‘It’s so different from the media narrative’: telling a different story of 7 October

W hen Hamas attacked southern Israeli communities on 7 October 2023, unleashing a devastating retaliation against Gaza that is still under way nearly two years later, those few who still hoped for peaceful coexistence were among the first to die.

The hardest-hit kibbutz, Nir Oz, has nearly 70 year-old roots in the Jewish socialist youth group, Hashomer Hatzair, which advocated for equal rights for Jews and Arabs in a binational state. Before the attack, volunteers from the kibbutz transported critically ill Palestinians from Gaza to Israeli hospitals for treatment.

Liat and Aviv Atzili were staunch liberals, a history teacher and an artist-mechanic, progressive parents to their three children. When Liat, a US-Israeli dual national, would complain about some difficulty in life on the kib