Moral and esthetic discussions on the depiction of horror and genocide, which were prominent in the aftermath of World War II, seem to have lost their relevance today. Is there still value in the debate between Claude Lanzmann and Jean-Luc Godard or Georges Didi-Huberman on the limitations of visually representing the Holocaust? Lanzmann emphasized the cognitive and moral insecurity of those witnessing the witnesses, while Godard was in favor of visually portraying evil. Today’s media environment seems to have followed Godard’s example. Who can expect discretion, or any regulation of the dissemination of images of catastrophe, when smartphones, go-pros and livestreams make everything accessible online?
Constant exposure to crude imagery creates a proximity all the more paradoxical the more we consider it: we are at once compelled to involve ourselves emotionally and to maintain psychic distance in order to protect ourselves.

These questions have come roaring back after the largest terrorist attack on Israel since its founding: one documented and reported as it occurred by both the perpetrators and the victims. Unlike Nazism, which sought to erase the traces of testimony, the raw material from 7 October 2023, the apocalyptic sights of mutilated bodies, abandoned vehicles, homes burnt to the ground and communities devastated, were disseminated indiscriminately in video clips. These images exposed—on a global scale and not only to the eyes of those directly concerned—acts of rape, kidnapping, and killing.

Such free-floating, overwhelming imagery along with its eerie soundtrack, however gripping they may be, are incapable of telling a coherent story. After 10/7, this excess of images may have created an inverted impression: increasing chaos and disinformation, which paralyze thought and feeling to this day. How does one retrospectively invoke what happened on that day whose proper name, as Lee Yaron notes in her book 10/7, signifies a cycle of Jewish mourning?

10/7 indicates a process of mourning that evokes multi-layered emotions from all parties involved, starting with endless sadness and despair and ending with revenge and cruel destruction, with raw and complete objectification. At the edges of the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, among the leadership of military action but also among the activists that carry the conflict to the world stage, nobody wants to negotiate. It is a world of constant talking, but no speech takes place. Returning to meaningful speech requires, therefore, a narrative and interpretive effort: a detailed description of the people involved in the conflict, of how they live, in what landscapes, in what languages—of their sense of the world. A narrative-interpretive endeavor such as this cannot even begin, and can certainly not achieve much, if it proceeds through preconceived political categories. Rather, it requires testimonies that imbued with both affect and the flexibility of becoming.

Collecting Testimonies

10/7 by Lee Yaron and The Gates of Gaza by Amir Tibon are part of a wave of books published after a year of disaster and war. Both authors are journalists at Haaretz: Yaron deals with social welfare and climate issues, Tibon with political commentary. Neither book is literary writing, and in Yaron’s case, it is not even writing in Hebrew (her book, unlike Tibon’s, is only published in English and other translations). Both books seek to actively digest and process, reclaiming what happened through documentary work.

The power of investigative journalism, its disciplined style and non-sensational modesty, has been growing in recent years not only in Israel. It is present in the literary turn of the memoir, which is largely related to the transformation of political life into fiction, that is, the false and fictitious governmental performance in the face of which writers devote themselves to a search for referential truth that exceeds the literary space.

Notably, Yaron and Tibon’s books speak from radically different perspectives. Yaron was outside Israel on 10/7, and she returned from the United States after the event. Tibon, on the other hand, was at the scene as a member of a kibbutz Nahal Oz: a community of 450 people that lost 13 members and saw seven more people kidnapped that day. Both books shift between individual and regional stories of the survivors of this extreme political violence in southern Israel, providing an overview of Jewish and Israeli history that sheds light on the events.