Israeli writers under siege reflect on the world since October 7

As diplomatic correspondent for Haaretz, Amir Tibon has spent years writing about the conflict in the Middle East.

Yet his extensive experience could not have prepared him for the moment that the conflict burst through his front door. He, his wife and their two daughters woke to explosions near their home on Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7, 2023. They hid for their lives in their safe room but incredibly survived thanks to Tibon’s brave parents, who drove down from Tel Aviv to rescue them.

The seasoned journalist, who still lives in temporary accommodation with his family, shares their experience in his book The Gates of Gaza. He told the JC: “There is so much denial around October 7, so many attempts to minimise or worse, even justify, the events of that day. This book is my own small contribution to fighting lies with truth.”

On Sunday March 2  Tibon joins a panel of Israeli authors at Jewish Book Week to discuss how October 7 has impacted identity, life and literature in Israel. Speaking ahead of the event, he said he and his family are “doing well most of the time” but are “extremely worried” about the fate of the hostages, including their friends and neighbours Omri Miran and Tsachi Idan.

“We are fighting every day for their release,” he said. “It’s a difficult struggle and a terrible reality that haunts us. But we try at the same time to keep our head above the water, mostly for our two young girls, who have been absolute heroes throughout this period.”

Tibon has not begun work on a follow up but has a plan. “I want to write a book about the battle of the hostage families, but I feel that emotionally, I can only start working on it after they all return,” he said.

Of his current book, he said: “The reception has been very good across the board, but my mission to get more people to read and learn from the book continues. I think it's very important to make it accessible to readers in the Arab world who want to learn what actually happened on October 7 and who are the people it happened to,” he said.

This is something Yossi Klein Halevy, who will also join the panel on March 2, has experience of. His book Letters to My Palestinian Neighbour, published in 2018, was available for free download in Arabic. The later paperback edition featured responses from Arab readers.

He told the JC his book, a bestseller, was “an attempt to start a new kind of conversation between Israelis and Palestinians that would be a respectful disagreement over irreconcilable narratives”. He added: “In some ways I feel the book was meant for this moment when young people, especially young Jews, need a language with which to respectfully engage Palestinians while holding the Jewish narrative - that’s what the book tries to do.”

Would he write it today? “There’s very little in the book that I would write differently but I don’t think I’d have the emotional capacity, the generosity of spirit to reach out to the other side and engage with their narrative,” he said. “It’s not only because of October 7 - it's because of everything that has happened since, where Israel’s legitimacy is under such sustained attack.

“I’m happy to engage with Palestinians, even now, but it’s harder. It’s harder emotionally and I have no patience whatsoever for the conversation about whether Israel has the right to exist. I hope that I will be able to return to the expansiveness that I tried to bring to the book - I don’t feel it now.”

Israel’s publishing industry, like so many other sectors, has been hit by unprecedented pressure from overseas critics. Back in October 1,000 writers, among them Sally Rooney, Arundhati Roy, and Percival Everett, signed a petition calling for a boycott on Israeli cultural institutions such as publishers, festivals and more. It prompted 1,000 other writers and cultural figures, including Klein Halevy, to sign an open letter calling out discriminatory boycotts.

The book he’s currently working on – The Wisdom of Survival – has also been impacted. “It begins the day after the Shoah and it tries to understand how the Jewish people went from the lowest point in our history to what I would still regard – even after October 7 – as the peak moment in 4,000 years.”

The book is “undergoing some significant rethinking” as certain premises he previously took for granted “are now open questions”, he said. “Israeli society is really reeling from two scenarios of power unravelling,” he said, referring not just to the war but the year of protests that preceded it. “It’s very different to the Israel I started writing about five years ago. It’s an Israel experiencing one trauma after another, so the book has required some major major rewriting.”

Ayelet Tsbarai woke on October 7 2023 to work on her first novel. “I was finishing the final touches,” she said. “Then of course I had to abandon it because I was, you know, surviving.”

After a “fracture” of some months, the Israeli-Canadian writer returned to it. “I read it with a new eye and suddenly there were all these considerations which came into play like is it too this or too that? Too pro or too anti? It was a little bit maddening and my partner said: ‘It’s good. It’s you. Let it be.’”

Songs for the Broken Hearted was published in September to great reviews, though not as many as her previous two books received. She describes herself as “fortunate” because she is published in English in North America, so the impact is not as hard as for some Israeli authors. Nevertheless, “there are certain things that make you wonder,” she said. “Like not being invited to this or that, not being translated to certain languages, or not being published in certain places. Some people call it stealth boycotting. You can never prove it but it does feel a bit different.

“A festival that told me how much they were looking forward to my novel when they invited me previously … didn’t invite me. They could have been thinking ‘why do we need this? It’s going to draw protests - let’s just choose another author, it’s easier.”

She added: “It’s really disheartening because books really promote empathy and how we see others. By saying you don’t want to read us you’re saying I don’t want to care. I don’t want to know you. It also means that it further isolates Israeli readers if books don’t get translated into Hebrew that’s also a shame. Israeli readers also need to have that kind of view into the world.”

Lucy Abrahams, a British literary scout based in Tel Aviv, said Israeli writers faced an uphill struggle prior to October 7 but the situation has got worse.

“Internationally and in the UK I would say people do not know Israel’s history or our stories and the outcome of this is a reluctance from most of the publishing industry to tell our history and our stories; and then from booksellers a reluctance to make our history and our stories available,” she said.

“The average world history table in a bookshop (even in Jewish areas) now overflows with titles accusing Israel of ethnic cleansing but will only sell ‘neutral’ Israeli books like Ottolenghi cookbooks and Yuval Noah Harari – you won’t currently find shops equally promoting the history of existential wars waged against Israel or our ethnic cleansing from the Arab world or the history of our state. Which aside from leaving us undefended in the arena of ideas is such a shame because I think we have the most interesting stories to tell and the most complicated, fascinating history.”

The last 16 months have resulted in a “really really grim” situation for Israeli writers, said Deborah Harris, a literary agent in Israel. “It’s not hard for me to sell someone like David Grossman because he’s known but for us to break out a new author is very very difficult. We’ve been ghosted.”

The response from most overseas “is not even anything substantial,” she said. “Mostly they write ‘I don’t know how to publish this book’.”

Echoing Abrahams, she said: “This didn’t just happen on the 8th of October but I never could have imagined that people who I know in the arts would so misunderstand a situation and just not look at the picture in its full context and that they would use the arena of literature to start boycotting, which seems to be the most unuseful way of trying to change the world.”

She has one client, first time novelist Elad Zeret, whose novel The Transport - award-winning in Israel - is a standout example. “At any other time in history it would have sold all over the world,” she said. The narrative is divided between 1961, when Adolf Eichmann stood trial, and 2061 when a man is in court for transporting livestock, which is now illegal.

“The writing is magnificent and I think it has a huge message for today when morality seems to be shifting on a daily basis,” said Harris, who admits that her efforts to sell it overseas have been “extremely unsuccessful”. She added: “It’s very very hard for him [Zeret] but I’m devoted and he trusts that I will find the right publisher. I’m like a dog with a bone.”

Despite everything, Harris is hopeful. “I’m not going to say there haven’t been days where I sat at my desk and wept but this can’t go on,” she said. “Our voices are too important, our people are too important and the situation has to change.”

Proud to be part of efforts to assist in that pushback is Claudia Rubenstein, director of the Jewish Literary Foundation which runs Jewish Book Week. She said: “This year, we feel deeply privileged to host a remarkable group of Israeli authors. Now more than ever, when Israeli writers often struggle to find a platform beyond their borders, Jewish Book Week remains a space where their words will always be heard, valued, and celebrated. We are honoured to continue providing a home for these voices, upholding our long-standing mission of championing literary excellence worldwide.”

jewishliteraryfoundation.co.uk/events/the-promised-land-authors-in-israel-post-7-october