general. And Noam’s or “Saba’s” (grandfather) heroic mission to rescue Amir and his family in Nahal Oz while the events of October 7 are still unfolding, including the Nova music festival.

Did we mention hair-raising?

Back and Forth

Chapters alternate between Tibon’s minute-by-minute account of what’s going on in and right outside the family safe room as they play out in real time and chapters detailing the history, culture, traditions, religion and prior conflicts in the region. The latter includes the rise of Arafat and the PLO, Hamas’s Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and the Palestinian Authority. The Camp David and Oslo Accords and fleeting hopes for peace. The rise of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad and the deployment of a new tactic: suicide bombings. Shin Bet (Israel’s internal security agency). Ongoing contests over land, especially the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip (the inclusion of maps is helpful to see why these are all strategic).

Rise and Fall

Also diplomatic attempts at peace that rise and fall over and over and over. Those who see “terror as a religious duty” on both sides. Syria. Jordan. Egypt. Qatar. Iran. Turkey. Lebanon. Intifadas. Tunnels. Mehablim. Arab Spring. Internecine squabbles between Israeli political factions. (This goes on for pages and pages.)

The Other Message

Tibon’s other message? It basically boils down to: Blame Benyamin Netanyahu. This is a recurring theme that takes up pages and pages and pages.

The book’s title is drawn from a 1956 speech by Moshe Dayan. And while The Gates of Gaza is a worthwhile read, we got tired of the political lecture after a while. The socio-political commentary adds little to the narrative and dilutes it more than anything else. The result is a one-sided see-sawing between a firsthand account of actual events, a replay of Israel’s history, and a shrill, almost petulant lambast of the Netanyahu government. And that’s too bad. This book would’ve been much stronger without the latter, which derails the narrative train. So we won’t be rating this book.

Another Perspective

For another perspective: TBN Israel. For daily news updates and more content “straight from the Holy Land”: TBN Israel on You Tube.