The Amram Scholar Series kicks off the 2024-25 season with a vital, timely story directly connected to Washington Hebrew and our efforts to assist Kibbutz Nahal Oz during their time of need following October 7.

There are four ticket options for the event:

• General Admission (free)
• VIP Experience ($80). Reserved VIP seating for two (2) with a special reception after the program to meet the author. One copy of the book included.
• Livestream & Book ($46). Note — there is no free livestream available for this event.
• JUST ADDED! Livestream Only ($18)

ORDER TICKETS

Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.

This lecture and VIP reception are sponsored by the Dr. Allan and Katherine Schwartzberg Jewish Studies Endowment Fund, and presented in partnership with

About the Book

The Gates of Gaza
A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel’s Borderlands
By Amir Tibon

The gripping true story of how leading Israeli journalist Amir Tibon, along with his wife and their two young children, were rescued from Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7, 2023 by Tibon’s own father — an incredible tale of survival that also reveals the deep tensions and systemic failures that led to Hamas’s attacks that day.

On the morning of October 7, Amir Tibon and his wife were awakened by mortar rounds exploding near their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, a progressive Israeli community less than a mile from Gaza City. Soon, they were holding their two young daughters in the family’s reinforced safe room, urging them not to cry as gunfire echoed just outside the door. With his cell phone battery running low, Amir texted his father: “The girls are behaving really well, but I’m worried they’ll lose patience soon and Hamas will hear us.”

Some 45 miles north, Amir’s parents had just cut short an early morning swim along the shores of Tel Aviv. Now, they jumped in their Jeep and sped toward Nahal Oz, armed only with a pistol but intent on saving their family at all costs.

In The Gates of Gaza, Amir Tibon tells this harrowing story in full for the first time. He describes his family’s ordeal — and the bravery that ultimately led to their rescue — alongside the histories of the place they call home and the systems of power that have kept them and their neighbors in Gaza in harm’s way for decades.

Woven throughout is Tibon’s own expertise as a longtime international correspondent, as well as more than thirty original interviews: with residents of his kibbutz, with the Israeli soldiers who helped to wrest it from the hands of Hamas, and with experts on Gaza, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the failed peace process. More than one family’s odyssey, The Gates of Gaza is the intimate story of a tight-knit community and the broader saga of war, occupation, and hostility between two national movements—a conflict that has not yet extinguished the enduring hope for peace.

About the Author

Amir Tibon is an award-win­ning Israeli jour­nal­ist who cov­ers diplo­mat­ic affairs for Haaretz, Israel’s news­pa­per of record. His writ­ing on Israel and the Mid­dle East has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York­er, For­eign Affairs, and oth­er lead­ing U.S. pub­li­ca­tions.

About Special Guest Susan Glasser

Susan Glasser is an American journalist and news editor who writes the online column “Letter from Biden’s Washington” in The New Yorker, where she is a staff writer. She is the author, with her husband Peter Baker, of Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the End of Revolution, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III, and The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021.