I’m most of the way through Amir Tibon’s The Gates of Gaza. I’m reading it in preparation for a zoom talk between him and Yishay Ishi Ron, whose novel Dog will be the other book discussed during a moderated conversation hosted by the Jewish Book Council. I finished Dog a while ago, and have a review coming out of Yishay’s next novel, pending that book’s release in June.

Dog sat with me, and etched into me the pain of a former Israeli commando wrestling with the agony of PTSD, addiction, alienation, and homelessness following his service.  In some ways, Tibon’s book is a kind of preamble to Dog.  It is the book that helps unlock the Israeli history that got us to October 7th, a history rife with deceptions, half-truths, lies, stunningly wrong decision-making, and the seemingly endless sacrifices of Israelis on the altar of one man’s unbridled ego.

Reading The Gates of Gaza, I assumed I would be infuriated by what Netanyahu in particular did or failed to do.  The farther I got into the book, and the more I read the stories of the families and individuals of Nahal Oz, the soldiers who defended it, and the people who settled there and saw it as a paradise for them and their children, the angrier I felt.  But that anger tilted away from Israel and toward my home country, America.  I had to unpack why, since that wasn’t what I expected.  After all, Tibon’s book is a heartbreaking, infuriating, humbling read.  It points to decisions that ranged from sensible to frankly indefensible, over a span of decades.  And the consequences of those decisions boomeranged through the lives of real people within Israel and across its borders. As someone with deep family roots in Israel, I assumed the fullness of my anger and frustration would be directed toward those who put my loved ones in harm’s way over and over and........

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