INTERVIEW - "The youngest victim of October 7 was a Palestinian-Israeli baby. In the womb, the unborn child caught the bullets of the Hamas attackers."

Israeli journalist Lee Yaron conducted the best interview of her life with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joshua Cohen. "It was a really good interview," Yaron says, adding with a laugh, "If not for the readers, then definitely for me." The American author and the Haaretz staff writer got along so well that they became a couple. In the spring of 2023, Yaron moved to the United States and accepted a scholarship at Columbia University, where she studied climate science. Then, five months later, October 7th changed everything.

In a hotel lobby in Frankfurt, where she was on a reading tour, Lee Yaron recounts the interview with her now-husband. It's a rare moment of levity in a stirring conversation. Yaron has come to recount other recent interviews she's conducted. These have yielded harrowing testimonies: For her book "Israel, October 7 – Protocol of an Attack," the young journalist spoke with numerous relatives of the victims of the Hamas massacre, as well as with former hostages. She describes the terrorist attack, skillfully interwoven with historical and political digressions, with a vividness that is almost unbearable.

Ms. Yaron, to be completely honest, I didn't read the book all the way through. It's brilliant, but unbearable in places.

Where did you stop?

At the Nova Festival. Where you describe the sexual violence.

This is certainly a difficult position.

By no means the only one. Which fates have particularly stuck in your mind?

For example, that of the Ukrainian refugees. Imagine being a victim of two wars at once. You flee Ukraine, come to Israel to find safety. Then, a year later, you find yourself under attack from Hamas. The Ukrainian refugees are a community of 50,000 people that is unfortunately often overlooked. In the book, I tell their story through the example of Eitan. An orphan boy from Odessa. 16 years old, a teenager. His life revolves around school, his girlfriend. That's what it's like at 16.

And then?

Then his family manages to escape Ukraine just in time. In Ashkelon, Israel, their new house is completely destroyed by a Hamas rocket, a direct hit. As if by a miracle, they have left it shortly before. Not the only miracle.

What else happened?

After losing their home, Eitan moved from southern Israel to the north. There, he sat in a bomb shelter while Hezbollah rockets rained down on him. Once, when we spoke, Eitan said, "I just want to live in a safe place, somewhere where I won't have to flee again. Can you tell me where I am safe?"

What do you say to a young person who has experienced all this?

Let me tell you another story: Sujood, a Bedouin woman, 21 years old. She is pregnant with her first child. Four days into her ninth month. On the morning of October 7, she is on her way to the hospital. On the way, Hamas terrorists shoot her in the stomach. Twice. The fact that she is obviously Muslim—she wears a hijab—doesn't stop the terrorists. But the fetus, the little girl, saves her mother.

What, it saved the mother?

In the womb, the unborn child absorbed both bullets. Sujood survived. She made it to the hospital and even delivered the baby. But the little girl died shortly afterward, at just fourteen hours old. She is the youngest victim of the terrorist attack. A Palestinian-Israeli baby who didn't even have a name yet!

This is an unimaginable story.

I . . .

Shall we take a short break?

It's difficult for me to tell this story, excuse me. But it's important to tell it because most people don't know it.

I didn't know it either. How is it that the story isn't more widely known?

It's certainly also because it's too complicated for the media. People tend to forget that 22 percent of Israelis are Arab Israelis. Many of them, too, fell victim to the Hamas massacre. At the same time, people of Arab background have very often experienced suffering and discrimination at the hands of the Israeli government, even though they are loyal citizens of Israel.

On the other hand, the story of the murdered Palestinian-Israeli baby is symbolic of the Middle East conflict.

Yes, and perhaps it's precisely the Arab Israelis who are showing us the future. After all, they're showing that it's possible to unite the two identities. A few months ago, by the way, Sujood's husband called me. Sujood became pregnant again, and they had a girl. Her name is Malak, which means angel in Arabic.

Was it important to you to tell stories from different backgrounds?

Yes, that was key. There are so many stories from people with very different backgrounds. Take Shachar Zemach, a peace activist from Kibbutz Beeri: He was the grandson of a woman who survived the Farhud pogrom in Iraq in 1941, then came to Israel and co-founded the kibbutz. In the West, many people talk about Israel as a white country. That's grotesque, because anyone who has ever been to Israel knows that so many of us are not white. When Israel was founded, more than a million Jews fled Arab countries where their lives and limb were threatened. Many of those murdered, like Shachar, belonged to the peace camp and worked alongside Palestinians for their state.

Like yourself. Did you feel the growing hatred of Israel after October 7?

Yes, it was disturbing at Columbia University. Immediately after October 7, the massacre was celebrated there. I saw people I considered friends and good colleagues turn against me. It was a shock. I had always considered myself part of a global left that shared similar views, whether it was about Black Lives Matter, climate change, women's rights, or the LGBTQ community. But now I was a red rag to these people. They wanted nothing more to do with me.

Can you give a concrete example?

In my seminar, I had a classmate from a Middle Eastern country. We were friends and talked about our hopes for peace. The week after the massacre, she went to the professor and said she could no longer work with me. She didn't even tell me directly.

What was it like flying back to Israel after October 7?

It was heartbreaking because it was suddenly a different country. Israel always had many problems, but there was this dream that Israel could be a safe place for Jews. And after October 7, it is now a place where you feel sadness, trauma, and anger. Wherever you go. Even if you are just sitting in a cafe in Tel Aviv. We have lost so many people in Israel, and when I meet strangers, I always think: What is their story? If, for example, the taxi driver is unfriendly, I imagine that he may have lost his son in the war. Or a grumpy waitress may be waiting for her husband, who is still at war.

Did the attack change the self-image of Israelis?

I heard the same phrase over and over again from the Jewish families I interviewed. October 7, they said, was the day we Israelis became Jews again.

Were they thrown back on their fate as Jews?

Yes, the ancient, intergenerational trauma resurfaced. Many families didn't speak about October 7 as an isolated day. They also spoke about their family trees, about their grandparents, about generations longing for security. The security that Jews still seek today.

And that Israel cannot offer them either.

In 2024, more Israelis will have left the country than ever before: around 82,000. The year before, there were about 50,000. And most of them are young, educated people born after the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin in 1995. For many older generations, that assassination ended their belief in peace. I hope that my generation, born afterward, will be the one to honor and carry on Rabin's legacy. But I am deeply worried that Israel will not survive Netanyahu. I want nothing more than to be able to raise children and live in Israel. And yet I am becoming increasingly accustomed to the idea that this will not be so.

You dedicated the book to a friend. Who is he?

Gal. He was killed as a soldier in Gaza, on a mission to rescue hostages. I think of him every day. He was only 25 years old, studying medicine, and wanted to be a doctor. For him, everything revolved around people; he always saw the good in them. A man of peace, I can't put it any other way.

However, from a military family.

Yes, his father, Gadi Eizenkot, was the head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Gadi admired his father. But he chose not to remain in the IDF as a commander. Gal died on December 7, 2023. So I was already working on the book when he died. And it made me suddenly realize once again that I had to write this book.

For what reason?

Because it was so painful how his death was exploited politically. He was presented as a war hero: "The brave soldier," "the son of so-and-so." For me, for the people who loved him, he wasn't a soldier. He was the kindest, most sensitive man you could imagine. Not a "great warrior." I want other families to avoid this: to remember their children as they truly were.

After October 7, was it immediately clear to you that you wanted to tell the victims' stories?

I felt I had to do something. And as an author, there's only one thing you can do: write. When I started at Haaretz almost ten years ago, I wrote about social issues. People in poverty, people with disabilities, Holocaust survivors. I always focus on the people's stories. And if I've learned one thing from the families of the victims, it's how important it is to be active and hopeful, even in the darkest times. I don't know how I would feel if I hadn't written this book and given in to despair. There's a chapter in the book called "Victims of Grief." It's about people who died from their worries.

What exactly did they die of?

From heart attacks, from trauma. Some have taken their own lives. I tell the story of a former settler who was forcibly evacuated in 2005, when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip. Later, he identified bodies after a terrorist attack, and he survived shootings and bombings. After the massacre in Kibbutz Beeri, he went there and brought survivors, bloodied children, to safety. A few weeks later, he took his own life.

Words fail me.

Yes, but if we want a different future, we have to start telling people's stories. Unfortunately, Israelis often don't know enough about the fate of Palestinians, and Palestinians don't know enough about Israelis. When I interviewed some of the hostages who came back, there was a mother with me who had been held captive with her daughter and her daughter's friend. I asked her to describe where they had been held. She explained that in all the rooms they had been held captive, there had been maps showing Palestine from "the river to the sea." Then she told me something else astonishing. One of the first things a terrorist asked her was where she came from.

What did he mean by that?

That's exactly what she asked: "You took me from my bed, from my home! You know exactly where I come from. From Kibbutz Beeri." - "No," said the terrorist, "where are you really from?" - "Well, Kibbutz Beeri!" - "No! Your parents?" - "From Israel." - "Grandparents!" - "From Poland." - To which he replied: "Ah, that's it. You're from Poland. Go back to Poland. We're from Haifa. We're going back to Haifa." A surreal scene. She was shocked to hear his perspective. And he was shocked to learn that her grandparents had had no choice but to flee. Shall I tell you one last story?

Please.

Moshe Ridler. Moshe was the oldest victim of the attack. 92 years old, a Holocaust survivor. He grew up in the town of Herza on the border of Romania and Ukraine. After the Holocaust, he became a police officer in Tel Aviv. Moshe must have been a great guy. In the 1960s, newspapers wrote about him; he was a celebrity for arresting drug dealers and pimps. Moshe always sought justice. After his retirement, his daughter Pnina—she bore the name of his mother, who was murdered by Romanian allies of the Nazis—persuaded him for a long time to move in with her on the kibbutz. She said: There is no better place to grow old. It's green, it's beautiful, come here. He was 90 when he finally moved in with her. Two years later, Moshe was murdered in his bed.

A good eighty years after he had managed to escape the Nazis... An incomprehensible fate.

I thought the book was finished. Then suddenly Pnina called. She had received a letter from a Holocaust survivor from Moshe's hometown, who remembered him and told how he had been deported to the ghetto by the Nazis' Romanian allies. That was on Simchat Torah in 1941. It was the same day. Moshe Ridler had been deported by the Nazis on the same Jewish holiday on which he was murdered by Hamas 82 years later.

Lee Yaron: Israel, October 7 – Record of an Attack. Translated from English by Sigrid Schmid, Cornelia Stoll, and Maria Zettner. With an afterword by Joshua Cohen. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2025. 320 pp., CHF 39.90. Lee Yaron and Joshua Cohen are guests at the Leukerbad Literature Festival (June 20-22).