Acclaimed Haaretz reporter Lee Yaron joins Zibby to discuss 10/7: 100 Human Stories, a radically passionate work of investigative journalism of the October 7th attacks through the stories of its victims and the communities they called home. Lee talks about the survivors she interviewed, everyday people from a wide range of communities—from elderly Holocaust survivors and peace workers to Ukrainian refugees and Israeli Arabs. She also describes the weight of carrying these stories, the emotional toll of hearing such grief, and her overwhelming mission to reclaim narratives for those who have been silenced. Finally, she shares her views on Jewish resilience and her hope that young Israeli women will step into leadership positions to help shape a safer future.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Lee. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss 10 7, 100 Human Stories. Thank you. 

Lee: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. 

Zibby: Lee, this book, like, it just slayed me as I knew it would.

reporting and the width, breadth of people that you spoke to and the intimate moments that you recreated here in not even that big a book, you know, like how you packed in so many perspectives, so many horrific moments and also inspiring moments. Like you saw these glimmers of connection and helping people and all of that.

Like tell listeners about the book, the framework for the book, just the backstory of the book. And just wow. I've, I was like, I almost, after I would read it. I was like having trouble sleeping, as I have for the last year, basically, nonstop. Anyway, okay, tell, give me more about it. 

Lee: I started writing it in the end of October, while I was very much still overwhelmed with just grief and anger and sorrow.

And I felt like I needed to do something for the victims. And there's not much you can do for, for the dead. And the thing I could do was to write what I've always done. Um, I'm a journalist for Aretz, which is the Israeli liberal newspaper for the last decade. And I've always been focused in human stories and in the people in the margins of Israeli society, if it's asylum seekers, the LGBTQ community, women's rights, and just trying to, to tell the story from the bottom up, because Because time and again, I've seen how these politicians that are shaping the policies that affect these people's lives are also telling and mistelling their stories.

And I came to understand that if I, I truly want to reflect a political reality, the real story lies with the real people. And I've been thinking about it from October 8th, basically, because from the beginning, we've just been flooded with all of this information and misinformation and disinformation about Israel and Palestine.

But it was again, the people in power that were also telling, spreading their agendas, you know, the same radical politicians, and I felt like this book is my attempt to reclaim the story of 10 7 from the people who created the crisis and return it to the people who suffered from it, to go, you know, beyond the numbers, the cold statistics and the political agendas to just the hearts and the homes of the people that were caught in the, in the crossfire and to tell their story from their perspective.

So, That's the framework. 

Zibby: So how did you go about this? Ten Seven Happens, we're all just, you know, flattened by it. You decided to take on this project. How did you do it? Did you just get right out there? You start in the field knocking on doors. Like, how did you, and how did you hold all of the grief and all of the trauma That you heard throughout the interviews where I, reading it is traumatic and I'm sure there's so much stuff that you didn't include and what was that like for you?

I guess that was a thousand questions, but how did you go about it? And then what was it like for you? 

Lee: I mean, from the beginning, I felt like I want to represent the amazing diversity in the Israeli society. I think in American media and European media, you know, people speak about Israelis as this one thing.

But this book is covering so many communities that were hurt. I mean, there is a chapter about refugees from Ukraine that just fled. Putin's aggression and see Israel like so many other Jews have seen it for the years as a place of refuge, of safety. And then one year later, do you need to flee again from Hamas rockets or the Bedouin community, you know, 22 percent of Israel is Arab Israelis, Palestinian Israelis.

Nobody is speaking about them. Holocaust survivors that were. Also heard our, um, of course the kibbutz in this amazing peace communities that eat so much to promote the two state solution and, and war in some kibbutz seen 10 percent of the population was murdered or taken hostage. So the first thing I knew.

Was that I'm gonna represent them all. And also the underprivileged communities. I think people are also overlooking that. I mean, so many of the cities that fell victim to Hamas are among Israel poorest. I'll tell you later. And some of them, my family lived in. And, and was under this attack that morning, but truly cities that are homes to also great populations of Mizrahi, what we call in Hebrew or Jewish Arabs that needed to flee Arab countries when Israel was founded, like Tunisia and Morocco and Egypt, because they were deported and came to Israel and many of them are still struggling just to make a living.

So these were the first two principles. And then I just let. It's story to lead me to another. I chose a few stories in every community that I felt like I had to tell. And then in every interview, I would ask the family that lost their loved ones about the relationships the victim had with other victims.

And I would hear this amazing stories, amazing connections, and this web of connections became the backbone of the book. And I feel like it's, it was important for me not to tell individual stories. I think it's a mistake in the media that we always hear it like, Oh, this person died and this person died.

But so many of them were actually friends or neighbors or. You know, in one chapter, I discovered that a daughter of the, of the Holocaust survivor that, that passed away, and maybe we'll speak about him, was the English teacher of the two kids and writing about them in captivity. So you understand that it's, it's not individuals, it's close knit communities that were destroyed and people that are mourning their families and also their friends and their neighbors.

So, there was that and it was, it was incredible. I was so many times just shocked from the things I discovered. 

Zibby: How did you, on a personal level, handle all of it? How did you handle the conversations and then go back to, you know, your own life or I mean, I know that is your life and it is life for so many people, but just how do you, how did you handle the heaviness without feeling hopeless?

Lee: Oh, I felt hopeless, but in the beginning as a, as a journalist, you know, you try to keep your boundaries between your professional life and your private life. But on 10 7, it was from the beginning, I came to understand it wasn't possible. I mean, and that morning I discovered that 20 Hamas terrorists were opening fire in the streets where my aunt and uncle live in the small town of, of Hakeem.

One of these four small communities and because people there are don't have the money to have a shelter in their home, even though they suffer from, uh, Hamas rockets from Gaza for nearly 20 years, when there is a rocket. Siren, like 10 7 started, people didn't know terrorists are coming. They thought it was just another, another rocket attack.

So people ran to the streets. And on that day, just made them easy targets for the Hamas terrorists that were waiting. And 49 residents of Hakeim died that morning. And the terrorists controlled the city for 48 hours. So we were very nervous. Uh, but in the end, my family was saved only because they were lazy.

They were so used to this rocket attack. So they decided to stay home and just hide home and staying home, save them. So it started like that. And then two months later, I was in the middle of an interview with a mother that lost her child and her daughter in law and is now taking care of their two little daughters.

And in the middle of this interview, I got a call that one of my dearest friends, uh, Gala Isenkot, was killed in Gaza. He was in a mission to rescue hostages. Uh, he was a reserve soldier, uh, a student. His father is, of course, is Gadi Eisenkot, that was the head of the IDF and a minister. But Gal wasn't a military man.

He wanted to be a doctor and save people. And he just went to the army on October 7th, like so many other young Israeli men that wanted to defend their country and bring back the hostages. And after Gal died, it was really, I found myself among these people, I was documenting, I was, some days it was, it was unbearable to just do, I wrote this book, really, I needed to write it very quickly, I had, Already, I, I, like I said, I started in the end of October and by November and December, the book doesn't only come out, it came out in English.

It's also French and German and Dutch and so many countries. And I, I understood from my editor that I have to write it quickly. So I had like six months to do all the interviews and write. So I was just interviewing all day, almost not sleeping. Like you said, you can't even Sleep after you hear all of these stories.

So it was at times too painful, but I have to say it also gave me strength and it gave me a purpose. I think it, it saved me in many ways from depression because I had a mission. I could be their voice, the voice of the people that were silenced and have this mission of telling their stories from their perspectives and make them remembered for who they were for their lives and not their death.

It's fair. It was very important for me that this book will not be a book about death will be a book about your lives. And after, after God's death, when, when God died because of his father, he came this political symbol in Israel, you know, and all of these politicians came to the funeral and were speaking about him in this way and that way.

And I just felt like I lost my friend and now all of you are like stealing him again. And I can't recognize him in all of these articles about him. And I wanted to do for these victims what we couldn't do for Gal, to just remember them for who they were. 

Zibby: I'm so sorry for your loss of Gal. The way it personally affected you and everything else.

I'm just so sorry. I mean, It's just horrific, really horrific. When you mentioned the town where your aunt and uncle were, that was the story with the man who worked in the cemetery, correct? Was that? Right. So that was, that was such a visual, immersive experience where he is going to bed, has to get up.

Wasn't it the Sabbath? And he has to go and work because you have special dispensation to do this kind of death preparation on the Sabbath. And he would, he used to take a long time with each body, but they were literally bringing him trucks, refrigerated trucks of body parts that he was assembling. And, oh my gosh.

And each body, he said it only took like a minute or two. He had to prep and was just, I mean, it Right. The immediacy, the pain, how he didn't even stop for 50 hours. I mean, that was so, it's just all, it's so powerful. 

Lee: You know, it's, there is, um, you're, you're completely right, but there is two characters in the name of Chaim in the book, and both of them are Chaim in Hebrew, of course, it's life.

But both Chaim has the job of, um, dealing with the bodies, with the dead. So one Chaim is Chaim Rumi, which is the manager of the cemetery of Afakin, the city my family came from. And then he's this religious man, 55 years old. He goes to the Moroccan synagogue every Shabbat. And on 10 7, you know, it was Simchat Torah.

It was a holiday. He was so excited to, to, he woke up early and was Preparing to, you know, sing and dance in the synagogue. And he, he began his day there. And after that, he went to his, his nap and then people are knocking in his door and telling him to go, to go to the cemetery and start burying his neighbors and friends.

So in this chapter, it's kind of like, get to know the people when Haim is, is surprised to see, to see his friends. And then there's. Another chapter that is a very difficult one was the Nova party in which I had, um, the chapter is mostly about the lives of these people. I'm going back and forth between the stories of 20 survivors and victims, but I chose to start it.

And I was thinking a lot about whether it's too difficult to read or not with the story of the other Heim. And that's what you described dead. He's just going there. It starts when he's also a religious man. He's hosting his parents, his parents in law for the holiday. When he gets this call from a rabbi he never met, he met once before, and this rabbi is telling him, you know Chaim, they put me here in this party to guard.

Something like 200 bodies and I don't know what to do. And Chaim is like, can you open the video? Like, I don't, he was having a hard time to even believe this rabbi when he saw what happened. He started driving there and just on his way, he gets like 70 volunteers that are leaving everything under fire and just coming to assist him.

And as we know in the Nova party, that just the number of victims was, was too much and they, they needed to do horrible, horrible work. 

Zibby: Oh my gosh. Yes. Sorry for conflating two chapters, 

Lee: both, uh, No, no, that's, that makes so much sense. The two times 

Zibby: you also sort of shined a light on lesser known stories, regions, the tour bus with all the elderly people who people watch just get this one man.

I think Danny watched out his window as helpless as you explain why they were on the bus and how they were just trying to go to the Dead Sea for the day and how there was nothing that could be done and how people said run. And of course they could barely walk and how basically just how all these, how the, how the towns.

Each place had this white van come through and just unleash destruction in so many ways and the terrorists everywhere. And I think that the media, or here in the U. S., like, I feel like we hear about the festival all the time, but so much less about, The other people and the other neighborhoods, the other groups, and tell me a little more about that, how you tapped into that whole group and that was, and how you ended that chapter saying that the two people who he had kicked off of how the organizer had kicked two people off the tour because there wasn't enough room and they called to say thank you at the end.

I mean, the whole thing is so heartbreaking. Oh my gosh. 

Lee: It's a very difficult, uh, an honest story. I mean, it's a group of these elderly, uh, immigrants that came to Israel in the 90s from the former Soviet Union. And they're also living like this. They live the hard lives of like working in this minimum wage jobs after they came with Russian and needed to learn Hebrew, but they're all retired and they want to enjoy They're, you know, their last years, they're all, and there's this guy, Alexei, that is offering this like, um, very cheap tours to the Dead Sea.

It's only 20 bucks. There is a deal. If you buy like three or seven trips at the same time, so they all have this little deals and it's like no meals, no guide, but they're taking you to the Dead Sea. And it's like little families, couples, an older woman and her sister, and they dress up for this trip and they get so excited.

And on that Shabbat a lot of people thought like each other who's going to get into the bus, because there were only 19 spots. So Alexei was trying to tell some of them like, okay, we'll push you to another week. And they said, no, we're regular customers. So in the end is this group of 19, uh, showed up and then the chapter, I mean, like going between the different seats and telling each of their histories, which is like just hearing the stories of people, like one, one man was.

One of the soldiers in the Red Army that was in charge of cleaning Chernobyl, they came to Israel and you're like hearing all of this amazing, amazing life stories and, you know, their strength, the way they struggle to build a life for their kids in Israel. 

Zibby: And how you, how you point out that, you know, for all of his exposure to Chernobyl, he gets 2, 000, right?

Or 2, 000. I mean, it's just ridiculous. So many unfair things, like, just, it's just the un It's just so unfair. All of it is just 

Lee: egregious. Exactly. Exactly. A man that really, he struggled all of his life, but still, you know, he comes that day with his hat and he's excited. He's trying just to, to make the best of what life gave him.

And they're driving just for a few minutes and then they have a tire and they stop in this bus station to try to fix the tire. When a Hamas fan is coming and the local shelter, there was a shelter there in the bus station, and it's supposed to be this like Israeli hijack thing when the shelter is opening by itself when there's a rocket alert, but obviously it didn't work.

And they were locked and they were calling to the municipality, but no one answered. And they just became these targets. For this, this Hamas van that was looking for people in the streets. So it's, you know, it's a story that inspires me because these people are so inspiring, but it's also so painful. And, you know, it reminds me, it's right after the story of Eitan.

Uh, we mentioned it a bit, the, the kid from Ukraine, there's a community of about 50 to 60, 000 people that fled Ukraine to Israel and I think are so overlooked, you know, these victims of two wars. And in the book I followed the story of this 15-year-old boy is like a tall, handsome, funny boy that grew up in the, in this Jewish amazing place in ESA with all the rest of the rest of the kids.

And when the, the attack started and in February of 2022, they the, they put an invasion. They just flee immediately. They have this rabbi that was one of the first people to be prepared. He had the bus for all the kids and they just drove for 20 hours and arrived to this abandoned hotel in Romania. They let him pass somehow without their passports and he reunites 10 years.

This, you know, like it's obviously so scary, like to run away from war, but Aytan is just so happy to be reunited with his mom again, and then they decided together they're gonna go to Israel. And the mother is asking one of her friends, Marina, that already did Aliyah before, and she's like, where should we go?

So Marina is saying, well, there's this city of Ashkelon. It's beautiful. There's this white beach that is really like Odessa and you should come here. And there's a little diddle that it's. pretty close to Gaza. They felt so safe with the Iron Dome and they knew the, you know, IDF is so strong. So they were sometimes sitting in the balcony and drinking a beer and seeing like the Iron Dome, you know, taking out the rockets.

And they were like, we're safe here. We're in the Jewish country. We're safe. And then, of course, Aten survived, and his family survived, and they started a new life for the third time in two years, now in, in the north of Israel, not that north, to be um, attacked now by Hezbollah. And one of the questions that Aidan asked me that I think about a lot is, you know, I'm only 15 and I went to two wars and where do you think is a safe place for a Jewish kid?

And, and I think that's one of the, you know, I understood quickly writing it that 10 7 is not just about Israeli history. It's truly about Jewish history. And there's this, this, another layer beneath the immediate suffering that I heard from all the families. And it's like the, the reopening of this wound of generations.

Now, I know it from, from my family, my name from my mother's side, my surname is Adato, which is in Hebrew Grimatria, it's, it's four, it's four letters and it's the year of 1496. Which is the year that my family was deported from Portugal with the rest of the Jews of Portugal. And for 500 years, we were wandering between Italy to Turkey and to Israel.

But it was so important. I remember my grandfather telling me the story. And it was so important for every generation to speak about that, about their injustice. Well, my father's side were, uh, survivors of the Holocaust and just so many pogroms in Russia and Romania. And my grandparents came to Israel, not, not as young people.

And they struggled, they struggled with the language and with the culture and my, my grandmother was speak Ladino in, in home. And I always wanted to learn it. And she told me, no, you are Israeli. They really, really hope that Israel will be the end of this. Jewish history in the, in the bad way of this prosecutions and programs.

And I think on, on 10, seven, when this fence broke, it was also just the de shattering of the dream of generations that Israel will be, will be a place of safety. I heard it from families of victims that came from Arab countries, from the former Soviet Union, from Europe, just, you know, Just speaking about their kids that died, but also about their parents, um, maybe we can give one example of, uh, the story of Shachar Tzemach from Kibbutz Be'eri.

Shachar was a young dad, this amazing peace activist, and he was a volunteer for the organization Breaking the Silence. And making tours in Havron, speaking about it to State Solution, even wrote an article a few months before 10 7 about the fact that citizens are not supposed to carry a weapon. And, but on that morning, when he understands the kibbutz is attacked, And no one is there to protect them.

He's the first one to take weapon and go and defend the clinic where some doctors and paramedics were trying to, to save the people that were already injured and he's calling the IDF all day and he's trying to get backup, but no one is coming, is standing there for hours and hours until he ran out of bullets.

And when the terrorist came, he put his hands up and he said, please, I'm not your enemy, please don't shoot. And of course they did. And when I'm speaking with his parents, which are his parents, with his father, Doron, he tells me about his mother, Carmela. Carmela was this young 13 year old girl in Iraq and Baghdad when the Farhud pogrom happened in 1941.

And she survived that massacre when 200 of the Jewish residents of the city were killed by their Arab neighbors. And after that, as a young woman, she came to Israel and was one of the founders of this kibbutzim, really wanting her children to have a safe place. So, so Shahar's parents are wondering, you know, if, if our mother knew what happened to her grandchild in the place she found it for his safety, what would she say, and that's, you know, Yeah, that's something I think about a lot.

Zibby: Lee, what do we do with all of this? All of this pain, all of this history of pain and yet resilience, of community, of injustice, persecution, and yet survival, sharing stories. Where do we go from here? Like, what do you want readers to take away? I, like, I personally took away that no matter what happens, the Jewish people will fight on.

And carry all the past and all the stories of the past and use that to sort of spur on this notion that like, nothing, even no matter how bad it gets, we can get through it. So I feel one message of the book is, is very hopeful, but another is, you know, it's very sad. I mean, it's, it, it, where do we go from here?

How do we hold all this pain and take a step forward? 

Lee: Yeah, I mean, this book, what I want people to take from it is like a renewed sense of our shared humanity. 

Zibby: You 

Lee: know, we live in a time that is so politicized and so polarized when it's like Israelis and Palestinians are so much in pain that we became blind to each other's grief.

And I hope that And not, not just us, but also our allies. It's just people are forgetting to make the difference between governments and between people. And to think about, you know, where there's so much politics and that obscures the fact that it's human, it's human suffering underneath. And I, I am a big believer in the power of empathy and the power of empathy to build bridges of coexistence between people.

And I, I think the best, the best way to create empathy is human stories. And that's what I'm trying to do in the book in a much, you know, deeper way than we can, we can get from, from the media when we tell, tell the story so quickly. Another thing is, you know, I come from the, the younger generation of Israelis that not all the people know, but we're 50, 50 percent of the Israelis were 30 years old or younger.

And that fact means that we'd never lived in a time of true hope for peace. We were born with or after the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, which basically says it was the murder of the Oslo Accords of the peace accords with him. And in the Palestinian side, it's like more than 50 percent are under 18.

We're all young people that were told again and again, that will always live in wars. You know, for me, the Intifada is my first memories of just buses exploding and, and running away and knowing to be careful not to be in places with a lot of people because, because children die, that's how I grew up. I really, really hope that after this horrible war and this horrible price for all pain, my generation will, will do the best we can to try and, and end this conflict and find a way to, you know, to live in safety.

I think that was the true dream of our grandparents coming to Israel. Maybe a last thing, because you know, we're Speaking here, there's, there's this subject that everyone is ignoring, which is the, the, the gender perspective of 10 7. 

Zibby: I was going to bring that up and some of the things that you reported I had not heard before, or just made my stomach turn, I, you know, we know about, The fact that there was so much female, sort of sexual violence, but reading about it in your book in such detail and, oh my gosh, okay, sorry, go on.

Lee: No, no, you're completely right. And I think, I mean, this is the most painful layer, but there's, there's so much, like, just think about it. How many women are there in the Israeli cabinet of war? Not a single one. How many are there in like leadership roles in the IDF? There's barely any. And I mean, in the Hamas leadership, of course, it's a joke.

So we have two, two sides of the conflict. There's absolutely lack of women voices that are in the decision making process. And then I'm thinking about who were the only people that warned Israel? from this war. The seers, the lookers. For the spotters, exactly what is this, we call them in Hebrew, tazbitaniyot.

They are these young soldiers, a job that is given only to women because it's so difficult. They need to sit and stare at the desert and their cameras for hours and hours and to report to their commanders, their male commanders, if they see any suspected activity from Hamas. And these young girls reported they reported weeks and months before the attack and they said, we see something unusual and what their male commanders told them girls.

You're only the eyes, you're not the brain, and they did nothing with their reports. Sixteen of them were killed that morning, and seven were taken hostage, many of them are still there in Gaza. And I'm thinking what happened if we listen to them, but also I'm thinking about what happened on October 4th.

On October 4th, there was this huge, huge peace march of Israeli women and Palestinian women that worked together from these two organizations. Women Wage Peace from the Israeli side and Women of the Sun from the Palestinian side. And they signed together what they call the Mother's Call. They said, look, as mothers, we have so much more that, that unites us than separates us.

And all of us just want to protect our kids. And they send letters to the leaders saying, please go back to the negotiation table. Please try and speak about a solution before we'll go to war again. And they had this beautiful march speaking about their dreams of peace and safety on October 4th. And three days later, the co founder of Women Wage Peace, Vivian Silver, was murdered in her home in Kibbutz Ber Ri, and three other members of this peace organization was murdered.

So I'm thinking, what happened if we listened to them before? And how come when, you know, everyone are now speaking about the future and what will happen in Gaza, what will be the next Israeli leadership, but no one is speaking about the absolute need? To have women in both leaderships, whatever they'll be.

So I think, you know, in this, in this podcast that is all about like women power and moms, it's, it's a message that is really important for me. And I really hope that, you know, we, the young, the young Israeli women will, will step up and we'll go to politics and we'll try to make the change. 

Zibby: Well, I have to say, as you've been talking, in my head I'm thinking, I am talking now to someone who, in 20 years, is going to be in charge of this whole country, like, you, I, I just, I'm just sure of it, whatever you set your mind to, like, and I'm, that fills me with hope that someone like you can take up, pick up the mantle, and it just fills me with so much hope.

You're amazing. The book was amazing. I could talk to you about all the stories. We didn't even touch on some of the ones that hit me. The, I mean, it's just incredible, essential, essential reading. So important gives such context to everything else that's going on. And. It's also sort of a mitzvah to the lost souls that we can all now get to know them like this.

Thanks to you. So, Lee, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is such a gift and it is amazing. You're amazing. Thank 

Lee: you. Thank you. so much. It's so, um, important for us to have the, the American Jewish community, you know, to, to be remembering with us and, and understanding, you know, the complexity. of the situation.

So I really, really appreciate you and your listeners taking the time to remember these stories. I hope that, you know, now that we're entering the holidays, that we'll have, uh, Shana Tova, a better one than, than this year. So thank you so much. 

Zibby: Shana Tova. 

Lee: Shana Tova. 

Zibby: Bye, Wei. Thank you. Bye. That was amazing.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. If you love it, please leave a review and follow us on social at Zivi Owens and at Zivi Readers.