Join us for Friday night services followed by a Shabbat dinner as Amir and Noam Tibon share the story of their experiences on October 7th.
6:00 | Happy Hour
6:30 | Kabbalat Shabbat
8:00 | Dinner
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.
Amir Tibon is an award-winning diplomatic correspondent for Haaretz and the author of The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel's Borderlands (Little, Brown, Sept 2024), which tells the gripping true story of how he, along with his wife and their two young children, were rescued from Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7, 2023 by Tibon’s own father—an incredible tale of survival that also reveals the deep tensions and systemic failures that led to Hamas’s attacks that day. The story was featured on 60 Minutes and the film rights been optioned by Leviathan Productions, with Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz (Fauda) set to write the script.
Tibon has previously served as the Haaretz’s correspondent in Washington, D.C., and as a senior editor for its English edition. He is the author of The Last Palestinian: The Rise and Reign of Mahmoud Abbas (co-authored with Grant Rumley), the first-ever biography of the leader of the Palestinian Authority. He, his wife, and their two young daughters were evacuated from their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz after the October 7 attack, and are currently living in temporary housing in north-central Israel.
Major General (ret.) Noam Tibon served for more than three decades in the Israel Defense Forces, until retiring in late 2014. First enlisting in Sayeret Matkal, Israel's premier special forces unit, he was awarded his officer's ranks for leading a top-secret mission behind enemy lines, details of which are still forbidden for publication decades later. He served as the commander of the IDF's Judea and Samaria Division, and his last role was leading the Northern Formation, responsible for fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon. General Tibon's story of heroism on October 7, when he fought Hamas terrorists on the way to his family, while rescuing helpless citizens and injured soldiers along the way, has become a source of strength and inspiration for Israelis and supporters of Israel abroad. He lives in Tel Aviv with his wife, Dr. Gali Tibon, a Holocaust researcher and author, and is the father of two sons - journalist Amir Tibon, and Dr. Uri Tibon, a combat doctor in the Israeli military.