Award winning Israeli author Lee Yaron set for Saturday night 10/7 commemorative event
By ALAN SMASON, Exclusive to the CCJN
As an award-winning journalist, Lee Yaron had written a number of articles for Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper website and American outlets like New York magazine. But the native Israeli could not have predicted how the October 7, 2023 attacks would bring her to write a book about the human stories behind the tragedies.
Author Lee Yaron of “10/7: 100 Human Stories” will address a crowd on Sat., Oct. 4 as part of the Federation’s second-year commemoration of the October 7, 2023 attacks. (Photo by Alan SMason)
“The book is about the human experience of the civilians since 10/7,” she told the CCJN. She was compelled to write stories based on hundreds of interviews she conducted with Israelis who suffered personal losses, whose family members were abducted as hostages, along with friends and first responders.
She created personal accounts of the families, some of which start back in the 1940s at the birth of the State of Israel as survivors recounted their previous pioneer generations.
“It’s really an attempt to allow my readers to understand Israel and the conflict through these stories of the lives of the victims,” Yaron explained.
The attractive 30-something brunette will appear at a special event tomorrow night sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater New Orleans, where copies of her book “10/7: 100 Human Stories” will be distributed.
Yaron, who identifies with the more hopeful, liberal wing of Israeli politics, believes that one of the casualties of the Hamas-led invasion and massacre that killed more than 1200 Israelis and resulted in the abduction of more than 250 hostages was the loss of a strong belief in a two-state solution.
“So many of the victims of 10/7 were peace activists,” she continued. “I checked their voting rate of the kibbutzim. Ninety-four percent of them voted for left-wing and central parties who supported the two-state solution. The people who lived there chose to live near the Gaza border because they truly believed in coexistence.”
Post 10/7, though, it’s different. “When speaking with so many of them now, they say ‘We feel that we lost everything. We lost our families. We lost our homes. We lost our friends. And we also lost everything we believed in.” For a lot of them it’s hard to believe in peace now,” she added.
There are others, she stated, who despite the loss of life and the ongoing war, have reinforced their beliefs in peace and continued to seek out peaceful coexistence, working with bereaved Palestinian families.
She admitted, though, that since the attacks, more Israelis have turned to the right.
“If you ask me and you ask a lot of Israelis who are protesting against this government of Netanyahu for so long, I believe that safety for Israel is a two-state solution. I believe it will not be over until we have peace agreements,” she avered.
“I grew up during the Inftifada. I lost friends in this war. My who life has been in this war and I really, really hope that my generation will be the one to stop it and find a way to give Israelis and Palestinians the life they deserve – of safety,” she mused.
Author Lee Yaron appears at a Federation event in commemoration of 10/7 on Saturday night. RSVPs are required to attend.
